Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#161

Post by zrn900 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

jonesjohnson wrote: post #12

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #5

> One change that’s likely to please almost everyone is a reduction in Europe’s ubiquitous cookie banners and pop-ups. Under the new proposal, some “non-risk” cookies won’t trigger pop-ups at all, and users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. Finally!

the issue was never the law. the issue were the 100s of tracking cookies and that websites would use dark patterns or simply not offer a "no to all" button at all (which is against the law, btw.) Most websites do. not. need. cookies. It's all about tracking and surveillance to show you different prices on airbnb and booking.com to maximise their profits. https://noyb.eu/en/project/cookie-banners (edit: link)

> Most websites do. not. need. cookies.

All websites need cookies, at least for functionality and for analytics. We aren't living in the mid-1990s when websites were being operated for free by university departments or major megacorps in a closed system. The cookie law screwed all the small businesses and individuals who needed to be able to earn money to run their websites. It crippled everyone but big megacorps, who just pay the fines and go ahead with violating everyone's privacy.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#162

Post by arbol » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #112

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers should know the government is never on your side.

Neither are the billionaires and their deputies who both own and run all the megacorps. 99% of the current AI push is entirely anti-hacker ethos . It is a race to consolidate control of the world's computing and its economic surplus to ~5 organizations. A few people do interesting stuff on the edges of this, but the rest of the work in it is anathema to hacker values.

The client ai push has also enabled people to run local llama models and build products without those companies. Presumably there'll be more of this to come

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#163

Post by superkuh » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

hdgvhicv wrote: post #125

superkuh wrote: post #118

Does this mean that whois information can come back? The destruction of the whois databases by GDPR really made the internet a more closed, proprietary place. No more could one just contact the people behind any domain and communicate... pretty much impossible after GDPR came into effect. Especially if you don't use twitter/corporate crap.

That was already the case for the majority of domains.

We must have lived on different internets. I have much lived experience of finding cool domains, looking up their email, and talking to them all the way up to GDPR coming into effect. "whois privacy" options at registrars were starting to take off but at least those still had the email to contact. Now it's nothing.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#164

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #38

bitpush wrote: post #16

Incredible to see the 180 both from EU and also from the HN sentiment. HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies, especially Meta. Meta is no perfect company, but the amount of 'please stick it to them' was strong (I reckon that is still a bridge too far for a lot of folks here). Even extreme proponents of big tech villanery in the US (Lina Khan's FTC) is also facing losses (They just lost their monument…

> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. That happened a decade ago. Users dropped from Facebook like flies and moved to Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg's response was to buy Instagram. The Obama DOJ waved through what was obviously a blatantly illegal merger. Likewise, Google's only ever made two successful products: Search and e-mail. Everything else was an acquisition. In fact, Google controlled…

> The Obama DOJ waved through what was obviously a blatantly illegal merger.

Speaking of buying Instagram[1], it's plain to see that the horrible judges that Obama appointed simply don't believe that antitrust should exist.

Exactly what you would expect from the guy who let Citigroup appoint his cabinet[2]. The powers that be at the Democratic party thought that Hillary Clinton was too independent for corporate elites, and she makes a fairly good case that they fixed the primary because they thought he was their best chance to "save capitalism" after the crash. They were right. She even sabotaged her next campaign with her desperate need to show bankers that she was a safe choice (e.g. the secret speech.)

> Google's only ever made two successful products: Search and e-mail. Everything else was an acquisition.

And search was only successful for 5 minutes, until SEO broke PageRank. Since that one fragile (but smart) algorithm, and the innovation of buying Doubleclick, everything else has been taking advantage of the fact that we don't have a government that functions when it comes to preserving competition in the market. The West loves corporate concentration; it's better when your bribes come from fewer sources, and those sources aren't opposed to each other.

[1] James Boasberg; "Meta prevails in historic FTC antitrust case, won’t have to break off WhatsApp, Instagram" https://apnews.com/article/meta-antitrust-ftc-instagram-what...

[2] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8190

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#165

Post by veltas » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #142

jdasdf wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clearer safe harbors for small actors Different rules for different people huh? Just because you like the group you're benefiting and dislike the group you're harming doesn't mean that is good policy.

In literally no place in the world are the rules the same for running a multinational or running a lemonade stand. I feel this should be obvious.

In almost every developed country the rules are exactly the same. No hairnet, no licence? Lemonade Stand Ltd can and will be shut down. The main difference is lenience in punishment which tends to tail off and disappear at the lemonade stand scale, and be stricter for large multinationals.

I wish you were right though.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#166

Post by saubeidl » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

m00dy wrote: post #8

I used to live and work in EU, get out of EU before it is too late.

I did the opposite, I moved to the EU before it is too late.

It's the only power left that stands for rule of law.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#167

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

jdasdf wrote: post #120

danishSuri1994 wrote: post #110

I sympathize with the startup argument: heavy compliance costs can stifle early innovation. But the solution shouldn’t be “weaker rules.” It should be smarter rules, clearer safe harbors for small actors, browser-level consent primitives for users, and stronger enforcement against dark-pattern CMPs. That keeps privacy meaningful without killing small businesses.

> clearer safe harbors for small actors Different rules for different people huh? Just because you like the group you're benefiting and dislike the group you're harming doesn't mean that is good policy.

[deleted]

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#168

Post by cess11 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

It would have been nice if we instead had actually enforced these rules and given the world an alternative digital regime. I suspect it would eventually seem quite attractive to most.

"Well, you can say what you like but it doesn't change anything 'Cause the corridors of power, they're an ocean away"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpo2-nVc27I

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#169

Post by cess11 » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:10 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers should know the government is never on your side.

> Hackers should know the government is never on your side Never is naive. Hackers should understand governments are complex, dynamic and occasionally chaotic systems. Those systems can be influenced and sometimes controlled by various means. And those levers are generally available to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and motivation.

No, the naive position is to assume that the state is on your side because you occasionally gain something from it.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#170

Post by bitpush » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 7:10 PM UTC

pipes wrote: post #132

radicalbyte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a change in the community here over the last decade, we've lost a lot of the hacker spirit and have a larger proportion of "chancers", people who are only in tech to "get rich quick". The legacy of ZIRP combined with The Social Network marketing.

In the last few years I think sentiment on hacker news has shifted from libertarian leaning to much mored left leaning. The same happened on Reddit a few years before. Anyway, just my gut feeling, nothing scientific.

Keen observation both you and OP. We've gone from a sense of techno optimism to tech blaming.

Valid criticism is OK (I stand by crypto being a scam) but bring up any topic that is neutral to popular(VR, Autonomous Driving, LLM) and people are first to be luddites come out.