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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

#581

Post by necovek »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #467
shoddydoordesk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the audience your comment is trying to reach? Who are these mysterious "companies"? It's important to realize companies are made of people. Someone had to explicitly code the dark pattern in the GDPR cookie dialog. Ever notice the button for "Accept All" is big and shiny, while refusing all is more often than not a cumbersome, multi-click process? That's not an accident. That was coded by people. People around…

IMO, this is a great example of the lack of professionalism in the software development field. No individual software developer is responsible for violating the GDPR's prohibitions on cookie banners in a legal sense, but we could be. Real engineers have that leverage: A PE who thinks a bridge's design amounts to professional malpractice gets to refuse to approve that design, and anybody who the employer could find to…

But that's a great example of why we might not need to turn into professionally licensed experts: the risk of messing the implementation of GDPR up is nowhere near messing a bridge or even a single family home up.

Now sure, with software controlling everything today (even the tools an engineer would use to design and build a bridge: imagine a bug in software setting the cement ratio in concrete being used), there are accountability reasons to do it.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#582

Post by frikskit »

Telaneo wrote: post #344
omnimus wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it's a lot more than 500%. If your business is based on doing things that are illegal under GDPR then the cost of doing that startup is close to infinite. But that's kinda the point of GDPR.

This. Sure, it's X% more difficult to do Y in Europe, because Europe doesn't want you to do Y, either at all, or unless you clean up after yourself so the costs aren't just eaten up by the environment or whatever, or unless you do it without causing harm. That's not a problem. That's the system working as intended. Sure, Europe doesn't have it's own Microsoft, probably because of regulations like this, but I don't wa…

Europe does have Microsoft. Actually, it has Microsoft in almost every single respect except the primary beneficial ones: taxes, employment and oversight.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#583

Post by erikerikson »

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…

> Business never respects anything, but profits

That is taken as a law of the universe by some but B-Corps, Social Purpose Corps, FairShares Commons... There are exceptions and some are working to do better. That statement has mostly become an excuse.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#584

Post by [deleted] »

voidhorse wrote: post #578
taurath wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a difference in values. To some, the ends justify the means and human life has no inherent value and the world is zero sum, and to some, a lying malignant narcissist deciding who lives and who dies is a personification of evil. To some people, it’s literally a choice between that “lens of curiosity” and their families lives. But people for whom politics has never directly impacted them past a few % up or down in…

precisely this. cool detachment or disinterested curiosity around political events is the privilege of those comfortable enough to believe current politics won't affect them. These same people are also usually ultimately responsible for the apathy/failure to act and stop meaningful regime change before it's too late. I'd love to live in a world where one can neatly compartmentalize reality and view life-altering poli…

[deleted]

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#585

Post by voidhorse »

baggy_trough wrote: post #262
jlokier wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But far more than 1% are harmed by it. Sometimes the harm is severe. Vast oceans of poorly handled personal data collected in exquisite and unnecessary detail by dark patterns, copied around to everyone who might be interested with low regard for security, kept forever, analysed by the best algorithms and sold to whomever will buy it, raise the risks and consequences of identity theft and fraud for everyone. Those ar…

Most people don't care about these things. Who are you to say that the harm is severe to people who don't care?

Many of the people who "don't care" don't know. Once you inform people about how much data meta has on them, for example, many of them do in fact care and they are in fact disturbed by it.

Now, they tend to continue to use meta's products because they have become essential communication tools for those people, so in fact, many people would welcome regulation that allows them to continue to use key communication tools without the sleazy privacy violations they weren't aware of.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#586

Post by erikerikson »

gessha wrote: post #408
idrios wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations are like lines of code in a software project. They're good if well written, bad if not, and what matters more is how well they fit into the entire solution

A major difference with regulations is there’s no guaranteed executor of those metaphorical lines of code. If the law gets enforced, then yes, but if nobody enforces it, it loses meaning.

Bad law enforced perfectly is also undesirable.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#587

Post by voidhorse »

bpodgursky wrote: post #52
yardie wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company did not retain customer data or retained very little. So compliance for us was very simple. If your business venture relies on that PII data you're going to have a hard time. And I'm not exactly sympathetic since I'm regularly getting notified from HaveIbeenPwned about another PII leak.

I'm not sure what you're looking for here. If your position is "it should be difficult to make a company that has PII" you won't get any significant AI or consumer tech companies in your jurisdiction. That's just reality, they use PII, they personalize on PII, they receive PII, that's how they work. If that is your goal, OK, that's a choice, but then you can't say "oh GDPR fears were overblown". They caused exactly t…

This notion that tech companies or even internet companies somehow fundamentally rely on PII is false and just an indicator of how normalized we've let unbounded and needless data collection become.

There are tons of business that can run without collecting any or extremely minimal PII. We already let the big companies take this data unnecessarily, let's not also let them brainwash us all into thinking unfettered surveillance is somehow essential to building a software business.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#588

Post by ttoinou »

jychang wrote: post #454
energy123 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stopped thinking of regulations as a single dial, where more regulations is bad or less regulations is bad. It entirely depends on what is being regulated and how. Some areas need more regulations, some areas need less. Some areas need altered regulation. Some areas have just the right regulations. Most regulations can be improved, some more than others.

I strongly agree with this position. This is basically the foundation of Control Theory! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory This is like arguing if "heater on" or "AC on" is better, which is a pointless argument. That entirely depends on what the temperature is!

So, you do think “useCase.regulation” being a single dial. It’s a pretty reductive framework. I have an easier framework where in 90% of cases current law was already good enough and we don’t need to tweak that dial

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#589

Post by morshu9001 »

necovek wrote: post #574
nomel wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this trivially in modern browsers: private browsing. I have one "normal" browser window for "persistent cookie" use (like gmail, youtube, etc) and another "private" window for everything else. Cookies are lost anytime a tab closes.

Are you sure cookies get scrapped after you close a tab? Does opening a single session-based web site in multiple tabs work (eg. logged into Amazon in a private browser)? What browser are you using?

In Chrome and Firefox, all the private windows share a session that gets scrapped when you close them all. Safari keeps them separate.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#590

Post by what »

lenkite wrote: post #561
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…

That cookie banner needs to be standardized and offered by the browser. It should be like a certificate popup. Why is every website forced into doing a shoddy job ?

How would that even work? The browser has no way to know what a cookie is for.
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