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Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

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Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#461

Post by duckMuppet »

aliveupstairs wrote: post #340
whatshisface wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also shows a direct discrimination against poor and/or young people who might not afford the service. As opposed to what, treating everybody badly? McDonalds discriminates between people who can afford a Big Mac and people who can't, and that's not a problem.

The internet is not the same as a food place. People expect and have gotten used to services for free. If you put a price tag on a software library, you obviously discriminate against students and poor people.

Actually, it kinda is the same.

If you don't have the money to buy a big mac, you either eat a cheeseburger on the dollar menu or go home and cook a burger yourself.

If you don't have the money for the software library, you either choose a lesser library, or go write your own.

A larger problem however is many are considering the internet a fundamental human right, which it isn't. Might be nice to have, but a fundamental right it is not.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#462

Post by tylerl »

nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

It makes it extremely difficult to legally be a tech firm unless you're already a tech giant, just like the FDAs procedures make it impossible to invent a new drug unless you're already an established, giant pharma company.

None of the big names in tech will have any trouble at all complying with this; I'd be very surprised if any at all are not already compliant today.

At the same time, the percentage of tech startups that are already compliant with this law is likely around zero, and few will ever become so. Unless this is precisely what your startup is about, small firms, especially with venture funding, can't afford to invest anything at all into privacy beyond the surface. If your startup fails because it gets sued into oblivion, that's no worse (and way less likely) than it failing because nobody actually wanted a chat app for dogs.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#463

Post by ohduran »

wolco wrote: post #69
ohduran wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Imagine if you said the same thing with taxes. "Gee, why do I have to pay taxes differently in every country?" Well, because that's what you have to do if you want to do business there. You're not forced to do anything in here if you don't want to; if the opportunity is worthy, others will take your place. Same with the laws, especially those that remove agency from the users.

But you don't. If I am from South Africa and I buy a US product from a smaller website I don't pay South Africa sales taxes. If I buy from Amazon I would because they have offices or a physical presence. When you buy a product from a website hosted/incorporated in a different country you are literally going into another country and buying a product under their laws. Your local taxes (national/stat wide/city wide) sho…

That's unfortunately not the case. You might be abstracted from all the things Amazon or a small website should do in order to get you your stuff where you are. That's why there are Incoterms in order to agree who pays what.

Take for instance the issue with tariffs and China: if you were right, someone might say "Ha, I'll buy it on Amazon/AliBaba and I'll go around your unfair tariffs". If only!

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#464

Post by drusepth »

tylerl wrote: post #462
nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

It makes it extremely difficult to legally be a tech firm unless you're already a tech giant, just like the FDAs procedures make it impossible to invent a new drug unless you're already an established, giant pharma company. None of the big names in tech will have any trouble at all complying with this; I'd be very surprised if any at all are not already compliant today. At the same time, the percentage of tech startu…

This law's implementation is bad for the same reason GDPR's implementation is bad: the people it's meant to target are easily capable of complying (and likely already do) and it's good for "the people" on paper, but disproportionately affects (hurts) small businesses that don't have the means to comply (or even know if they're properly complying to the extent of avoiding a lawsuit).

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#465

Post by hackerbabz »

tylerl wrote: post #462
nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

It makes it extremely difficult to legally be a tech firm unless you're already a tech giant, just like the FDAs procedures make it impossible to invent a new drug unless you're already an established, giant pharma company. None of the big names in tech will have any trouble at all complying with this; I'd be very surprised if any at all are not already compliant today. At the same time, the percentage of tech startu…

If a company (small or giant) can't afford to protect my data and preserve my rights to it, then I don't want that company to exist.

Just like I don't want startups making unsafe medicine, or losing my medical secrets.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#466

Post by dmitriid »

t_dunks wrote: post #156
dmitriid wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve now been at three large multinational companies who have gone through GDPR process. It’s not easy or simple for an established company, but it’s not impossible. Additionally: - before GDPR most EU countries already had similar laws (e.g. data protection laws in Sweden). Sometimes for decades - GDPR gave two years to become compliant All in all everyone had two to twenty years to become compliant. Those who didn’…

This is a terrible line of reasoning. GDPR came AFTER the expense software, so blaming the company for not forwardly thinking about an non-existant regulation is ridiculous.

You had two years. Plenty of time to figure this out.

Also: is this your line of reasoning? It’s really weak. To take it to extremes: “we’re still using asbestos and lead pipes because the legislation was nonexistent when we started using them”.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#467

Post by terragon »

mr_toad wrote: post #352
buboard wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly. It doesnt seem the law will affect the business, it will just make the cost of data collection explicit: "Pay $40/month to use facebook or get a free rebate by enabling ads".

It doesn’t cost anything like $40 per month per user to operate Facebook, it’s not even $40 per year. (Facebooks operating revenue per user in 2018 was about $25). Of course, they’d hate the idea of having a fixed revenue per user. They want to keep sucking out more revenue per user until the well runs dry.

Yeah, but that's averaged across their global users. Stands to reason that most people in developing nations will not pay $25/mo to access Facebook; nor is their data worth that much.

Ergo, Facebook will charge a different rate per nation; per state; ideally per user (they already have all the data they need to calculate exact revenue per user based on their data).

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#468

Post by Renaud »

drusepth wrote: post #464
tylerl wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes it extremely difficult to legally be a tech firm unless you're already a tech giant, just like the FDAs procedures make it impossible to invent a new drug unless you're already an established, giant pharma company. None of the big names in tech will have any trouble at all complying with this; I'd be very surprised if any at all are not already compliant today. At the same time, the percentage of tech startu…

This law's implementation is bad for the same reason GDPR's implementation is bad: the people it's meant to target are easily capable of complying (and likely already do) and it's good for "the people" on paper, but disproportionately affects (hurts) small businesses that don't have the means to comply (or even know if they're properly complying to the extent of avoiding a lawsuit).

Most of these requirements are perfectly reasonable and i don’t see any that are technologically difficult to implement unless you underlying business model relies on selling user data without regards, in which case, good riddance.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#469

Post by Sephr »

dillondoyle wrote: post #346

I'm pretty concerned about it, and we are a tiny political digital agency. My reading is that basically any small sized email list, website, service etc that 'receives for the business’ commercial purposes' data on more than 50k 'devices' or 'consumers' must be compliant which is a very low bar. Like small business email lists would hit this, though maybe burden falls onto Mailchimp for most. It should be fairly easy…

Sounds like you need a Data Privacy Infrastructure provider so you don't have to worry about the implementation details. The startup I'm working at, https://transcend.io, offers that.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#470

Post by saagarjha »

nickodell wrote: post #390
m-p-3 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just have to change the onboarding process to include a fee, and offer an incentive/rebate of the subscription price to match the cost to basically make it free. That way if they decide to change their mind and not give their data, you're still in the clear by removing the incentive and either charge their payment method or disable their service until they do (or reenable data sharing). That way it feels more tra…

>You just have to change the onboarding process to include a fee, and offer an incentive/rebate of the subscription price to match the cost to basically make it free. That way if they decide to change their mind and not give their data, you're still in the clear by removing the incentive and either charge their payment method or disable their service until they do. What's the practical difference between these two sc…

The second one has a much higher barrier for users, as they now need to hand over their credit card information.
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