7 ms·

I think if I was creating a new social media website today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU. The sheer quantity of fines for vaguely specified "cr

I think if I was creating a new social media website today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU. The sheer quantity of fines for vaguely specified "crimes" being handed out makes it a deeply unattractive business environment and it seems to be getting worse. I remember when Facebook was new, one of its big competitive advantages was its easy and comprehensive privacy controls. I didn't see other social networks go significantly further in the years since. Now Germany - having failed to clone Facebook domestically (StudiVZ) - sits around extracting money on the grounds that users somehow did not consent to their data being used when they directly uploaded it to the site. I don't see the Valley's hold on social networking loosening any time soon. For all its faults the USA doesn't constantly fine its firms for not doing "enough", whatever that means.

kome 9y ago
k bye
- sctb 9y ago
  Could you please post civilly and substantively or not at all? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
wickawic 9y ago
One way of thinking of legislation is to encourage/discourage behavior indirectly. Think how putting a ridiculous tax on cigarettes makes people less likely to want to use them. In this sense, the German government (and greater EU) may be completely fine in implementing these laws to discourage the presence of these types of companies operating in their jurisdiction. After all, it is hard to argue that social media as currently implemented (by large, foreign, data-hungry companies) is an inalienable right, and much easier to argue that it is a net drain on society.
- LanceH 9y ago
  I think it is pretty easy to argue that someone has the freedom to put their info on a website that will use it according to the terms of service.
  - pille 9y ago
    I think the argument is about whether someone has the freedom not to have their info on the site. It’s well known that FB has shadow profiles with no active accounts. You’re on there whether you like it or not.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    30 years ago everyone had the freedom to choose between restaurants that allow smoking and those that don’t — except that no businesses wanted to provide the latter. Without government intervention we’d still be wading through cigarette smoke in bars. Facebook’s reckless use of private data is a public hazard not unlike passive smoking. It’s not going to be solved by an asymmetric fake free market where customers are free to choose an option that doesn’t exist.
    - perl4ever 9y ago
      Are you referring to Germany or the US? In my recollection, in the US, 30 years ago restaurants had "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections. And non-smokers sometimes complained bitterly about smoke wafting into the "non-smoking" section. Which in fact led to some restaurants being all non-smoking before government intervention. The NY statewide ban on smoking in workplaces was only passed 15 years ago. I don't know about bars 30 years ago, though. Because drinking has always been considered a "vice", I think people tended to group it with smoking and think if you're going to tolerate one, why not the other.
      - fnordian_slip 9y ago
        Pretty sure the parent comment is talking about Germany. Smoking bans in restaurants and bars have made a significant difference in most states. If I remember correctly, we had a non-binding agreement between the health ministry and our national restaurant and hotel organisation at first, but this did not change much. Even most smokers I know agree that the laws were necessary, and that they are thankful for them because otherwise they would not go outside to smoke.
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago
  > Think how putting a ridiculous tax on cigarettes makes people less likely to want to use them. It also makes them more likely to buy them illegally.
  - squiggleblaz 9y ago
    Well yes, and laws against killing people make people want to murder (i.e. kill illegally with premeditation). It's incredible that people think "someone will break the law" is a justification for not having the law.
imbusy111 9y ago
Maybe the way we architect social networks online is fundamentally flawed? Maybe these products should not even exist. I'm not claiming I have a better solution though.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  We have the answer - no, nothing's flawed, there's a huge demand.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    I think it's a huge stretch to say that nothing is flawed.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      And the reason is...?
  - mark_edward 9y ago
    Demand proves that things are good, this is why slavery and cold prostitution are good, for example. Your brain has been broken by money.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      Yeah there goes the Hitler argument...
45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
