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As I've commented below it's disingenuous to say that GDPR applies equally to all companies when it was conceived with US tech companies in mind and is designed

by sqdbps 9y ago

As I've commented below it's disingenuous to say that GDPR applies equally to all companies when it was conceived with US tech companies in mind and is designed to alter their business models. 1) Some of the ideas in there are welcome. 2) When you put roadblocks in front of every data point it's difficult to develop a half decent pattern matching system. A consent prompt upon joining ought to suffice. > technology companies are only suffering because in the past they have collected personal data indiscriminately on the basis that it might be useful some day Perhaps, but the "might be useful someday" part is a route for many an innovation that I want to preserve.

avianlyric 9y ago
I think this law will force people building AI's and ML systems to innovate more and be more thoughtful of how they use peoples data. Companies like DeepMind are already showing that collecting every data point under the sun is unnecessary, and that ML systems can be built with privacy in mind. Anyone that can't be bothered to put the effort in can, quite frankly, die at the hands of the market.
smueller1234 9y ago
I don't think that's disingenuous at all. Incidentally, most of the big tech companies are in the US. But there's some in Europe that are hit equally hard by this regulation. Examples: Booking.com (Dutch, but American owned, pays taxes primarily in the Netherlands): between 60 and 90 billion USD worth; Spotify (Swedish) purportedly worth 30ish billion USD. In other words: I really doubt that this is a targeted attack on the US/US companies. Finally, I think a lot of GDPR is at least as hard to implement for non tech companies as it is in tech/information type companies. The latter at least have lots of in house expertise in both tech and usually tech related law. It's just really expensive for them. More traditional companies that run some crazy IT system built by an outsourcer 20 years ago might have a bigger problem. Disclaimer and source: implemented several GDPR components when working at Booking.com.

by sqdbps 9y ago

avianlyric 9y ago

I think this law will force people building AI's and ML systems to innovate more and be more thoughtful of how they use peoples data. Companies like DeepMind are already showing that collecting every data point under the sun is unnecessary, and that ML systems can be built with privacy in mind. Anyone that can't be bothered to put the effort in can, quite frankly, die at the hands of the market.

smueller1234 9y ago

I don't think that's disingenuous at all. Incidentally, most of the big tech companies are in the US. But there's some in Europe that are hit equally hard by this regulation. Examples: Booking.com (Dutch, but American owned, pays taxes primarily in the Netherlands): between 60 and 90 billion USD worth; Spotify (Swedish) purportedly worth 30ish billion USD. In other words: I really doubt that this is a targeted attack on the US/US companies. Finally, I think a lot of GDPR is at least as hard to implement for non tech companies as it is in tech/information type companies. The latter at least have lots of in house expertise in both tech and usually tech related law. It's just really expensive for them. More traditional companies that run some crazy IT system built by an outsourcer 20 years ago might have a bigger problem. Disclaimer and source: implemented several GDPR components when working at Booking.com.