Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 1001 posts

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#671

Post by EarlKing »

Gigachad wrote: post #616
EarlKing wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

....and I don't care because I don't use either of those. All the network effects in the world mean nothing if that network has no value to me.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#672

Post by miramba »

Myrmornis wrote: post #520
thfuran wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The banner isn't required. They could just not do the things the banner would ask consent for.

People don't know whether they are or are not doing things that require consent under the law. That's because, if you haven't noticed, the people concerned are computer programmers, UI designers, and PMs. Notably missing from that list is "lawyers who can be bothered to research the question". People put the banners up because they see other people doing it and it seems safest. That all of this would be so should hav…

> if you haven't noticed, the people concerned are computer programmers, UI designers, and PMs.

Those are the people who should know best what is meant by "ask visitors for consent before you track them.".

Lawyers and more work is needed if you want to track anyway and look for ways to make people accidentally consent. "Let's ask the question, but hide the unwanted answer as deeply as possibly without breaking the law."

You may blame EU bureaucrats, I blame the unwillingness of the companies to fulfill the spirit of the law and putting all the work into pretending.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#673

Post by fsflover »

nmz wrote: post #536
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…

Why not accept and let cookie autodelete delete it after closing the site? Expecting any industry to follow the law is foolish, if it gets big enough, they will wear down and overturn any annoyance against it, malicious compliance is the only way. https://adnauseam.io/

It's not just about cookies but any kind of tracking, including fingerprinting.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#674

Post by 1718627440 »

fsckboy wrote: post #483
pembrook wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately politics has become the religion of modernity. Nuance and sober analysis like you've suggested do not mix well with religious dogma. It's much easier for people to react emotionally to symbols. For many here, 'GDPR' is a variable that equals 'privacy' in their brain computer. So any criticism of it or its implementation realities, no matter how well argued, will not be met with reasoned response, but in…

> Unfortunately politics has become the religion of modernity. religion was classically politics. Moses's tablets were Law. the circle of life.

Because both is trying to create a better society. One by internal, the other one by external motivation.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#675

Post by fsflover »

Gareth321 wrote: post #664
danishSuri1994 wrote: post #110

I sympathize with the startup argument: heavy compliance costs can stifle early innovation. But the solution shouldn’t be “weaker rules.” It should be smarter rules, clearer safe harbors for small actors, browser-level consent primitives for users, and stronger enforcement against dark-pattern CMPs. That keeps privacy meaningful without killing small businesses.

I agree in theory but in practise, this just results in even more regulations. There are very few or no real world examples of stricter regulations being written in clearer terms. The reasons are numerous, but a big one is that people often have a financial incentive to circumvent these regulations. They attack the edge cases and the ambiguity between each word. If the regulations are not written sufficiently prescri…

> Ultimately this means fewer regulations generally are good for startups - and larger businesses.

Yeah, forcing companies to write food ingredients on the package is bad for business. And I don't care about business more than about the well-being of society and myself. Same with tracking.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#676

Post by Terr_ »

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.

Some of that is attributable to raw inflow/outflow differences, where newer cohorts are bigger and therefore the blend would shifts even if no oldsters ever left.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#677

Post by VadimPR »

wg0 wrote: 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.

In Sweden and Netherlands it is quite easy and straightforward to register a business, speaking from personal experience. Tax filing is quite straightforward as well, especially for personal income tax.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#678

Post by sdoering »

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.

Don't mix PII data and cookies (or any other similar tech). There are different regulations in place here.

If you want to use ddata that can identify me (even in theory), you need to ask me, if I am fine with that. If you want to store data on my computer, you also need to ask me, if I am fine with that. Because, if I request a download, I expect to download the file. If I request a website, I expect the website content. I do not expect data that you or others can use to see how often I visited your site. Like meta-shit, or google-crap, or linkedin-slop...

If you want to do that, just ask m. And explain in clearly understandable words, what you do and why. That is just human decency.

Yes, I can (and strongly do) protect myself against this (and I am working in that business, I know the tricks and tools and stuff). But my late mom can't. Or her 80+ year old neighbor. Or SO#s my 19 year old niece that only uses a tablet and a crapload of apps that target her and spew a shitload of targeted ads for wheightloss onto her since she was an early teen...

So no -> Those companies need to be highly regulated. To me, those companes need to rott in hell, but that is my take. I want people to be protected. From business, from government. Thst is the basis of European privacy law - protecting the small person from the big entities. And rightly so. We have our history from which those protections originated.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#679

Post by 1718627440 »

vanviegen wrote: post #451
pembrook wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately politics has become the religion of modernity. Nuance and sober analysis like you've suggested do not mix well with religious dogma. It's much easier for people to react emotionally to symbols. For many here, 'GDPR' is a variable that equals 'privacy' in their brain computer. So any criticism of it or its implementation realities, no matter how well argued, will not be met with reasoned response, but in…

I've never seen anyone here, or elsewhere, displaying a positive opinion on GDPR without readily acknowledging it, or the way it has turned out and is (not) being policed, has many shortcomings. I have seen people that are fanatical on privacy. Cheers to them!

> displaying a positive opinion on GDPR

Ok. I hereby do. The only complaint I have is that it isn't enforced automatically and that we often don't have a way to force the worst offenders, because they have the military we rely on on their side.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#680

Post by Terr_ »

morshu9001 wrote: post #519
radicalbyte wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a hacker, I don't care about cookies or what the EU thinks about them. Disable them if you really care. Or at least use a browser that blocks 3P cookies (not Chrome).

What about when the lack of cookies makes everything break and you cannot work around it because it's too much JS to reverse-engineer, and/or it's a copyright-felony in your country to develop workarounds?

"I'll use my l33t hacker skillz to avoid it on my own" is a losing strategy in the long run.

A similar thing happens with the proliferation of cameras and license-plate readers.

Post reply on HN