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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

#391

Post by nine_k »

rckt wrote: post #270

I get that too many regulations is a bad thing. But when we talk privacy and personal data there should be no gray zone. It has to be black and white. When I see a stupid cookie banner I search for "Reject all". There's no some data that companies can collect and process without my consent, they just shouldn't be able to collect anything without me actively opting in. Business never respects anything, but profits. Se…

More regulation, or stronger regulation, as in less wiggle room for businesses, may be a good thing. Case in point: a regulation requiring to disclose the ingredients of food.

Too many regulations is almost always a bad thing: numerous pieces of regulation rarely fit together seamlessly. It becomes easier to miss some obscure piece, or to encounter a contradiction, or to find a loophole. The cost of compliance also grows, and that disproportionately favors big established players.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#392

Post by crazygringo »

Neikius wrote: post #268
vouwfietsman wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ext…

you CAN use analytics! Just need to use first party analytics... it is not so hard to set up, there are many opensource self-hosted options. I hate how everyone and their mother ships all my data to google and others just because they can.

Let's not deceive ourselves -- first-party analytics are much, much harder to set up, and a lot less people are trained on other analytics platforms.

They're also inherently less trustworthy when it comes to valuations and due diligence, since you could falsify historical data yourself, which you can't do with Google.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#393

Post by omnimus »

aerhardt wrote: post #379
Telaneo wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Sure, it's X% more difficult to do Y in Europe, because Europe doesn't want you to do Y, either at all, or unless you clean up after yourself so the costs aren't just eaten up by the environment or whatever, or unless you do it without causing harm. That's not a problem. That's the system working as intended. Sure, Europe doesn't have it's own Microsoft, probably because of regulations like this, but I don't wa…

> That's not a problem. That's the system working as intended. You really think that supra-national legislators regulating the fine-print of unfathomably complex systems manage to have everything working "as intended"? Why do Draghi or the EC want to roll back this mess then, other than the evident loss of competitiveness respective of the blocs who did not do this? Was that intended or foreseen?

I think what they mean is that what EU in general kinda knows that for various they won't be able to make their version of money machine big tech. So why not to try different path? The individual laws will always be flawed because there is huge pressure to make them flawed by corps and lobby that want's to exploit them.

But if you ask anyone in europe on the street they have no sympathy for big tech. If anything they want stronger GDPR and more of it.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#394

Post by lucketone »

idrios wrote: post #327
energy123 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stopped thinking of regulations as a single dial, where more regulations is bad or less regulations is bad. It entirely depends on what is being regulated and how. Some areas need more regulations, some areas need less. Some areas need altered regulation. Some areas have just the right regulations. Most regulations can be improved, some more than others.

Regulations are like lines of code in a software project. They're good if well written, bad if not, and what matters more is how well they fit into the entire solution

And lines of code is like the mass of an airplane.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#395

Post by user34283 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #302
tsoukase wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an Ad blocker I feel regret for stealing the site's revenue. So I allow them to collect my personal data. Anyways, I think most of them will not respect my rejection.

A site that cannot exist without collecting not needed personal data and without selling out its visitors, has no justification of continuing to exist. Don't let them guilt-trip you.

Do you think anyone cares in the slightest about your 'personal data'?

It's garbage and no one would waste energy for it, if it weren't for the ability to serve more effective advertisements.

If I'm going to offer an application monetized with Ads, I'm going to use a big ad network like Google which requires cookies to personalize the ads and prevent fraud. I could not care less about collecting your personal data.

And that's probably the same for 99% of websites.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#396

Post by crazygringo »

pseudalopex wrote: post #256
legitster wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, some how the vast majority of HN comments defend the cookie banners saying if you don't do anything "bad" then you don't need the banners. There are a LOT of shades of gray when it comes to website tracking and HN commenters refuse to deal with nuance. Imagine running a store, and then I ask you how many customers you had yesterday and what they are looking at. "I don't watch the visitors - it's unnecessary an…

> Imagine running a store, and then I ask you how many customers you had yesterday and what they are looking at. Server logs can provide this information.

Only in very simple ways.

Realistically, you want to know things like, how many users who looked at something made a purchase in the next 3 days? Is that going up or down after a recent change we made?

Many necessary business analytics require tracking and aggregating the behavior of individual users. You can't do that with server logs.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#397

Post by strken »

IMTDb wrote: post #387
palata wrote: post #375

I don't get why people conclude from the cookie hell that "regulations are bad". If those goddamn websites got actual fines for those dark patterns, they wouldn't do it. The EU should just be stricter with the regulations.

I m not sure I follow your logic; are you saying that the regulation is not that bad because you are not fined enough if you don't follow it ? Some of us just follow regulations because it's the law - regardless of the fine. I feel like we should be allowed to express our opinion about their merits or shortcomings without considering the penalty aspect which is an entirely separate conversation.

I believe the point was the exact opposite: the regulation isn't enforced, which creates these absurd opt-out dialogue trees. If it were to be enforced fully, then anyone without a "reject all" button would be slapped with fines. Maybe even anyone who doesn't abide by the do not track/global privacy control headers.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#398

Post by radicalbyte »

mmooss wrote: post #376
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.

> 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". Doesn't that describe SV in general, and big tech in particular?

> Doesn't that describe SV in general, and big tech in particular?

Absolutely! It's just that the hopeful hacker/nerd culture used to be more dominant here (slashdot had the more cynical types).

Now there are a generation who don't know anything but Javascript but think that they're God's gift to programming. I can understand it as ZIRP resulted in the bar being dropped to the floor for jobs which paid SV salaries. Imagine earning that kind of money straight out of school and all you had to be able to do was implement Fizzbuzz.

The hackers ARE still here as are some really amazing people but this always seems to happen with communities. The only constant is change. And without change communities die.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#399

Post by samdoesnothing »

idrios wrote: post #327
energy123 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stopped thinking of regulations as a single dial, where more regulations is bad or less regulations is bad. It entirely depends on what is being regulated and how. Some areas need more regulations, some areas need less. Some areas need altered regulation. Some areas have just the right regulations. Most regulations can be improved, some more than others.

Regulations are like lines of code in a software project. They're good if well written, bad if not, and what matters more is how well they fit into the entire solution

In general you want as few as possible of both.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#400

Post by samdoesnothing »

nine_k wrote: post #391
rckt wrote: post #270

I get that too many regulations is a bad thing. But when we talk privacy and personal data there should be no gray zone. It has to be black and white. When I see a stupid cookie banner I search for "Reject all". There's no some data that companies can collect and process without my consent, they just shouldn't be able to collect anything without me actively opting in. Business never respects anything, but profits. Se…

More regulation , or stronger regulation, as in less wiggle room for businesses, may be a good thing. Case in point: a regulation requiring to disclose the ingredients of food. Too many regulations is almost always a bad thing: numerous pieces of regulation rarely fit together seamlessly. It becomes easier to miss some obscure piece, or to encounter a contradiction, or to find a loophole. The cost of compliance also…

I think this is an excellent point. More is almost always worse, but if there is a genuine need for regulation it should be absolute.
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