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Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
231–240 of 735 posts
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#232WhatsApp, Telegram and everyone else should pull out of EU in protest of Chat Control. Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, and citizens will finally feel enough pain to contact their representatives ;)
> feel enough pain to contact their representatives
It doesn't work like that because the European "Parliament" is a joke. For starters, they can't initiate anything, they can only approve or reject (of course that it's almost always approve) stuff that is being passed to them from higher up, most of the times from the European Commission, if I'm not mistaken. Ah, they can pass/generate "resolutions", which are basically empty words put on a piece of paper.
Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone, at most they represent the political parties that have put them on the lists that got them into the European Parliament, but that's it.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who write this stuff still don't understand that big tech IS THE ENEMY. They are quite happy to implement this, even up into the OS Level. It's called Regulatory capture. Now your legal Moat to a true European Alternative has become even bigger.
Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the premise “big tech IS THE ENEMY”, it does not necessarily follow that the vast mass surveillance national security apparatus is our friend.
Personally I hate both surveillance systems. I hate the American big tech surveillance system - under which companies like imgur sell the personal data of its users to anyone who comes knocking. And I hate the European chat control proposal, where the government wants to take that data by force.
Privacy is a human right.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
signal is open source, so they'll just download the source, build it, add a backdoor and push it to the app store same as that weird official USgov version hosted by israel
Sometimes I wonder who builds this stuff. I appreciate at the end of the day that everyone has bills, but I feel like I'd rather apply for public housing before I work on that. They're not even getting rich, just a wagie. I have never met someone in the tech industry that was ideologically anti-privacy. It's always the lawyers and politicians. But someone builds it.
> Sometimes I wonder who builds this stuff.
the "secure" chat app supplied by some rando israeli company to the US government?
have a guess
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#235The UK has been doing this sort of stuff for at least a decade. For example they have the PIPCU which under the guise of copyright threatens 10 years in prison for sites not even in their jurisdiction. https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-launch-campaign-to-shut-d... And with that, they have at the least gotten registrars not located in their jurisdicrion to transfer domains https://easydns.com/blog/2013/10/08/whatever…
So has alot of Europe to be fair, I think it's a cultural thing honestly.
Wait, so you can host a torrent site in the USA and not get your domain ceased by the FBI?
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#236WhatsApp, Telegram and everyone else should pull out of EU in protest of Chat Control. Then EU will be forced to make its own chat app, UX will be terrible, and citizens will finally feel enough pain to contact their representatives ;)
We (in most EU countries) don't have representatives. Parties have representatives. To be listed on a ballot you need to be with good standings with your party and get chosen by them. Then various method ensure that you can't be elected if you are not a member of a party (anyone from a party below 5% is not getting in for example).
This means officials only care about what their party leaders tell them to do, not what voters think because voters matter very little to them. That's why American "contact your representatives" does very little here - they are not your representatives, they are representatives of party leaders.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#237The UK has been doing this sort of stuff for at least a decade. For example they have the PIPCU which under the guise of copyright threatens 10 years in prison for sites not even in their jurisdiction. https://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-launch-campaign-to-shut-d... And with that, they have at the least gotten registrars not located in their jurisdicrion to transfer domains https://easydns.com/blog/2013/10/08/whatever…
The US has always claimed jurisdiction on foreign-hosted but US-accessible content.
Do people forget the owner of Megaupload being extradited? In many ways this is just catching up to the current US state.
And there's a lot of confusion here between basic consumer data protection laws and (IMHO massively overreaching) "Online Safety" laws. This isn't Imgur making a stand for free speech, this is Imgur wanting to track and sell user data - to which minors cannot consent. Putting on my tinfoil hat you could argue that many of these companies are trying to encourage this misunderstanding intentionally.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#238Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
If big tech wants a reaction, pull all investment out of the UK. Microsoft + Google + Amazon + Nvidia + Meta + Apple = $630 billion in annual operating income. They'll react to a change in capital investment faster than anything else.
> pull all investment out of the UK. Wow I didn't know big tech invested so much in the UK!
"Investment" here seems to be operations and personnel, resulting in taxes going to the UK government.
They aren't making $630 billion per year in money off of those companies, but the operating income means they're getting taxes on that $630 billion (income tax from company and employees, VAT for purchases, etc.) and the personnel working in the UK are probably spending most of that money in the UK (velocity of money theory comes into play here).
The resulting economic benefit for the UK government is enough that they'd notice the drop if all that started to transition away.
Re: Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine
#240What are they actually accused of? That article doesn't mention any specifics.
There is a bit more detail on these pages:
https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...
No full detail though. Having said that, the second link is particularly interesting as it goes though various companies with comments about each.