Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#751

Post by testfrequency » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:22 AM UTC

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.

Couldn’t agree more.

I’ve said it before, but the cynicism and weirdness that used to exist here has been gobbled up by a new wave of early stage tech evangelists who are just here to complain about ladders and levels.

It’s honestly been depressing to watch lots of good comments and posts go unnoticed, while the bait comments get all the engagement.

There’s also weirdly (ok, maybe not that weird) amount of casual hate on here now. It’s subtle, but I’ve been seeing a lot of negative karma and rhetorics that never used to exist here. I suppose it’s just “the internet” these days, but I’d wager HN has just grown too much outside the bubble it once was, and now we have a wide open door with lights vs the tiny alley way we once had.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#752

Post by tim333 » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:25 AM UTC

palata wrote: post #731

tim333 wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of like it. I mean here we all are on it. And sites like HN can just be written by one person and put up by one person with no permissions. The alternative if the government controlled it would be something like the Apple app store where you have to pay a fee to maybe be allowed to do something.

No it would not. We're already in some alternative where the government says that you can't make a website to sell CSAM, for instance. And we all agree that this is a good thing. The goal of regulations is to prevent undesirable behaviours by making it "too costly" to do. The goal is not to take 30% on every app sale.

The post I replied to was on an internet designed with a "profit motive". What you describe is still basically profit motive with laws to stop bad things. I'm not quite sure what you get if you removed the profit motive. Maybe the app store wasn't a good example. Maybe something like the BBC?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#753

Post by rckt » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:27 AM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #737

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…

Nothing is ever black and white. You could prevent all car accidents by banning motor vehicles. You could prevent all side-effect related deaths by banning all the drugs. You could stop all phone scams by banning telephones. Obviously, that's excessive overregulation. Just as obviously, letting people get away with car accidents, phone scams and drugs that kill more people than they cure is not what we should be doin…

What kind of a discussion can there be? It's very simple. I don't want any business or individual or whatever to collect any of my personal data if I don't agree to it. Right now companies do everything they can to do the opposite. And there's nothing here that can prove them right.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#754

Post by zombot » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:28 AM UTC

> if the development of the GDPR and AI Act are anything to go by, a political and lobbying firestorm is on its way.

No doubt that now the flood gates are open, powerful interests will do everything they can to water down the protections even more. This is already bad enough as it is.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#755

Post by lanthissa » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:29 AM UTC

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…

so what it like working at meta?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#756

Post by Hoasi » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:29 AM UTC

So they've missed the innovation train due to regulation, and now they are likely to axe the side-effect benefit of said regulation.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#757

Post by troupo » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:29 AM UTC

morshu9001 wrote: post #521

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.

Yeah idk why there's a law trying to poorly enforce this instead

Because the law isn't about cookies, but about tracking? You know, the kind that doesn't stop even if you open the "ignorant mode" in your browser: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/going-incognito-in-chrome-doe...

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#758

Post by Telaneo » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:46 AM UTC

tim333 wrote: post #749

Telaneo wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 having its own Microsoft might be better than Europe having to use the US one and sending it like $100/user/yr in whatever subscription they've tricked them into.

Europe doesn't have to use the US one. It's been the easier choice historically, but there's little beyond inertia forcing Europe to stick to Microsoft. Not that that inertia isn't nothing though.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#759

Post by nedt » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:47 AM UTC

theptip wrote: post #34

> users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. Great to see this finally. It’s obviously the way it should have been implemented from the beginning. We still see this technically myopic approach with things like age verification; it’s insane to ask websites to collect Gov ID to age verify kids (or prove adulthood for porn), rather than having an OS feature that c…

> Great to see this finally. It’s obviously the way it should have been implemented from the beginning.

It was on its way to get implemented and then Microsoft enabled it by default in IE10, so not making it the choice of a human, and ruined it for everyone.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#760

Post by nickdothutton » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 10:47 AM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #304

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…

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.

One of the problems with regulation is that politicians "understand" complex systems like computers or software or "the platforms" almost entirely by way of analogy. Yet at the point of actually introducing rules about (for example) tracking or what happens to your data, you need to throw away analogy entirely and start talking and thinking (and implementing) not an analogy but what the thing _actually_ is. Rarely do they resolve down to this last stage where you move from analogy to how things really work, or might work. I see this everywhere I have touched government and regulation over many years.