The AI bubble is so big at this point that this just feels like coercion/bribery induced.
Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#682Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There are a bunch of sites that stop working if you tweak privacy related settings. Twitter straight up tells you that if you experience problems, you should disable Firefox's tracking protection.
And by that they are actually in violation of GDPR. But hey - since when was Musk interested in following regulations. And since when has a governmental or supra-governmental entity been able to curb that tendency of the super rich and biggest cooperations.
Like with meta: They know they mke 7 billion annualy from serving 15 billion scam ads daily. They calculated that they will have at most have to pay about a billion in governmental fines all over the world, if they should one day be regulated for that.
So it is a clear business decision to go on shoing 15 billion+ scam ads per day to their "users". Were some interesting journalistic pieces on that a few days ago.
And exactly those companies are the reason we need stronger protection. And these protections more heavily enforced.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#683I 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…
The problems are in the details: why are news organizations exempt from this rule in Europe? You can’t read news websites unless you accept all cookies or pay to read. Who decides these things? How is such a rule in favor of privacy? Why is my site where I regularly post news not eligible? Who decides which sites are eligible? It’s these kind of moral double standards and cognitive dissonances that people have to end…
It seems there were lawsuits but "pay to reject" is apparently legal as long as the pay is reasonable. I despise it personally.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with this otherwise seemingly reasonable position. Draghi's latest report pointed out that overregulation is a major problem in the EU and costs EU companies the equivalent of a 50% tariff (if I remember correctly). Of course, Draghi's report has led to nothing more than a few headlines.
>latest report pointed out that overregulation is a major problem in the EU and costs EU companies the equivalent of a 50% tariff (if I remember correctly). Of course. Normally I'm against overrgulation, but when it comes to privacy more fine for big corp is need if ANY violation is found. Rather NOT have AI than compromise on privacy.
Interesting that you have privacy so high on your list of priorities. The general public usually considers other small thing like "cost" and "convenience" when thinking about privacy.
Most of us actually don't mind losing a little privacy to read a news article when faced with the alternative of paying money or that news website ceasing to exist at all.
But, hey, keep pushing your warped privacy sense onto all of us, I am sure you are right.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#685I 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 ?
They aren't forced, they choose to. They're forced to get user permission before tracking them across websites and sharing info with 3rd parties, but how they do it is left up to the industry. And the industry chose dark patterns, hoping to annoy the users into complaining to the EU about them.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#686Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?
I assume it's because a business has different ideas about what to collect from their users and users are more or less willing to share some data with some specific businesses. Hence, every business needs their own consent rules. The fact that this is achieved with a cookie banner for 99,9% of all businesses is a side-effect. Could there be a better solution? Probably. But the law and the incentives aligned to cookie…
> Probably. But the law and the incentives aligned to cookie banner hell.
Most cookie banners are non-compliant, so I doubt that.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#687Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keen observation both you and OP. We've gone from a sense of techno optimism to tech blaming. Valid criticism is OK (I stand by crypto being a scam) but bring up any topic that is neutral to popular(VR, Autonomous Driving, LLM) and people are first to be luddites come out.
> We've gone from a sense of techno optimism to tech blaming. IMO this is simply because the tech industry isn't what it was 20+ years ago. We didn't have the monopolistic mammoths we have today, such ruthless focus on profiteering, or key figures so disconnected from the layperson. People hated on Microsoft and they were taken to court for practices that nowadays seem to be commonplace with any of the other big tech…
> A future where everyone has a personal computer was exciting and seemed strictly beneficial
I like to frame it in terms of capital goods, even if I didn't think of it at that time: The personal computer's promise was that everyone would own their own digital foundry and factory, creating value for them, controlled by them, and operating according to their own best interests.
Nowadays, you're just renting whatever-it-is from BigCorp, with massive lock-in. A tool for enacting other people's decisions at you.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
There's the idea of creating a so-called 28th regime under which a streamlined registration process would allow the creation of business entities in all EU countries. See: https://www.eu-inc.org/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_regime
how realistic is it that it will be implemented? Sounds more like wishful thinking at the moment.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ?
Aren’t tracking cookies mostly irrelevant nowadays, because every browser can be uniquely fingerprinted anyway?
No. The regulation is about processing your personal information, cookies are just an implementation detail.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#690I 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 keep hearing this argument that it stifles small businesses, but how is that exactly? I've worked for a variety of small startups in NL and GDPR has never, not once, been a real issue or blocker.
Yes, it forced these small businesses to think about how they're handling personal data, but that should be the fucking point, I don't care if a company is Facebook or if it's a 2 person startup, neither should be collecting and redistributing personal data and tracking people.