From the other side of the coin, I think if your business model is based on the exploitation of peoples data, the EU doesn't want your 'SV disruption'. From https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-... it would appear that these lessons are being learned, somewhat slowly.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  An inteesting article, certainly, but it buries a rather explosive accusation: Zuckerberg had reason to take the meeting (with Rupert Murdoch) especially seriously, according to a former Facebook executive, because he had firsthand knowledge of Murdoch’s skill in the dark arts. Back in 2007, Facebook had come under criticism from 49 state attorneys general for failing to protect young Facebook users from sexual predators and inappropriate content. Concerned parents had written to Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, who opened an investigation, and to The New York Times, which published a story. But according to a former Facebook executive in a position to know, the company believed that many of the Facebook accounts and the predatory behavior the letters referenced were fakes, traceable to News Corp lawyers or others working for Murdoch, who owned Facebook’s biggest competitor, MySpace. “We traced the creation of the Facebook accounts to IP addresses at the Apple store a block away from the MySpace offices in Santa Monica,” the executive says. “Facebook then traced interactions with those accounts to News Corp lawyers. When it comes to Facebook, Murdoch has been playing every angle he can for a long time.” (Both News Corp and its spinoff 21st Century Fox declined to comment.) Does anyone have any good pointers for further reading on this? If I were Mark Zuckerberg and some fossilized ink-stained wretch like Murdoch tried to weaponize a state attorney general against my company, there would be very serious consequences.
lima 9y ago
Deeply unattractive business environment for companies exploiting people's personal data without their consent? Good.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  You can stop using Facebook if you want to
  - clarkenheim 9y ago
    You can stop Facebook from using you as well in the EU.
    - meddlepal 9y ago
      So you're effectively stealing then? Your data is your payment to Facebook.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Will Facebook remove all of my personal data and attest to no longer collecting any future data from my online of offline activities?
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      Dunno man, did you give them your personal data? If yes, then according to the TOS it's theirs. If not, there's no problem.
      - toomuchtodo 9y ago
        Where is the ToS you agree to for the involuntary profiles they create of you if you've never used their service? https://boingboing.net/2017/11/08/involuntary-profiling.html https://boingboing.net/2017/11/08/involuntary-profiling.html "Facebook is well understood as being a major customer of third-party data-brokers, who compile huge dossiers on people based on their spending, internet and phone usage, employment history and so on. In addition, Facebook encourages users to upload their entire address books to the system to "find your friends," and users generally don't appreciate that they may be leaking sensitive information, including nicknames, private numbers, and connections to the system. Facebook mines this data to create "shadow profiles" of its billions of users. These are profiles that are filled with data about you that you have never consciously provided to the system -- data mined from third parties, including your friends, but also those spooky data-brokers. Facebook's shadow profile system was first confirmed in 2013 when it accidentally leaked users' shadow profiles to them along with their own data, something the company says it will never do again out of (ironic) respect for the privacy of the people who provided the data that goes into your shadow profile. Facebook's shadow profiles are involuntary and there's no opt-out. Facebook has shadow profiles on people who don't use the service. For example, even though I'm not a Facebook user, multiple people have uploaded their address books containing my email and phone number to the system, allowing Facebook to create a profile of my contacts by looking at who lists me as a contact."
shadowtree 9y ago
1., If you store data of EU residents, you are under EU jurisdiction (GDPR) and can be targeted by fines. 2., The EU is a very rich, large market - considered the single largest economy in the world (GDP per capita). Good luck not targeting it with your products. 3., The pendulum around data protection is swinging back, this is normal. Apple saw it and adjusted already. Google is cooperating and staying quiet. Only FB is stupid enough to fight in courts.
- nordsieck 9y ago
  > 1., If you store data of EU residents, you are under EU jurisdiction (GDPR) and can be targeted by fines. Anyone can claim jurisdiction. Enforcement is another matter entirely. If there is no presence in Europe, I can't imagine how the they would collect.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Yes, unfortunately, in the case of FB there is.
    - chrisper 9y ago
      Unfortunately?
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        For them. Fortunately for the rest of us, they have a solid foot on the ground both in NL and Ireland.
        chrisper 9y ago
        I see. For a second it seemed you were defending Facebook!
        jacquesm 9y ago
visarga 9y ago
> today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU Facebook is a national security risk and should not be let to reign free as it likes. I see no problem if we tame a vulnerability - the way it handles our personal data, how it uses it to push ads and politics, how it influences elections by tweaking the feeds. Not to mention that it doesn't like to pay taxes in EU.
saas_co_de 9y ago
> USA doesn't constantly fine its firms for not doing "enough" The EU isn't fining its firms. It is fining US firms. Big difference.
- lima 9y ago
  This claim is completely unsubstantiated.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    It's true, the reasoning (e.g. no EU firms to fine / corruption / market protection) is unclear.
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    Except for the article in question which is about the EU fining a US firm.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gaius 9y ago
