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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

#791

Post by johndhi »

nickdothutton wrote: post #760
energy123 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But how do you actually do that?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#792

Post by BLKNSLVR »

amelius wrote: post #776
jychang wrote: post #454

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!

> 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! I think the problem here is more that _some_ people want the heater to be on and _other_ people want the heater to be off.

And when it comes to privacy, consumer advocate types and privacy wonks (I include myself in this group) want the heater to be on, and technology companies and advertising companies and all of their hangers-on want the heater to be off.

One group has a lot more money, power, and influence than the other.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#793

Post by franga2000 »

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.

What actual innovation is stifled by data protection laws? What small business is unable to operate because of the GDPR?

Compliance costs almost nothing. If you collect data, explain why and what for. If people ask you to delete it, do that. If you want to share data with others, ask first (or just, you know, don't).

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#794

Post by corford »

harperlee wrote: post #103
r3knak wrote: post #100

Good, GDPR is useless for the consumer as 99% of the people click "Accept everything". It's only a few of us who care about this kind of thing and we shouldn't have policy made for the 1%. I hope the changes they implement will actually benefit small startups instead of relaxing regulations for large data hoarders.

GDPR is not about the cookie banner, it has massive implications around the whole lifecycle of data. For example you need to be able to gather all data of a particular client for them to access, and they have the right for all their data to be erased.

This is what infuriates me with people that knock GDPR. They simply don't understand it's prime purpose: creation of a legally enforceable audit chain of data ownership. This is a prerequisite if you want to enforce how people's data is used and shared amongst private entities.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#796

Post by earthnail »

thomastraum wrote: post #790

I love how you can think about any of these ideas in a really basic way like a 5 year old and you'll know intuitively that it'll all fail, particularly if you invert it: for example: - bureaucracy creates less bureaucracy - price controls create more supply - adding more rules creates more freedom - government is good at understanding technology - the more people you have the better your decisions will be - the furth…

Generally agree, except for point three.

- adding more rules creates more freedom. Imagine the US without a constitution. It’d be madness. In a lawless country, people would be less free to do things they actually want to do because they’re so occupied with just surviving.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#797

Post by IanCal »

concinds wrote: post #766
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…

There is an infinitely more effective and trustworthy solution: an adblocker that blocks trackers. You don't have to spend minutes daily on dark-pattern banners. You don't risk the broken implementations that still track you no matter what you click, that regulators can't oversee on billions of websites. They should just keep the thing that lets you request full deletion of your account and data, the rest is total se…

It's not more effective and trustworthy, particularly as you can do both. The laws also cover dramatically more than tracking scripts and cookies.

> They should just keep the thing that lets you request full deletion of your account and data, the rest is total security theater.

Then large law abiding sites can still do enormous amounts of tracking, and can do lots with my data that they currently are not doing.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#798

Post by Sankozi »

wqaatwt wrote: post #655
bjourne wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> they will be then we adjust the law. Bizarrely horrible approach. A lot of damage would already be done, most importantly changing the status quo is inherently much harder than doing nothing. So going back won’t necessarily be straightforward. Claiming that “slippery slope” is always a fallacy is a gross misconception and misinterpretation. It varies case by case, very often it can be a perfectly rational argument.…

In the same post you are arguing for and against "slippery slope".

Either it is possible to easy change law to make it worse ("slippery slope" is valid objection) or changing law is "much harder than doing nothing"("slippery slope" is a fallacy).

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#799

Post by IanCal »

dgb23 wrote: post #786
blueblisters wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is paternalism and assuming the user is too dumb to take control their privacy preferences. The compliance of the cookie banner regulation has measurable negative externalities - one estimate suggests a EUR 14B/year productivity hit in the EU Most modern browsers allow you to disable all cookies if you like. You can always use incognito mode if you want to be selective about it. In an ideal world, the EU…

GDPR is not a cookie regulation it is a tracking regulation.

It's broader, it's about users data. For example, you can store my address so you can send the item I ordered to me. You can't, without permission, use that to send me marketing stuff.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#800

Post by jack_pp »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #748
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.

The "hacker spirit" is dying. Corporations and governments are locking computers down. Secure boot. Hardware remote attestation. Think you can have control by installing your own software? Your device is now banned from everything. We eill be ostracized from digital society. Marginalized. Reduced to second class citizens, if that. Everything the word "hacker" ever stood for is being destroyed. I predict one day we'll…

I might get worried when mainstream computers won't be able to run Linux. Until then.. I'm not worried.

Seems there are efforts to bring openness to platforms that inherently have an interest to resist it and while the progress is slow.. there is progress

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