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If anything, this kind of regulation helps companies like Facebook keep their "monopoly", because it raises the monetary cost of starting a competitor. A number
by ericdykstra 8y ago
If anything, this kind of regulation helps companies like Facebook keep their "monopoly", because it raises the monetary cost of starting a competitor. A number of smaller services and games have shut down due to increased cost of compliance, even for companies that don't have any privacy issues.
- adrianN 8y agoWhat alternative do you propose? The free market obviously fails to address privacy issues, I don't see how anything besides stricter regulation can help the affected people here.
- ericdykstra 8y agoI'm not a policymaker, but GDPR seems overly-reactionary, over-reaching, and not well thought-out. I think the negative unintended consequences are likely much greater than however much it actually protects the privacy of individuals (which I don't think will be much at all).
- hvidgaard 8y agoGDPR is mostly a regulation that was a directive (DPD) before. If you handled data responsible before and didn't do shady stuff with it, there is little extra to do to be GDPR compliant.
- taysic 8y agoExcept if you had targeted advertising you now need to allow users to use the same service without targeting. (ie 'without detriment')
- Drakim 8y agoI don't think GDPR is flawless, but at some point if we don't do anything, privacy violations are going to become so common place and so entrenched in the online economy that we can't fix it anymore. At that point, the discussion would be all about all the "jobs we would destroy" and "businesses opportunities we would shut down!", and heavy lobbying would make sure it gets nowhere.
- kennell 8y agoDo you think that the GDPR has really changed anything for either Facebook or its users? Do you think that anything changed in the way data is being handled? All i see is a bunch of highly paid law firms writing up 200 additional pages in terms and conditions to shield the company, but nothing really changed as far as daily business is concerned.
- foepys 8y agoConsidering that GDPR is only in full effect after May 25th 2018, there is nothing to talk about in regards to its effect right now.
- taysic 8y agoIt seems most of their GDPR user facing changes have been made: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-changes/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-changes/
- robin_reala 8y agoTwo hundred extra pages of new privacy info in the T&Cs would fail GDPR: The information you provide to people must be concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible, and it must use clear and plain language. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/right-to-be-informed/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...
- vmateixeira 8y agoIf a company has money to hire lawyers to make an extra 200 pages of T&Cs, I'm sure they will have the money to argue that those pages are "concise, transparent, intelligible, easily accessible, and it must use clear and plain language".
- icebraining 8y agoNot yet, it'll take a few lawsuits. See the work of Max Schrems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems https://www.fbclaim.com https://www.fbclaim.com
- rocqua 8y agoNot that I am advocating this approach, but regulations that are more about liability and transparency (towards journalists and shareholders) might help. Liability means that mistakes are (hopefully) punished more proportionally to their effects, which allows one to scale measures as the business grows. Meanwhile, the transparency means that any potential issues are easier to spot, making it possible for suits to be brought. Note that transparency towards users has been shown to be rather ineffective, similar to how no-one reads the eula.
- askvictor 8y agoThinking on the run here, but: the reason big companies have an advantage here is that they grew big before regulations, and their current size can deal with the regulations easily; while small companies don't have the resources to deal with the regulations. So how about a levy on these larger companies that goes straight to small companies to help with the regulatory burden of such regulations?
- afarrell 8y agoDecrease the cost of compliance by communicating super-clearly. - The UK ICO's Guide to the GDPR is a good step. Kudos to those who got the budget passed to do that. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da... - Produce clear example cases before things are litigated. That way, you don't run into the problem of "Well, nobody really knows how things are going to shake out and people are trying to stay in the middle of the pack in terms of compliance" (Which is what I heard from an entrepreneur at a panel at Slaughter & May) - Hire someone to write The Manga Guide to GDPR Compliance, in the style of https://nostarch.com/mg_databases.htm https://nostarch.com/mg_databases.htm Or in the style of http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1585 http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1585. - Post video courses with the same sort of content. Part of the problem here is that law firms have a strong incentive to publish SEO-optimised content which proclaims that compliance is difficult and confusing and that you should hire an expert law firm.
