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Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd comment considering Americans are literally dying due to a refusal to regulate in certain areas - employee rights, healthcare, gun laws, obesity etc. Small price to pay for "freedom" I guess.

How does regulation help with obesity? And if it does, why are Europeans very nearly as fat as Americans?

The US is very lax on regulation concerning unhealthy foods. Sugar's the usual suspect, but things like livestock antibiotic usage and other sins come to mind.

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd comment considering Americans are literally dying due to a refusal to regulate in certain areas - employee rights, healthcare, gun laws, obesity etc. Small price to pay for "freedom" I guess.

How does regulation help with obesity? And if it does, why are Europeans very nearly as fat as Americans?

> [...] why are Europeans very nearly as fat as Americans?

They really aren't "very nearly".

According to [0], US' obesity rate is 36.2%(highest of OECD) while the EU country with the highest obesity rate is UK with 27.8%.

Every other EU country's rate lies below that, e.g. Germany is at 22.3%

[0] https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0060...

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#33
I think it's a relevant and legitimate thesis that this is in part caused by the origin of the major data capitalists (please explain why they are voted down).

I think it is fairly widely believed that the USA government favors US-american companies. The EU might do this less, but would have a clear economic interest in doing so, so I find this very plausible as well. I don't know how many smaller personal data companies there are in the EU compared to the US, but the major ones you hear about (Google, Facebook) are definitely in the USA.

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Europe keeps regulating itself to death and america isn’t. Given that the life expectancy in the US is falling which is unprecedented in an industrialised society, and on average below some second world countries that post has an involuntary morbid spin.

Unprecedented might be too strong a term. It isn't too difficult to find ups and downs of life expectancy in Western European countries.

That is correct, such decreases have been seen before.

e.g: "If we're not careful, we could end up with declining life expectancy for three years in a row, which we haven't seen since the Spanish flu, 100 years ago."

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-life-expectancy...

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#35

When you have zero tech companies it's easier to do things that impede tech companies.

Are you implying there are zero tech companies in Europe?

Not zero, but compared to US the state is kinda sad. Quite a few EU startups move to US sooner or later too. Meanwhile vice versa ain't happening. It's one way road for both engineers and companies.

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#36
I think it all comes down to uniquely American cult of individualism, in two distinct streams that separate and then join together. The first is a general anti-regulatory attitude and distrust of government, assuming that those things are harmful to individual freedom even when they're anything but. The second is treating corporations as people. Put those together and you get a belief that the government shouldn't tie companies' hands with privacy laws.

I'm not here to debate whether those attitudes are right or wrong. That's just my theory on how they answer $question.

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#37

When you have zero tech companies it's easier to do things that impede tech companies.

We do have tech companies but we don't let them grow beyond reason and extend their tentacular grip on almost all areas of society. Are you implying it's a bad thing?

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#38
post #19
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that America is unregulating itself to death.

The sad part is that platform economies are mostly owned by US companies, and their internal (inside the platform) markets operate on a global scale. So far we haven't seen much external regulation here.

Clearly not enough, but there are laws (NetzDG) for censoring illegal posts in Germany.

Much more interesting and important, of course, will be regulation on actual platform mechanisms like vendor lock-in, Apple's non-compete app store policies and such.

Re: Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

#39

Europe keeps regulating itself to death and america isn’t. That’s why most modern innovation (Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Uber, Airbnb, Etc) is coming from the US and not Europe. If you lived in both continents you would know

The innovation you speak of is either completely superfluous or actively harmful to society. No one needs a Tesla or SpaceX, and society would be much better off without Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Apple or Facebook. That you consider these companies, all with a notorious track record of badly treating their employees and mishandling their user's data, as good things, speaks volumes about the mindset of some Americans.
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