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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

#441

Post by dijit »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #430
pembrook wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately politics has become the religion of modernity. Nuance and sober analysis like you've suggested do not mix well with religious dogma. It's much easier for people to react emotionally to symbols. For many here, 'GDPR' is a variable that equals 'privacy' in their brain computer. So any criticism of it or its implementation realities, no matter how well argued, will not be met with reasoned response, but in…

Most criticism of GDPR on HN is a criticism of bad-faith attempts to pretend to comply, many of which are expressly forbidden by the GDPR. It's a well-written, plain English regulation, and I encourage everyone to read it before criticising it. (At the very least, point to the bits of the regulation you disagree with: it should only take around 5 minutes to look up.)

Hear hear.

My company had consultants come in to help with GDPR, I left after months of them being hired: more confused than I went in.

So I went to the source, and I found it surprisingly easy to read and quite clear.

I think theres a lot of bad faith discussion about the GDPR being complex by people who have a financial interest in people disliking it (or, parroting what someone else said).

Heres the full text: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

87 pages and nearly every edge case is carved out. Takes 20 minutes to read.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#442

Post by stickfigure »

bitpush wrote: post #106
JoshTriplett wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies HN is not a hive mind or a monoculture. Every time the EU goes after some company, some people always cheer, some people always boo, and some people will cheer some and boo others based on the impact/nuance of the particular policy or company.

This is accurate, however if you look at any thread you can see an overwhelming consensus of opinion. The diversity of views are not equal - in the sense that there isnt equal number of for and against comments. In most of the threads I have observed about EU action on Big Tech, the overwhelming majority of thoughts are 'for', with perhaps few dissenting thoughts.

The loudmouths do not necessarily represent a majority of HN users. They're just loud. Some of us find the social-media-bashing threads boring and just go back to our social media.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#443

Post by dijit »

Someone wrote: post #368
betaby wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That cookie thing should a browser's default.

FTA: “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.”

GDPR allows for essential cookies with no popup.

Implied consent is valid for most functionality, just not selling peoples tracking data or giving it to a third party who could.

Its entirely possible to have no pop-up.

Someone once told me they wanted one anyway because it made the site seem more legitimate than if I removed it (the only thing I would have needed to change was the embedded video from youtube and I could have dropped the popup. Oh well).

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#445

Post by rapnie »

user34283 wrote: post #395
zelphirkalt wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. A…

A blog writer who injects ads cares in an analogy similar to how a low-level street dealer cares about pushing to clients. It provides the income. Further up the chain it goes much further than just ads, up to state actors who try to influence elections all across the globe, based on such data. And with AI a new Wild West wide open to explore.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#446

Post by rester324 »

generalizations wrote: post #436
rester324 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much untrue. Look at India, Africa, South America, Japan, Singapore, UK, Israel, the Arab world, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Norway, Switzerland, or Australia and compared to them the EU is doing just fine

You’re comparing the tech sector of the EU to that of Africa ?

No

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#447

Post by mzajc »

prolly97 wrote: post #406
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 don't want an internet designed by lawyers and politicians. And I'm afraid that's what this level of regulation and enforcement would create.

I don't want an internet designed by businessmen and advertisers, yet here we are.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#448

Post by EarlKing »

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.

Facebook is filled with billions of people I have no reason to speak to, ergo its network effects for me are zero, and its value to me is zero. Other services have similar zero or negative value, and hence I don't use them either. As much as some around here would like to believe that network effects are a moat that effectively allow social media to be immortal, experience has shown that not to be the case. Facebook is dying a slow, lingering death. It is not the place you go to find trendsetters and people of import, but, at best, to go check up on grandma. Facebook will die when grandma finally kicks the bucket and there isn't anyone to replace her because they're all on Discord.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#449

Post by mvdtnz »

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…

There are lots of uses for cookies that have absolutely nothing to do with collecting data about you.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#450

Post by vladms »

crazygringo wrote: post #396
pseudalopex wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Many people want to do many things, problem is do we agree as society it is ok, considering all the implications.

I personally find the commercial targeting extremely poor. I look for things to buy and I get stupid ads which don't fit, or I bought the things and still bombarded with the ad for the same thing.

But data collection can be used by far more nefarious purposes, like political manipulation (already happening). So yes, I am willing to give up some percentage points in optimizing the commercial and advertisement process (for your example, wait for 2 weeks and check for the actual sales volume difference) to prevent other issues.

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