social media website today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU Social media is a psychological weapon that can disrupt a society to the point at which it can no longer function. Look at Libya or Syria. Look at how fractured the US is. If you want to point it at someone else, that would be nice.
starsinspace 9y ago
The fewer of these surveillance economy businesses we have here, the better. So as a EU citizen, I see these laws working in my favour.
jacquesm 9y ago
It looks as if the system is working as intended.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
I think it shows that the EU actually cares about their citizens.
pjc50 9y ago
Homework: find the bit when signing up for a FB account that explains how they use tracking from buttons loaded on non-FB pages you visit while logged in.
madez 9y ago
> Now Germany - having failed to clone Facebook domestically (StudiVZ) - sits around extracting money on the grounds that users somehow did not consent to their data being used (...) That is an inappropriate accusation. In Germany, large data collections have been seen as very problematic since before social networks were a thing. Authoritive action and laws take time to adapt to new problems. Given the prevalance of social networks like Facebook nowadays sped up the process, but I'm confident it would have come sooner or later anyways. Also, Europe is certainly a place where one can do business very fine. Handling data about other people they are not aware of or don't consent to is a very specific aspect. Just don't record data about other people and you are fine in this aspect.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Read the article. The violation was: "Facebook hides default settings that are not privacy-friendly in its privacy center and does not provide sufficient information about it when users register" How is putting privacy settings in the privacy center hiding them? What is "sufficient" information when users register? Where in law are these things spelled out? Germany isn't punishing Facebook for anything actually concrete or real. Rather the German courts and regulators seem to think they should design Facebook's UI instead of Facebook. This is not how free markets work and if you were creating a new company, why let some random German regional court waste your time on disputes over the position of widgets in your user interface?
  - madez 9y ago
    There are regulations for agreements. In Germany for example, when you rent a flat, the customers have inalienable rights that he can't legally-bindingly forfeit even in written contract form. There is no such thing as a fully free market, and that is a good thing. The complaint is not that they want to control every detail. Certain parts of the agreements might simply not be valid just by clicking a check box, or the parts are not displayed in a form that is considered appropiate. Imagine a document with 15000 words that is unnegotiable by you. Will your mother read that so she can give meaningful consent? I don't think so, so the consent isn't valid. This line of reasoning is about common sense, and not about formalities, and I'm glad it is relevant in law.
thinkloop 9y ago
It's a happy fact for me that the EU protects us where we fail. I am more aligned with their privacy rules and anti-trust policies than America's - grateful for it.
lurker456 9y ago
The US has software patents. The EU has GDPR. China has rampant IP theft. Russia has corruption. Every large market has peculiarities, it's the cost of doing business.
- tzs 9y ago
  > The US has software patents. So does the EU [1]. "The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as 'computer implemented inventions'". [1] https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html
  - chopin 9y ago
    Even though, in most of Europe we have a loser pays legal system. That's one of the reasons we don't have rampant patent trolling.
MrMoenty 9y ago
I find it surprising that people have gotten so used to Facebook's abuse of data that they cannot even imagine things being different. You uploading data to Facebook to share with your friends does not mean that you give consent to have it stored, analyzed, and sold for profit. If I upload data to Dropbox, my bank, or my health insurance, I don't expect them to be sold to advertisers either. So what if there was a social network that actually respected its users and didn't exploit their data for its own ulterior motives? Seems to be an inconceivable notion to some.
- BookmarkSaver 9y ago
  It does seem inconceivable to me. How would it make money? Subscriptions? People can't even be bothered to pay for YouTube despite complaining endlessly about ads.
  - squiggleblaz 9y ago
    If a business can't make a profit in a socially conscious way, does the society benefit from its existences? If the only way you can make a social network is by selling members' lives to the highest bidder, maybe it's a product we should give a miss.
jimnotgym 9y ago
1) According to this[0] it is the worlds second largest economy 2) It is a very politically stable block, with low crime and corruption, war etc. 3) 51% of the population speak English as a first or second language[1] 4) High levels of literacy 5) Free market Sounds like a really excellent place to sell advertising, as long as you don't mind not exploiting consumers. Why would you avoid it? In favour of where? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)#Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
the_svd_doctor 9y ago
It's a pretty rich continent of 500 millions people. Hard to ignore from a business perspective.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Maybe there are social media business paradigms that don't revolve around exploitation of users' PII.
ginko 9y ago
>I think if I was creating a new social media website today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU. And nothing of value was lost.