- jimmaswell 8y ago>The free market obviously fails to address privacy issues, No it doesn't. Everything was working completely fine before.
- taysic 8y agoI propose allowing people to use their private data as a form of monetary exchange. Iow, GDPR disallows apps/sites to ask a user if they would allow targeted advertising or would like to pay for the app. There is no good reason for this in my eyes. Transparency is great but don't force people to not be allowed to use their personal data in an exchange.
- adrianratnapala 8y agoIt's a win-win politicians can make hey of continuing to hate Zuckerberg and "making good" on it by continuing to prop him up with such barriers to entry.
- kybernetikos 8y agoSomeone who runs a club recently told me he was moving all comms to Facebook because of the GDPR. He says that means that he is not collecting user data only Facebook is and so he doesn't have to worry about GDPR things. This is a bit awkward for me since I don't use Facebook.
- TheGrumpyBrit 8y agoHe's going to find himself in for a shock. The platform he chooses to store data on is irrelevant, if he's processing that data then GDPR applies.
- zerostar07 8y agoNah, he would not be storing any data himself. He s not a processor or a controller.
- CapacitorSet 8y agoIs Facebook monopoly any worse than having multiple actors in the data collection field? If anything, having more competitors would push each to be more cunning in their collection and retention of data, to appear more valuable to stakeholders. One evil is better than two.
- makapuf 8y agoOr having more competitors would push them to ask for data portability and thus transparency.
- Vinnl 8y agoThe regulation, after all, did not have as a goal to break up monopolies, but to protect user data.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoI think that's only a temporary thing. If people actually start writing software from ground up where it's easy to handle GDPR requirements, such as user deletion, giving users access to their data, etc., then it shouldn't be hard to start compliant and stay compliant.
- zerostar07 8y agoI think the right to access and delete are the easy parts. More people are complaining about the consent requirements and the added bureaucracy.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoALTER TABLE users ADD COLUMN consents jsonb; Easy enough.
- 3327 8y agoIn that case compliance and regulation should be run similar to the way the SEC runs it. There is a threshold and if you report AMU over say 5mn you are subject to tier 1 compliance, then tier 2 and so on. follow me?
- jdietrich 8y agoIt's a huge competitive advantage for privacy-oriented companies that were actually following the old Data Protection Directive. I've spoken to people who are in a blind panic about GDPR day, but I've also spoken to people who were completely unconcerned because they already had their ship in order. If your business relies on re-selling user data or aggressively targeting ads through data mining, coming into compliance will be painful and expensive; it might completely break your business model. If your business just sells a useful service at a reasonable price while respecting user privacy, you've got very little to worry about.
- zerostar07 8y ago> huge competitive advantage I get the advantage of being more prepared to apply GDPR but that lasts 1-2 months max. The fact that people keep using facebook mindlessly in and out of EU over the last year makes one wonder: Does it really matter to users?
- jdietrich 8y ago>I get the advantage of being more prepared to apply GDPR but that lasts 1-2 months max. The advantage is in having a sustainable business model that isn't based on exploiting user data. With GDPR-compliant privacy controls in place, it'll be a lot harder to target advertising or profit from user data by selling it to third parties. Companies that provide a "free" service based on these revenue streams will face a long battle of regulatory enforcement and dwindling ARPU. They might have no choice but to completely pivot their business model. If you just provide a service in exchange for money and take reasonable steps to protect your users' privacy, it's business as usual. This applies doubly to startups. If a service like Snapchat or Instagram were to launch next week, potential investors will be asking a lot of questions about how their revenue model will hold up against GDPR. The old approach of "grab a ton of users, harvest a ton of data and figure out how to monetise it later" doesn't really stack up when your ability to financially exploit personal information is severely curtailed. If you decide to fence off EU users and exploit everyone else's data, you're playing a risky game - the regulators will not react sympathetically if it turns out your geofencing technology is imperfect and you've been illegally harvesting EU user data.