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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

#921

Post by epolanski »

vovavili wrote: post #838
matthewdgreen wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go farther. Privacy laws seem like an excellent way to tighten the internal European market and develop homegrown competitors, which (one might argue) Europe really needs. If Europe is loosening up those laws, does that help Europe? Or does it help Meta and Google and Microsoft?

This argument in favor of protectionist industrial policy is almost universally opposed by most modern economists, for a good reason.

While I agree with you 100%, I think most modern economists fail to account for bad actors.

If a situation was "China is producing X and having its taxpayers subsidize cars, steel, etc" then it would be their loss and our advantage. We get great products they get pieces of paper. I couldn't care less.

But considering that the real goal of those bad actors is to annihilate the competition and then pull the rug this is ultimately a bad idea.

Especially when those bad actors, at the same time, do their best at playing dirty and ignoring intellectual property.

I couldn't care less if Europe didn't have a shipping industry, in fact protectionism of it has failed miserably in Europe, and made our yards less, not more competitive. So yes, in that world I agree.

But in a world where an elected (or unelected) government, can suddenly blackmail you or create such an immense strain on your economy (as Russia did with Europe) this is not really like that. And suddenly you realize you should've paid way more, but invested way earlier in diversifying energy-wise.

In an ideal market I'd be 100% with you, in the real world, it's really neither black nor white.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#922

Post by _w1tm »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #875
epolanski wrote: post #828

I'm not understanding, as an European who's been part of multiple startups how's that supposed to boost growth. There's literally 0 startups I've been part of where data protection laws or even the infamous cookie banners have been anywhere near relevant (unless your business was literally profiling). In fact the actors that most opposed those laws have always been non Europeans. Sure, there is an attached cost in ha…

Sure but the laws are probably relevant for the startups you _haven’t_ been a part of. The ones that never got started. It’s funny you mention a lack of entrepreneurial spirit but then dismiss something that’s clearly a factor (not saying it’s the main factor but obviously it has some effect). I have some side projects that I don’t really care about making money from but some people do use and it’s easier for me to j…

> I have some side projects that I don’t really care about making money from but some people do use and it’s easier for me to just block all European users than worry about complying with all the random laws and regulations.

GDPR fines scale based on annual turnover so blocking EU users on a non-commercial product is utterly pointless and just being mean.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#923

Post by asveikau »

heavenlyhash wrote: post #907
asveikau wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an European European starts with a vowel in spelling, but actually phonerically begins with a consonant, /j/, so it doesn't trigger the "an" thing. Similarly some spellings start with a consonant but have vowels (like acronyms, "an SSRI", the name of the letter S, "ess", begins with a vowel) More to the point I agree with what you're saying. This seems like lazy attribution of cause that is so common in American bu…

Really depends on where you're from. OP already mentioned in his area it's phonetically mostly "ew". I'd say a lot of germanic areas also do something I'd describe as "oi". That'd also make one inclined to use an "an" when speaking.

I speak other languages where it starts with an E sound. But I'm not aware of any native English speaking place where it doesn't have /j/ in English.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#924

Post by hearsathought »

huijzer wrote: post #913
epolanski wrote: post #828

I'm not understanding, as an European who's been part of multiple startups how's that supposed to boost growth. There's literally 0 startups I've been part of where data protection laws or even the infamous cookie banners have been anywhere near relevant (unless your business was literally profiling). In fact the actors that most opposed those laws have always been non Europeans. Sure, there is an attached cost in ha…

> bureaucracy to fight at European level so we still don't have a real unified market, neither in physical goods (our economy's backbone) nor services which doesn't allow national startups to scale at European level I guess you have been part of software startups and you severely underestimate the bureaucracy that is involved in physical companies nowadays. Farmers, fishermen, factory-owners, and other small to mediu…

> it hard to compete with, for example, China.

What exactly is europe competing against china on? Isn't europe's competition the US?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#925

Post by mrguyorama »

jebronie wrote: post #721
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that cookie banners are not a regulation problem, they're a privacy problem. If you don't spy on your users you don't have to have cookie banners.

no. even including a font from a different host is not allowed under the gdpr because you are leaking the users IP to that host. you are poorly informed on this topic.

We used to use Subway's proprietary font. We never needed to call a server for that.

Maybe don't build stuff in such a dumb and lazy way?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#927

Post by hearsathought »

meowface wrote: post #860
matthewdgreen wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nations don’t outsource critical national security industries even though economists might say that’s more efficient. The question is whether they should outsource critical tech infrastructure to huge quasi-monopolistic US firms that can turn it off or abuse European data at will. I don’t have the answer to that question, but I have to imagine it’s a worthwhile debate. The data we have cuts both ways: China applied p…

>China applied protectionist policies to its own Internet companies, and it’s hard to argue that this has been economically devastating for them. China has 1.4 billion people in one country while the combined population of Europe is around half of that, so that's one difference. But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritar…

> But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritarianism.

How would china be better off? All their tech companies would have been bought out by larger foreign tech companies. Kinda like what happened to many european tech companies.

> To the Chinese state, protecting Chinese citizens from harmful things (like knowing full details about atrocities perpetrated by their government, or organizing to criticize the government) outweighs other concerns.

Yeah that's what the chinese state is worried about /s. Not the neverending misinformation, disinformation and propaganda directed against it.. When china does it, it's "authoritarianism". When "the west" does it, it's fighting against misinformation.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#928

Post by franciscator »

pelasaco wrote: post #775
1970-01-01 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU citizens: WE DEMAND XYZ PROTECTIONS EU: WE SHALL BUILD XYZ FOR EVERYONE (years pass) EU citizens: WE HATE XYZ PROTECTIONS

Who demanded cookie banners?

Cookie banners are an AI solved problem ... just train on "minimize eyes spying on me"... a business model?

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#929

Post by franciscator »

epolanski wrote: post #828

I'm not understanding, as an European who's been part of multiple startups how's that supposed to boost growth. There's literally 0 startups I've been part of where data protection laws or even the infamous cookie banners have been anywhere near relevant (unless your business was literally profiling). In fact the actors that most opposed those laws have always been non Europeans. Sure, there is an attached cost in ha…

The Elysium-Cloud needs your data

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#930

Post by vouwfietsman »

nonethewiser wrote: post #246
vouwfietsman wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would EU governments use cookie banners They generally don't, because you don't need banners to store cookies that you need to store to have a working site . In other words, if you see cookie banner, somebody is asking to store/track stuff about you that's not really needed . Cookie banners were invented by the market as a loophole to continue dark patterns and bad practices. EU is catching flak because its ext…

In terms of whether or not the ubiquity of cookie banners is malicious compliance or if it was an inevitable consequence of GDPR, it doesnt matter if trackers are good or necessary. GDPR doesn't ban them. So having them and getting consent is just a normal consequence. We can say, "Wouldn't it have been nice if the bad UX of all these cookies organically led to the death of trackers," but it didn't. And now proponent…

> And now proponents of GDPR are blaming companies for following GDPR.

Not really, proponents of GDPR are aware that GDPR explicitly blocking trackers would be extremely hard as there is a significant gray area where cookies can be useful but non-essential, so you'd have to define very specifically what constitutes a tracker or do a blanket ban and hurt legitimate use-cases. Both are bad.

For some reason though people think that the body that institutes laws that try to make the world a better place, when loopholes are found and abused for profit, this is somehow the standard body making a mistake, rather than each individual profit-seeking loophole-abusing entity being the problematic and blame-worthy actor.

I never understand why, I guess you work somewhere that makes money off of this.

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