Earlier quoted context omitted.
GDPR doesn't really work as you describe. Under GDPR data is a liability.
One man's liability, another man's profit.
Versus every man's profit?
Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
961–970 of 1001 posts
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#962I'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…
I know a friend who was building his first website, he asked in our startup group how to handle the GDPR cookie banner, it likely wasted 1 day on that, when he had invested maybe a whole othery day on the project. At that moment in time the GDPR cookie banner amounted of 50% of the effort. It killed momentum, it killed willpower with beuracracy. It should have asked himself how to get users, not how to comply with GD…
The problem was not the cookie banner, but rather that they were doing things that required user consent (most commonly: filling up the website with 3rd-party marketing tools).
You can have a website as big as GitHub without a cookie banner yet still be compliant.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#963Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's something like 24 national languages in the EU. I can hardly blame hetzner for not translating their services to say polish and think it's entirely the wrong approach anyway. It's really true language is a big barrier but honestly the solution cannot be for every single company to offer services in 20 languages. It can't be. English must be adopted.
> English must be adopted. I cringe when I read this. Why not German? There are more native German speakers than any other language in the EU. Also, in the age of LLMs, translating (on a best effort basis) to (at least) 24 different languages is trivial.
> Why not German?
Are there more distinct markets in the EU/EEC where adopting german would give you a quantifiable economic and/or competitive advantage over adopting english?
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#964I'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…
> do use and it’s easier for me to just block all European
Making it harder for foreign companies to compete is actually great for European startups, though
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#965Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not care about 100s of startups and how they want to use my data for advertisement or other things they benefit from. I care about keeping my personal data private so it will be more difficult to use for profiling me for whatever (whatever!) reason, but all are for other's benefit on no or marginal benefit for me in overwhelmingly major part of the cases. If startups cannot do properly, then they should not do a…
Sure and that's why EU now has the weakest tech sector of any service industry and have become absolutely dependent on US and Chinese software instead. I cannot even use my official government ID application that is mandatory almost everywhere without signing on to Google or Apple, so much for data privacy and sovereignty.
The tech sector is for people, and not people for the tech sector!
If they cannot do without exploiting people for their organizational benefits, then they can go to China and USA, they do not care about living standards over there! That is the place for ruthless, greedy, lazy fast paced groups to stomp on people! As they already do.
The EU is not the strongest and who cares?! It is strong enough, and that's what counts! Fullfills the needs. Good. Not everything is a race to infinite numbers in quarterly reports! Less inflated pushy tech idiots racing each other to oblivivion? GOOD!
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#966Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Rules are necessary, but ideally you'd strive for the minimum set that produces the desired outcome w/ the least side-effects.
Totally agree. But parent‘s point was formulated as such that rules are generally bad, and I wanted to point out that some rules are necessary, and sometimes you may even need to add some (and obv sometimes also remove some).
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#967Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or a new, opt-in "Do-Track" that means consent to tracking, and anything else means tracking is not allowed. Why should it opt-out?
As long as there is Do-Not-Track as well, and companies must follow BOTH, this would be ok by me. But this one alone opens the door to behavior similar to tracking cookies, where accepting all was easy and not accepting was hard af.
I can already hear big tech explaining to me, that not sending the do-not-track header must mean do-track obviously, and that I am wrong, when I complain about missing consent. And I can already see the people who have been gaslit sufficiently to believe this stuff.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#968> One change that’s likely to please almost everyone is a reduction in Europe’s ubiquitous cookie banners and pop-ups. Under the new proposal, some “non-risk” cookies won’t trigger pop-ups at all, and users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. Finally!
Can we get the do-not-track header instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track Because that made more sense than the cookie banner ever did. Edit: it looks like there is a legal alternative now: Global Privacy Control.
Oh, but you see, this can impossibly be interpreted as not consenting to our specific tracking. Surely users mostly clicked this accidentally. I mean why would they block our tracking? It's all for a better user experience... /s
_Company goes on to put tutorial about disabling the do-not-track header on their website._
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#969Earlier quoted context omitted.
But where would you rather be an average Joe ? Your health outcomes alone are better in the EU. I think we all agree that looking at GDP figures needs to be supplemented with wealth distribution data.
>But where would you rather be an average Joe? In the US. By far! And migration data backs it up.
Come now - you are setting yourself up for an easy rhetorical response with that assertion.
I’m not disagreeing that america gets more migrants.
But are you going to say that migrants are “average” when compared to the average Joe ?
On average immigrants from a country are the people who are capable enough or desperate enough to make the move to an entirely different culture and life. America used to attract some of the best talent out there.
Most people, in most countries, are not that driven.
And besides that, the different in net immigration numbers are not so wide, as to suggest that the EU is unattractive.
Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws
#970Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ughhh here we go again. Every time GDPR is brought up on HN, the same "it's super simple to comply, just read it yourself!" religious incantation gets repeated ad-nauseam. I think it's because people love the idea of what they think GDPR actually represents (the fuzzy abstract idea of "privacy"), without ever diving into any of the implementation details. Almost nobody on this forum has ever talked to a lawyer about…
> but will continue to go back and forth if GDPR remains as-is. Yes, it should remain as is and enforced . Yes, storing your users' data in the US is extremely problematic because the US really couldn't give two shits about privacy, or user data.
It's funny that the President of the United States literally stated that the European Union's raison d'etre is inherently hostile to the US - pretty much as close as you can get to calling us an enemy - and yet EU politicians still desperately cling to holding the doors open for US corporations which continue flaunting our laws and are inherently incapable of abiding by them because of the US's publicly stated and demonstrated intent to commit warrantless surveillance under the use of gag orders.
Given how much Russian political influence tanked after the economic ties were forcibly severed (or at least had to become more discreet and indirect as in the case of Russian gas imports - though those will allegedly further decrease in the near future) it seems reasonable to assume that a lot of these weirdly pro-US anti-EU stances held by European politicians are linked to the economic ties to the US. But of course I'd never dare to accuse any EU politicians of taking bribes - us Westerners have far more sophisticated methods of giving politicians money to do what benefits us than the profane bribery of Russian cops being handed money to look the other way.