kome 9y ago

k bye

sctb 9y ago
Could you please post civilly and substantively or not at all? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

wickawic 9y ago

One way of thinking of legislation is to encourage/discourage behavior indirectly. Think how putting a ridiculous tax on cigarettes makes people less likely to want to use them. In this sense, the German government (and greater EU) may be completely fine in implementing these laws to discourage the presence of these types of companies operating in their jurisdiction. After all, it is hard to argue that social media as currently implemented (by large, foreign, data-hungry companies) is an inalienable right, and much easier to argue that it is a net drain on society.

LanceH 9y ago
I think it is pretty easy to argue that someone has the freedom to put their info on a website that will use it according to the terms of service.
- pille 9y ago
  I think the argument is about whether someone has the freedom not to have their info on the site. It’s well known that FB has shadow profiles with no active accounts. You’re on there whether you like it or not.
- pavlov 9y ago
  30 years ago everyone had the freedom to choose between restaurants that allow smoking and those that don’t — except that no businesses wanted to provide the latter. Without government intervention we’d still be wading through cigarette smoke in bars. Facebook’s reckless use of private data is a public hazard not unlike passive smoking. It’s not going to be solved by an asymmetric fake free market where customers are free to choose an option that doesn’t exist.
  - perl4ever 9y ago
    Are you referring to Germany or the US? In my recollection, in the US, 30 years ago restaurants had "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections. And non-smokers sometimes complained bitterly about smoke wafting into the "non-smoking" section. Which in fact led to some restaurants being all non-smoking before government intervention. The NY statewide ban on smoking in workplaces was only passed 15 years ago. I don't know about bars 30 years ago, though. Because drinking has always been considered a "vice", I think people tended to group it with smoking and think if you're going to tolerate one, why not the other.
    - fnordian_slip 9y ago
      Pretty sure the parent comment is talking about Germany. Smoking bans in restaurants and bars have made a significant difference in most states. If I remember correctly, we had a non-binding agreement between the health ministry and our national restaurant and hotel organisation at first, but this did not change much. Even most smokers I know agree that the laws were necessary, and that they are thankful for them because otherwise they would not go outside to smoke.
aeorgnoieang 9y ago
> Think how putting a ridiculous tax on cigarettes makes people less likely to want to use them. It also makes them more likely to buy them illegally.
- squiggleblaz 9y ago
  Well yes, and laws against killing people make people want to murder (i.e. kill illegally with premeditation). It's incredible that people think "someone will break the law" is a justification for not having the law.

imbusy111 9y ago

Maybe the way we architect social networks online is fundamentally flawed? Maybe these products should not even exist. I'm not claiming I have a better solution though.

TomMarius 9y ago
We have the answer - no, nothing's flawed, there's a huge demand.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  I think it's a huge stretch to say that nothing is flawed.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    And the reason is...?
- mark_edward 9y ago
  Demand proves that things are good, this is why slavery and cold prostitution are good, for example. Your brain has been broken by money.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Yeah there goes the Hitler argument...

45h34jh53k4j 9y ago

From the other side of the coin, I think if your business model is based on the exploitation of peoples data, the EU doesn't want your 'SV disruption'. From https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-2-years-of-hell/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-... it would appear that these lessons are being learned, somewhat slowly.

CamperBob2 9y ago
An inteesting article, certainly, but it buries a rather explosive accusation: Zuckerberg had reason to take the meeting (with Rupert Murdoch) especially seriously, according to a former Facebook executive, because he had firsthand knowledge of Murdoch’s skill in the dark arts. Back in 2007, Facebook had come under criticism from 49 state attorneys general for failing to protect young Facebook users from sexual predators and inappropriate content. Concerned parents had written to Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, who opened an investigation, and to The New York Times, which published a story. But according to a former Facebook executive in a position to know, the company believed that many of the Facebook accounts and the predatory behavior the letters referenced were fakes, traceable to News Corp lawyers or others working for Murdoch, who owned Facebook’s biggest competitor, MySpace. “We traced the creation of the Facebook accounts to IP addresses at the Apple store a block away from the MySpace offices in Santa Monica,” the executive says. “Facebook then traced interactions with those accounts to News Corp lawyers. When it comes to Facebook, Murdoch has been playing every angle he can for a long time.” (Both News Corp and its spinoff 21st Century Fox declined to comment.) Does anyone have any good pointers for further reading on this? If I were Mark Zuckerberg and some fossilized ink-stained wretch like Murdoch tried to weaponize a state attorney general against my company, there would be very serious consequences.

lima 9y ago

Deeply unattractive business environment for companies exploiting people's personal data without their consent? Good.

