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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

#231

Post by graemep »

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…

> sers dropped from Facebook like flies and moved to Instagram.

Even worse, bought Whattsapp.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#232

Post by cm2012 »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #123
cm2012 wrote: 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.

What were they doing with user data?

Number one use case is sending anonymized and hashed data back to the ad platform to trigger conversion events.

Essentially all modern advertising is done algorithmically. The platform takes conversion events (a typical event is "someone fills out a form"), that signal is sent to the platforms, and the platforms use it to serve your ad to other people who may be interested. GDPR as it is means you need opt-in to do this, so it greatly reduces the effectiveness of online ad targeting.

So in practice, say you make a new cool B2B tool for, say, plumbers. It automates your plumbing business and makes plumbers more money.

In the US, you can make a Meta ad campaign with broad targeting and Meta will use algorithmic magic and be able to just find plumbers for you to show your ad to.

In the EU, this doesn't work as well, so its harder to find plumbers to show your ads to. Less plumbers get to use your product as a result. So its just one reason it's hard to get your EU based Plumbing SaaS off the ground.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#233

Post by tdrz »

HWR_14 wrote: post #186
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's impossible. The network effects are too strong. Facebook may die, or even Instagram, but WhatsApp is so intermeshed with the majority of the world that it can only be taken out by a government.

I uninstalled WhatsApp last year after I sent a message to my most important contacts that I'm switching to Signal. In the mean time, I convinced a grand total of 2 people to install Signal so we can talk. Also, I realized that actually not being part in some of the WhatsApp groups that I left behind has quite a lot of advantages!

Yes, the network effects are very strong, but each of us has the possibility of making a small sacrifice for this thing to change.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#234

Post by vouwfietsman »

nonethewiser wrote: post #157
hdgvhicv wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those “cookie banners” are nonsense aimed at getting this outcome. This is a loss for European citizens and small businesses and a win for the trillion dollar ecosystem of data abuse.

How can you comply with the current requirements without cookie banners? Why would EU governments use cookie banners if they are just nonsense meant to degrade approval of GDPR?

> Why would EU governments use cookie banners

They generally don't, because you don't need banners to store cookies that you need to store to have a working site.

In other words, if you see cookie banner, somebody is asking to store/track stuff about you that's not really needed.

Cookie banners were invented by the market as a loophole to continue dark patterns and bad practices. EU is catching flak because its extremely hard to legislate against explicit bad actors abusing loopholes in new technology.

But yeah, blame EU.

And before you go all "but my analytics is needed to get 1% more conversion on my webshop": if you have to convince me to buy your product by making the BUY button 10% larger and pulsate rainbow colors because your A/B test told you so, I will happily include that in the category "dark patterns".

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#235

Post by clickety_clack »

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.

So “smart rules” only means “more rules”?

Smart rule making includes reducing the regulatory burden when it overreaches. The weight of regulation around tech in the EU is creating an environment such that the only companies that can operate in a space are the ones who can afford massive compliance overhead. That leaves you with the very same big tech firms that people are writing these rules to protect themselves from in the first place.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#236

Post by bitpush »

microtonal wrote: post #181
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. People stop using Meta products, and then I want to see it die. The problem is that with a nearly infinite amount of money, you are not going to get irrelevant on merit. You just buy up any company/talent that becomes a threat. They have done that with Instagram and WhatsApp (which was and is really huge in Europe etc.).

Didnt the judge rule literally yesterday that this wasnt illegal. This was one of Lina Khan's signature lawsuits, and judge didnt agree even a single one of FTC's arguments.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#237

Post by debazel »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #123
cm2012 wrote: 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.

What were they doing with user data?

Most are running ads and needs to track the performance of their ad spend I believe, at least that what we do. We don't care at all about tracking anything other than x amount of users came from x ad source with some basic device info like mobile/desktop/etc.

We tried to get rid of any tracking banners but have been unable to do so.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#238

Post by nonethewiser »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #216
nonethewiser wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you comply with the current requirements without cookie banners? Why would EU governments use cookie banners if they are just nonsense meant to degrade approval of GDPR?

By not setting a cookie until the user does something active when I then tell them (say on “log in” or “add to basket”.

I dont think you actually need a cookie for that, technically. But I take your point.

What about trackers which they want to set immediately on page load? Just separate prompts for each seems worse than 1 condensed view. You might say "but trackers suck - I don't care about supporting a good UX for them" and it would be hard to disagree. But I'm making the point that its not malicious compliance. It would be great if people didn't use trackers but that is the status quo and GDPR didn't make theme illegal. Simply operating as normal plus new GDPR compliance clearly isnt malicious. The reality is cookie banners everywhere was an inevitable consequence of GDPR.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#239

Post by MangoToupe »

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.

Innovation isn't worth it for innovation's sake, though. Europe could easily profit watching others innovate and taking what makes sense for europe. I don't see anything about GDPR that would harm innovation or long-term success for europe.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#240

Post by paulryanrogers »

Aunche wrote: post #137
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…

Hackernews has always been a venture capitalist forum and has always had a significant minority that generally sides with money. I don't think that is substantially different today. Most European regulations seemed to be less about helping regular people and more about protecting European ad firms, many of which are even shadier than big tech.

> ...more about protecting European ad firms, many of which are even shadier than big tech.

Where can I read more about that phenomenon?

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