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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

#641
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…

can you please explain the driving licenses part?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#642
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…

I'm 100% on the same page as you. I just wanna point out that apparently, the enforcement of said regulation just failed. There are way too many businesses that don't give you a single "reject all" button and get away with their dark patterns. A regulation that can't be enforced consistently is not desirable and failed to some degree.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#643
post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's ridiculous to say GDPR did "jack shit". I now have the ability to withdraw consent for tracking/marketing cookies on every major companies website I visit. An option that was near non-existent before GDPR.

That wasn't even the GPDR and it did even less for user privacy.

what was it then? why it did less for user privacy?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#645

Let me steelman the new proposal a little bit: You run a merch store. You want to share with your suppliers order data so that you can get the right number of sizes/colors/etc. Is this PII under GDPR rules? Technically, yes! Not only is there information on gender, but also people's height and weight and maybe even family makeup. Does it make sense to call this data sub-processing? Eh? Maybe? (To my knowledge, I don'…

I think you don't understand the GDPR. The GDPR does not disallow the processing of personal data, nor does it disallow the sharing of personal data with suppliers or other entities in the supply chain. For example, if you run a merch store, it's perfectly OK to share the buyer's address with DHL or whoever does the shipping. What the GDPR requires is that the user is informed about the processing and the suppliers u…

> The new proposal which suggests that pseudonymized data is not always PII is a different thing.

This actually is already the case, see the recent CJEU C‑413/23 P. Currently the main question is if the recipient has a way to unmask the user. In case of IP address the answer is almost always yes since the recipient could ask competent authority to unmask the IP address if there is crime involved. That was the exact reasoning provided in the Breyer case.

In C‑413/23 P the recipient didn't have any reasonable way to map the opinion to real person so it was determined that it's not PII from recipient's POV but it was from the data controller's.

One of the issues in the new proposal is that it lowers the standard quite a bit compared to C‑413/23 P.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It is the perfect and correct antidote to any slippery slope argument. If the consequences of the law turns out to be as bad as you say they will be then we adjust the law.

> If the consequences of the law turns out to be as bad

This is the usual "the market will regulate itself" argument. It works when the imbalance arises organically, not so much when it's intentional on the side with more power and part of their larger roadmap.

The conflict of interest needs to be accounted for. Consequences for whom? Think of initiatives like any generic backdooring of encrypted communication but legislators are exempt. If legislators aren't truly dogfooding the results of that law then there's no real "market pressure" to fix anything. There's only "deployment strategy", roll out the changes slowly enough that the people have time to acclimate.

Control theory doesn't apply all that well to dynamical systems made entirely of human beings. You need psychohistory for that.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#647
post #644

Europe should make business registration a single one page one step operation first. There are dozens of stories how registering a business alone can take several months and tons of paperwork.

How is Europe, much less the EU, supposed to do that?

Registering a business in Estonia is famously relatively straightforward, while it is an absolute pain here in Germany. But business registration is the responsibility of the countries themselves and it should remain that way

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is accurate, however if you look at any thread you can see an overwhelming consensus of opinion. The diversity of views are not equal - in the sense that there isnt equal number of for and against comments. In most of the threads I have observed about EU action on Big Tech, the overwhelming majority of thoughts are 'for', with perhaps few dissenting thoughts.

It depends what time of the day you log in too. I'm in the GMT time zone, I can literally see a comment go from +20 upvotes in the morning to negative numbers when Americans start waking up. It really shifts your perspective of the site too, because comments move down or even disappear based on the number of votes.

Yeah, you can sense how strong libertarianism is in the US.

Europeans here steer more in the "we can, but should we?" category, while Americans are in the "move fast and break things" category.

I literally see upvotes during the day (Europe) and then downvotes during the night. Mostly. But the trend is there.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the solution is clearer rules. What drives compliance costs up is rarely the compliance itself, it's usually the uncertainty about your being in compliance or not. That's also true for tax laws, labor laws, environment laws, almost every safety code out there, building zoning...

And the answer should be self-served, ideally, with an automated authoritative self-served approval. It could have a lag time of a few days or even a week for a person to approve. Apple App Store review is a nightmare but still better than these regulations. They say yes or no clearly. These EU regulations are more like: if you fuck up, you wouldn't know until the sentence might be really really high.

I keep hearing that, but do we actually have stories about small European companies being ruined?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#650
post #375

I don't get why people conclude from the cookie hell that "regulations are bad". If those goddamn websites got actual fines for those dark patterns, they wouldn't do it. The EU should just be stricter with the regulations.

I don't want an internet designed by lawyers and politicians. And I'm afraid that's what this level of regulation and enforcement would create.

"I don't want a society regulated by rules"
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