TomMarius 9y ago
You can stop using Facebook if you want to
- clarkenheim 9y ago
  You can stop Facebook from using you as well in the EU.
  - meddlepal 9y ago
    So you're effectively stealing then? Your data is your payment to Facebook.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Will Facebook remove all of my personal data and attest to no longer collecting any future data from my online of offline activities?
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    Dunno man, did you give them your personal data? If yes, then according to the TOS it's theirs. If not, there's no problem.
    - toomuchtodo 9y ago
      Where is the ToS you agree to for the involuntary profiles they create of you if you've never used their service? https://boingboing.net/2017/11/08/involuntary-profiling.html https://boingboing.net/2017/11/08/involuntary-profiling.html "Facebook is well understood as being a major customer of third-party data-brokers, who compile huge dossiers on people based on their spending, internet and phone usage, employment history and so on. In addition, Facebook encourages users to upload their entire address books to the system to "find your friends," and users generally don't appreciate that they may be leaking sensitive information, including nicknames, private numbers, and connections to the system. Facebook mines this data to create "shadow profiles" of its billions of users. These are profiles that are filled with data about you that you have never consciously provided to the system -- data mined from third parties, including your friends, but also those spooky data-brokers. Facebook's shadow profile system was first confirmed in 2013 when it accidentally leaked users' shadow profiles to them along with their own data, something the company says it will never do again out of (ironic) respect for the privacy of the people who provided the data that goes into your shadow profile. Facebook's shadow profiles are involuntary and there's no opt-out. Facebook has shadow profiles on people who don't use the service. For example, even though I'm not a Facebook user, multiple people have uploaded their address books containing my email and phone number to the system, allowing Facebook to create a profile of my contacts by looking at who lists me as a contact."

shadowtree 9y ago

1., If you store data of EU residents, you are under EU jurisdiction (GDPR) and can be targeted by fines. 2., The EU is a very rich, large market - considered the single largest economy in the world (GDP per capita). Good luck not targeting it with your products. 3., The pendulum around data protection is swinging back, this is normal. Apple saw it and adjusted already. Google is cooperating and staying quiet. Only FB is stupid enough to fight in courts.

nordsieck 9y ago
> 1., If you store data of EU residents, you are under EU jurisdiction (GDPR) and can be targeted by fines. Anyone can claim jurisdiction. Enforcement is another matter entirely. If there is no presence in Europe, I can't imagine how the they would collect.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Yes, unfortunately, in the case of FB there is.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Unfortunately?
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      For them. Fortunately for the rest of us, they have a solid foot on the ground both in NL and Ireland.
      - chrisper 9y ago
        I see. For a second it seemed you were defending Facebook!
        jacquesm 9y ago

visarga 9y ago

> today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU Facebook is a national security risk and should not be let to reign free as it likes. I see no problem if we tame a vulnerability - the way it handles our personal data, how it uses it to push ads and politics, how it influences elections by tweaking the feeds. Not to mention that it doesn't like to pay taxes in EU.

saas_co_de 9y ago

> USA doesn't constantly fine its firms for not doing "enough" The EU isn't fining its firms. It is fining US firms. Big difference.

lima 9y ago
This claim is completely unsubstantiated.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  It's true, the reasoning (e.g. no EU firms to fine / corruption / market protection) is unclear.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  Except for the article in question which is about the EU fining a US firm.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

gaius 9y ago

social media website today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU Social media is a psychological weapon that can disrupt a society to the point at which it can no longer function. Look at Libya or Syria. Look at how fractured the US is. If you want to point it at someone else, that would be nice.

starsinspace 9y ago

The fewer of these surveillance economy businesses we have here, the better. So as a EU citizen, I see these laws working in my favour.

jacquesm 9y ago

It looks as if the system is working as intended.

s73v3r_ 9y ago

I think it shows that the EU actually cares about their citizens.

