81–90 of 443 posts
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Another reminder from the HN guidelines:
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
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If the standard becomes "make illegal business models that the media gets enough people upset about" (without even a vote where the alternatives [paying for service] are clearly explained), then -yeah- people are going to be left poorer. Europe already endured centuries of this when the majority Christian ethos was that usury & banking were an evil to be banned. This, among other things of course, helped sentence mil…
> This, among other things of course, helped sentence millions of people to poor and deprived lives for centuries. Wealth inequality is much worse in the US than Europe, so relatively speaking, "poor" in EU is still much better than "poor" in the US.
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> If nobody is willing to pay for your product, maybe it shouldn't exist? Hm, so you think it's better for the world for poor people to not have access to information via tools like Google? I think the fact that you need to use emotionally loaded language like spyware to make your argument really detracts from it.
Advertisers aren't altruistic and don't voluntarily subsidise poor people's access; advertisers want to target people with money. Poor people being able to "freeload" is a side effect of imperfect ad targeting - if advertisers could reliably identify someone's financial standing without hurting conversion rates they'd absolutely do so and deny access to poor people. If nothing gets done against ad targeting and non-c…
Yes and no, since at the same time _almost everyone can be monetised_, just at a lower CPM. Everyone, almost everyone has _some_ money they could spend on useless crap. The goal of advertising is not to inform (or "connect people with the brands they love") but to create a need. This is not much different from poor people spending money on lotteries or in-app purchases in shitty mobile games.
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It is predictable though, and has been clear for ten years. They are on the side of users privacy and clearly against invasive tracking and particularly profiling.
Nothing has changed, these companies have been given ample warning, they didn't change or tried to skirt the issue and now they are facing fines.
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> Feel free to downvote if you feel, as per HN guidelines, that I am not contributing to the discussion. I feel it doesn't, as it doesn't even try to present any sort of nuanced argument, it's really just nationalistic flame-bait. It's one thing to express the opinion that one worries that excessive regulation might mean a competitive disadvantage in the long run. It's quite another to accuse the whole continent of E…
The EU shares common regulatory characteristics as well as a common capital market often. Comparing the two systems is not "nationalistic flamebait" and I find it sort of absurd to suggest so.
Different economic systems have an impact on people's well being. I didn't realize it was verboten to suggest so.
re: paywalls, I agree they are annoying (ironic that given the subject matter of the post they will likely become much more common), but you can use archive.is
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> you should be familiar with what is/isn't personal data by now Again, I hear this sort of thing all the time. Then you ask lawyers and lobbyists and get a host of opinions, many of which stick depending on which DPA one approaches or complains to. As a competitive stick, it’s dangerously dynamic.
+1 and what the GP is stating is not how any multinational I work with considers GDPR compliance. Properly managing "likes" and other member activity are absolutely key to compliance.
As is keeping an eye on competitors, particularly lightly-capitalised ones, and noting when they stray into grey areas. Bonus points if you can get multiple DPAs to issue simultaneous requests in obscure languages.
"Users therefore need to be provided with a yes/no ("opt-in") consent option, otherwise Meta may not use their data for personalized advertisement." I guess Facebook's solution could be a pop-up asking whether you want to continue using it as before or if you want to deny access to your personal data and pay $50 a month.
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> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…
The issue isn't what we personally like or prefer for ourselves -- it's more about when we think it's legitimate to take away the right of businesses to experiment with business models, and of consumers to be free to enter into the tradeoffs they prefer.
Why shouldn't a consumer be allowed to agree to what you call "extremely invasive spying" in exchange for a free product, if they want to? As long as you're not signing away rights (e.g. you can't agree to sell yourself into slavery) or engaging in physical harm (e.g. food and safety regulations), then what's the moral basis for taking away choice?
After all, what you call "extremely invasive spying" other people might consider no big deal at all, in terms of their own personal data.
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> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…
If the standard becomes "make illegal business models that the media gets enough people upset about" (without even a vote where the alternatives [paying for service] are clearly explained), then -yeah- people are going to be left poorer. Europe already endured centuries of this when the majority Christian ethos was that usury & banking were an evil to be banned. This, among other things of course, helped sentence mil…
That's a great analogy.
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> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…
> To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation Is it right that a tiny but loud minority be able to ban these ad-supported services for all of society? Going by revealed preferences, most people don't consider targeting advertising to be "spying and psychological manipulation". If they did, usage patte…