391–400 of 443 posts
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If I want to take crack cocaine, and someone wants to sell it to me, how is it the role of government to say we can't make that trade? Sure, hyperbole, but the role of government is to regulate when the externalities of a transaction aren't being accounted for within the transaction.
I'm on board with governments stepping in over externalities, but if A and B make a deal that includes "B will, in addition to observing A's behavior to implement functionality, use these observations to target ads and detect ad fraud" I don't see how externalities enter into it.
Edit: I think it’s comparable to something like warranties. Enforcing an automatic 1/2/etc. warranty on products makes certain business models untenable. Do we consider blanket warranties on end products more important or an individuals freedom to forego such a warranty more important? Different societies may reach different conclusions.
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It's a grey area. It's illegal under the GDPR, but some newspapers in Europe are taking the gamble and seem to be getting away with it for the time being.
I'm not sure if it's been tested in court, but there are certainly newspapers as you say that are doing this - including from quite major publishing houses. Personally I just open their pages in private browsing tabs anyway, if everyone did that it would probably kill the business model (even before we talk about uBlock). My (non-lawyer) opinion is it's probably illegal if you're making a sham paid tier to justify wo…
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You don’t have to guess. We know. How many people use Gmail vs paying for a provider not owned by an advertiser company? How many people use Hulu free/lite tier vs paying more for zero ads? How many people are flocking to use a paid privacy focused search engine like Neeva? Hell even DDG hasn’t taken over and it’s free! People have choices and their preferences are clear: “give me free shit!”
I’m not so sure. My observations are certainly not statistically significant, but I’m a Brazilian who moved to Germany. One of the things I noticed when using email here is that the amount of people who have an email not @gmail.com, but whatever German provider that has to follow GDPR is much higher than what I saw back in Brazil. This suggests that the population in general in Europe is indeed more privacy-conscious…
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I don't understand this "free-rider" depiction of Europe, it sounds to me like a delusional and superficial classification. Can someone please explain the rational observations behind it, if any?
On healthcare, > Pharmaceutical breakthroughs are financed by the high prices paid by American patients (and backed by abundant venture capital); government-run health systems in Europe then bulk-buy the same drugs for much less. If pharma companies did not have expectations for full price to be paid in America, they wouldn't waste their money developing therapies. This effect also applies to pharma companies in Euro…
In general, this is just globalization. Different regions specialize in different tasks. You don't see the United States actually manufacturing much of the pharmaceuticals. That's happening off in India or one of its neighbors.
As an EU citizen all I can say is: Get fucked. I hope the EU grows a spine and actually doubles down instead of bowing to US pressure. >Fine for Meta more than tenfold from € 28 million to € 390 million. Third case on WhatsApp pending. Starting to get into a range for the fine that makes sense. Give it another tenfold increase and I'm content.
I'm happy to be an EU citizen for all the great tech regulations that are actually passing here !
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That's how sanctions are usually implemented. See: Russia and Iran, trickling down to their state businesses and armaments industries, tricking down to their suppliers. The only difference here would be there isn't a nation-state as the starting point.
Sorry, I meant the other way around. Sanction Meta and subsidiaries, and then punish companies doing business with them.
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I'm happy to be an EU citizen for all the great tech regulations that are actually passing here !
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Well then openly ask users for consent. EU law does - in absolutely no way, shape or form - forbid targeted ads. What it does is it forces companies to specifically ask for consent before collecting data for such things and people must know that they're consenting to data collection specifically for ads.