pjc50 9y ago

Homework: find the bit when signing up for a FB account that explains how they use tracking from buttons loaded on non-FB pages you visit while logged in.

madez 9y ago

> Now Germany - having failed to clone Facebook domestically (StudiVZ) - sits around extracting money on the grounds that users somehow did not consent to their data being used (...) That is an inappropriate accusation. In Germany, large data collections have been seen as very problematic since before social networks were a thing. Authoritive action and laws take time to adapt to new problems. Given the prevalance of social networks like Facebook nowadays sped up the process, but I'm confident it would have come sooner or later anyways. Also, Europe is certainly a place where one can do business very fine. Handling data about other people they are not aware of or don't consent to is a very specific aspect. Just don't record data about other people and you are fine in this aspect.

peoplewindow 9y ago
Read the article. The violation was: "Facebook hides default settings that are not privacy-friendly in its privacy center and does not provide sufficient information about it when users register" How is putting privacy settings in the privacy center hiding them? What is "sufficient" information when users register? Where in law are these things spelled out? Germany isn't punishing Facebook for anything actually concrete or real. Rather the German courts and regulators seem to think they should design Facebook's UI instead of Facebook. This is not how free markets work and if you were creating a new company, why let some random German regional court waste your time on disputes over the position of widgets in your user interface?
- madez 9y ago
  There are regulations for agreements. In Germany for example, when you rent a flat, the customers have inalienable rights that he can't legally-bindingly forfeit even in written contract form. There is no such thing as a fully free market, and that is a good thing. The complaint is not that they want to control every detail. Certain parts of the agreements might simply not be valid just by clicking a check box, or the parts are not displayed in a form that is considered appropiate. Imagine a document with 15000 words that is unnegotiable by you. Will your mother read that so she can give meaningful consent? I don't think so, so the consent isn't valid. This line of reasoning is about common sense, and not about formalities, and I'm glad it is relevant in law.

thinkloop 9y ago

It's a happy fact for me that the EU protects us where we fail. I am more aligned with their privacy rules and anti-trust policies than America's - grateful for it.

lurker456 9y ago

The US has software patents. The EU has GDPR. China has rampant IP theft. Russia has corruption. Every large market has peculiarities, it's the cost of doing business.

tzs 9y ago
> The US has software patents. So does the EU [1]. "The European Patent Convention states that software is not patentable. But laws are always interpreted by courts, and in this case interpretations of the law differ. So the European Patents Office (EPO) grants software patents by declaring them as 'computer implemented inventions'". [1] https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html https://fsfe.org/campaigns/swpat/swpat.en.html
- chopin 9y ago
  Even though, in most of Europe we have a loser pays legal system. That's one of the reasons we don't have rampant patent trolling.

MrMoenty 9y ago

I find it surprising that people have gotten so used to Facebook's abuse of data that they cannot even imagine things being different. You uploading data to Facebook to share with your friends does not mean that you give consent to have it stored, analyzed, and sold for profit. If I upload data to Dropbox, my bank, or my health insurance, I don't expect them to be sold to advertisers either. So what if there was a social network that actually respected its users and didn't exploit their data for its own ulterior motives? Seems to be an inconceivable notion to some.

BookmarkSaver 9y ago
It does seem inconceivable to me. How would it make money? Subscriptions? People can't even be bothered to pay for YouTube despite complaining endlessly about ads.
- squiggleblaz 9y ago
  If a business can't make a profit in a socially conscious way, does the society benefit from its existences? If the only way you can make a social network is by selling members' lives to the highest bidder, maybe it's a product we should give a miss.

jimnotgym 9y ago

1) According to this[0] it is the worlds second largest economy 2) It is a very politically stable block, with low crime and corruption, war etc. 3) 51% of the population speak English as a first or second language[1] 4) High levels of literacy 5) Free market Sounds like a really excellent place to sell advertising, as long as you don't mind not exploiting consumers. Why would you avoid it? In favour of where? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)#Lists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...

the_svd_doctor 9y ago

It's a pretty rich continent of 500 millions people. Hard to ignore from a business perspective.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Maybe there are social media business paradigms that don't revolve around exploitation of users' PII.

ginko 9y ago

>I think if I was creating a new social media website today I'd probably not set up any presence in the EU. And nothing of value was lost.