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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

#611

Post by 0xedd »

adrr wrote: post #564
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…

Are cookies really tracking you? 3rd party cookies don’t work in any browser. Ads are passing session data on the URLs instead. You can alow easily change some settings to stop persistent cookies. You can install privacy extensions like ghostery to block beacons. You can use features like ICloud private relay to prevent IP tracking. Solutions are all there and they aren’t because of any law.

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Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#612

Post by lynx97 »

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…

Everything that happens under Ursula Von der Leyen leaves a bitter taste.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#613

Post by troupo »

pembrook wrote: post #457
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most criticism of GDPR on HN is a criticism of bad-faith attempts to pretend to comply, many of which are expressly forbidden by the GDPR. It's a well-written, plain English regulation, and I encourage everyone to read it before criticising it. (At the very least, point to the bits of the regulation you disagree with: it should only take around 5 minutes to look up.)

I would call this the religious zeal response, it's been parroted so many times here that it's become fact, even though this is false. The full text of GDPR is 261 pages long with 99 articles and 173 recitals. Here's a condensed version and guide to reading the actual passages that matter, still 88 pages long: https://www.enterpriseready.io/gdpr/how-to-read-gdpr/#:~:tex... And even if it was, being easy to read is no…

> The full text of GDPR is 261 pages long with 99 articles and 173 recitals. Here's a condensed version and guide to reading the actual passages that matter, still 88 pages long

My feeling is that in 9 years you could read it.

However, I read most of the relevant bits in an afternoon. Most people on HN making preposterous claims about GDPR have never in their life read anything but industry's take on it.

> it's actually super easy to comply, you can read it yourself, it's one sentence!

It's trivial to comply with for the absolute vast majority of companies, you can very easily read it yourself, the bits that are relevant to most businesses shouldn't even take an hour to read.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#614

Post by troupo »

nomel wrote: post #500
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…

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.

> You can do this trivially in modern browsers: private browsing.

The one that Google keeps tracking? https://www.tomsguide.com/news/going-incognito-in-chrome-doe...

Edit: not just Google. Incognito mode does not prevent websites from tracking you, period.

--- start quote ---

Once these new disclaimers make their way to stable builds of Chrome, you’ll see a message that looks like this when going incognito:

“Others who use this device won’t see your activity, so you can browse more privately. This won’t change how data is collected by websites you visit and the services they use, including Google."

--- end quote ---

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#615

Post by po1nt »

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…

Every regulation has some unforeseen consequences. Most of the time it's impacts are worse than the effect we wanted to regulate from the start. Us humans discard the effects we can't predict as benign even over smaller inconveniences we can see.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#616

Post by Gigachad »

EarlKing wrote: post #448
HWR_14 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. That's impossible. The network effects are too strong. Facebook may die, or even Instagram, but WhatsApp is so intermeshed with the majority of the world that it can only be taken out by a government.

Facebook is filled with billions of people I have no reason to speak to, ergo its network effects for me are zero, and its value to me is zero. Other services have similar zero or negative value, and hence I don't use them either. As much as some around here would like to believe that network effects are a moat that effectively allow social media to be immortal, experience has shown that not to be the case. Facebook…

Facebook is still running strong on Marketplace and Groups. They have almost no competition on those.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#617

Post by vanviegen »

imiric wrote: post #347
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…

Do you really think that clicking on any button on cookie consent popups actually does anything? It's just an illusion of choice. The reality is that these sites will still track you, whether that's via cookies or, more commonly today, fingerprinting. When they list thousands of "partners" with "legitimate interest", it's a hint that there's a multi-billion-dollar industry of companies operating behind the scenes tha…

I'm sure that happens in some cases. But the EU is building a reputation for handling out fines that actually hurt, and I'm sure that actively lying to consumers about this would warrant a big one, if ever discovered. And in any case, tracking will be a lot less robust without those 388 cookies.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#618

Post by DocTomoe »

bitpush wrote: post #16

Incredible to see the 180 both from EU and also from the HN sentiment. HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies, especially Meta. Meta is no perfect company, but the amount of 'please stick it to them' was strong (I reckon that is still a bridge too far for a lot of folks here). Even extreme proponents of big tech villanery in the US (Lina Khan's FTC) is also facing losses (They just lost their monument…

The 180 does not surprise me at all. GDPR and associated laws are a perfect example of the old 'Good intentions, unintended consequences'-pattern we see in laws all the time.

The results of the GDPR (and the unrelated Cookie Directive) on my everyday professional life are what made me - an European - from a flag-waving European-Unity-proponent to a heavy critic that dreams of a Dexit. And I know I am not the only one - public opinion is shifting - some because of cookie banners, some because of driving licenses, some because manufactuers have started to neuter their devices when sold to Europe, taking away features available everywhere else in the world, some because of the ridiculous VAT reporting regime that hits European businesses once they hit a 100k gross income mark, some for yet other reasons. And now they are trying hard to get the de-minimis-rule taken away, increasing trouble and cost for anyone who does cross-eu-border trading.

It's only been a matter of time even Brussles remembered that ultimately, their throne is built on sand, and that Europe has a history of getting rid of unreasonable leadership.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#619

Post by cma »

radicalbyte wrote: post #35
bitpush wrote: post #16

Incredible to see the 180 both from EU and also from the HN sentiment. HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies, especially Meta. Meta is no perfect company, but the amount of 'please stick it to them' was strong (I reckon that is still a bridge too far for a lot of folks here). Even extreme proponents of big tech villanery in the US (Lina Khan's FTC) is also facing losses (They just lost their monument…

There has been a change in the community here over the last decade, we've lost a lot of the hacker spirit and have a larger proportion of "chancers", people who are only in tech to "get rich quick". The legacy of ZIRP combined with The Social Network marketing.

It always had a lot of that, I would say 2-3% of articles were about SEO in the early days of HN. It was never slashdot.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#620

Post by gbanfalvi »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #545
gessha wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not saying the following regarding Draghi’s report or particular regulation in mind: If an unethical business gets started due to underregulation and it generates revenue and contributes to GDP, is that a good thing?

If the net social cost is less than the cost from overregulation, yes

Lmao you can’t be serious. This is something that can only be said if you can’t/won’t quantify social cost.

Deregulated gambling has had a horrible impact on individuals. Repealing Glass—Steagall led to a global financial crisis. Gig economy businesses are exploiting workers by the thousands through self employment loopholes. We have insane monopolistic pricing and practices in the US in eg the telecom industry. Worst of all is that we’ve likely doomed the entire planet based on what is effectively too little environmental regulation.

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