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Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

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Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#221
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked to highlight the insane amount of tracking every fucking website does. Unfortunately it didn’t stop it. A browser setting letting me reject everything by default will be a better implementation. But this implementation only failed because almost every website owner wants to track your every move and share those moves with about 50 different other trackers and doesn’t want to be better.

The cookie law made this worse. I used to use an extension that let me whitelist which sites could set cookies (which was pretty much those I wanted to login to). I had to stop using it because I had to allow the cookie preference cookies on too many sites.

You can fix that. I use an extension called "I don't care about cookies" that clicks "yes" to all cookies on all websites, and I use another extension* that doesn't allow any cookies to be set unless I whitelist the site, and I can do this finely even e.g. to the point where I accept a cookie from one page to get to the next page, then drop it, and drop the entire site from even that whitelist when I leave the page, setting this all with a couple of clicks.

* Sadly the second is unmaintained, and lets localStorage stuff through. There are other extensions that have to be called in (I still need to hide referers and other things anyway.) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/forget_me_not.... I have the simultaneous desire to take the extension over or fork it, and the desire not to get more involved with the sinking ship which is Firefox. Especially with the way they treat extension developers.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autode... does a similar thing.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#222
post #91

This is such an important change for Europe. I've worked with 100+ start-ups as a consultant, and I've talked to EU ones who have been strangled by some of the regulations.

Honestly? Sounds like incompetence. I have never had issues with GDPR compliance. If their business is using people's data in an irresponsible or intrusive way, then they probably shouldn't succeed. The engineering problems it introduces aren't hard problems.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#224

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.

I always felt applying the same rules to everyone was a big problem with GDPR.

Not just small business, but even non-profits that just keep a list of people involved with them are subject to the same rules, even if they only use the information internally and do not buy or sell any personal information.

Its not just cookies and websites, its any personal information stored electronically.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#225
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…

?? He bought instagram in 2012 when it was tiny. They all moved in 2016.

His response was 4 years back in time because he can see the future?

They moved from meta to meta.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#226

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.

Browser level consent primitives would be a significant improvement on the status quo.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#227
post #199

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.

This would require politicians and policy-makers that think long-term, know what they're regulating, and maybe have been in the field. I don't think Law school Eurocrats can do any of the 3 items above, at least not well enough. This is either a way to chop at the (poorly designed and already watered down) GDPR or true, unapologetic lack of care. I'm hoping to go for my 3rd startup and ‘compliance costs’ have never b…

Politicians don’t need to know the details, they need to be advised by competent people with the best interests of the public in mind. Which may sound straightforward while being really difficult to get right.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not different rules for different people. You would be subject to one rule for your small company and another rule as it grows. This is everywhere in society, from expectation difference between babies, kids, teenagers, adults and seniors and to tax bracket structures.

This is different for different people said differently. Why would small companies have access to things not allowed to big companies?

Corporations are not people. This is not different rules for different people.

In the traditionally implied sense of different rules for different social classes.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#230

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.

I don't know if it's a changing of the audience or a change in how people behave generally, but this place has been insufferable lately whenever anything remotely related to Donald Trump's administration comes up. One of the things that made this place special relative to other online communities is the ethos to interrogate through a lens of curiosity. Now, there's a lot of vitriol that's indistinguishable from any o…

Yeah I still remember my first interaction with a supporter back in 2016. It was startling, and the first hint I had that politics was about to shift abruptly.
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