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what will this do to the stock market on Tuesday? I don't know about Tuesday, but you should have been shorting any company that derives a significant percenta

what will this do to the stock market on Tuesday? I don't know about Tuesday, but you should have been shorting any company that derives a significant percentage of their revenue from the EU ad market for the last several months. Online ad revenue from the EU will fall and never rise again, it's just a matter of exactly how much. The only thing that might change this is if there is such a public outcry about the negative effects of GDPR that it gets dialed back. But that seems like a longshot.

ISL 8y ago
I looked at purchasing options for a similar bet, and walked away. I couldn't be certain of the drop. I've made a written prediction instead, and will see how I've done in August. What fraction of your investable wealth have you (downandabout) committed to the short?
- downandout 8y ago
  I have half of my high-risk portfolio bet against companies that are highly exposed to the EU ad market (so about 5% of the total). I did not bet against Facebook, as they have the market dominance to get users to agree to anything. Ad RPM and available inventory in the EU will drop for everyone including Facebook, but they may have gains elsewhere that offset these losses. However, there are a number of smaller companies that are heavily exposed under GDPR that I have spread out bets against.
  - dahdum 8y ago
    Good strategy, I also believe the impact on ad revenue is not fully priced in, and the lawsuits against FB / Google will just fan the fear flames for a while.
  - morsch 8y ago
    So most of the dozens if not hundreds of GDPR doomsday posts in the past days should come with a financial interest disclosure.
    - downandout 8y ago
      1) I have not made hundreds of posts about anything recently, much less GDPR 2) I have not made a single "doomsday" post about GDPR. I am realistic about its consequences, which happen to be negative for the most part. 3) There are many, many people on HN that invest in various things, and I have not once seen a financial disclosure about anything, even from incredibly high profile individuals on here that are known to be investors in or associated with the things they are talking about.
      - distances 8y ago
        You are one of the most vocal anti-GDPR commenters in HN. I'm not going to count your comments of course, but for each GDPR related topic in the last weeks (which means close to daily), I invariably encounter a discussion where you are warning of the threats and unknowns GDPR poses to companies. It's good to have multiple viewpoints of course, but I was a bit surprised by your commitment to anti-GDPR commenting. It's as if the previous discussions accounted for nothing, and it all has to be hashed out again. I would for sure classify your viewpoint as "doomsday" (or FUD), but I have to admit I'm probably biased by my opinion: I legitimately feel GDPR is the best thing to happen to not only privacy, but Internet in general in the last decade.
        downandout 8y ago
        The problem over the last few weeks is that people kept repeating the same falsehoods about GDPR over and over again. So the same correct information needed to be posted in response. In every one of these threads, for example, somebody posts about how regulators must issue warnings and that companies must be given a chance to correct any problems well before they are issued a fine. This is patently false, and it needed to be corrected wherever I saw it posted. Everyone should have a chance to learn accurate facts about this nightmarish regulation, especially here on HN where we have many tech entrepreneurs. Most people don’t see every post on GDPR. For the record, I just searched for GDPR stories on here and it turns out I have commented on only a small percentage of the GDPR threads that have been submitted.
  - ISL 8y ago
    Thanks for the reply -- I'm so accustomed to people claiming that "you should have been shorting X" without actually doing it that it was a real pleasure to hear that you've made the shorts. Bravo.
tpm 8y ago
GDPR will have some negative effects, but why is lowering online ad revenue (if that is what will happen) one of them? What I mean is, why is that a negative effect for the whole society, not an industry? Stopping a war has the negative effect of having to manufacture less war supplies, but the overall effect tends to be positive.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- downandout 8y ago
  GDPR will have some negative effects, but why is lowering online ad revenue (if that is what will happen) one of them? It's simple math. The ad industry has gotten so large because complex ad targeting tools made it possible to deploy ad campaigns profitably. With those tools extremely watered down due to GDPR, most ads that were profitable on May 24th are not profitable today. Most companies will not sustain these losses for long, and will simply shift their ad spend to other markets where they can still make a profit. Some brand advertisers might stick around in the EU market - Coke, Pepsi, maybe Apple, etc. But with most everyone else out of the picture, the market will shrink. It will likely never again be the size that it was on May 24th.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jeena 8y ago
    scratching my head - that sounds to me like a positive thing. If a industry has gotten big by doing something bad (misusing private data or using slaves as workers) and a law comes along and forbids that practice than I can't see how this is something negative for the sociaty overall.
    - downandout 8y ago
      You're comparing a retargeting pixel to slavery? That is the kind of mentality that brought us GDPR.
Freak_NL 8y ago
> the general public over there seems to have drunk the Kool Aid Seriously? Comparing privacy regulations with blithely following a cult leader into mass suicide? Aside from a few emails asking for permission to keep sending newsletters and announcing new privacy policies being mildly annoying, most EU citizens just gained a few basic rights without any significant downsides.
- downandout 8y ago
  I deleted that part of the comment almost as soon as I posted it, you must have somehow gotten that line when you accessed the page. However, the comparison isn't wrong. Convincing 500 million people to get on board with an initiative that will forever slow down the pace of innovation in your country, get you locked out of a large percentage of the Internet because your data (including your IP address) is radioactive, kill many existing businesses inside your own borders, and stop many others from ever being formed, is a difficult thing to do. It's definitely a feat worthy of the Kool Aid reference.
  - snovv_crash 8y ago
    It slows down the innovation in a small subset of leeches which were taking advantage of new technology to abuse the citizens and residents of the EU. Cry me a river.
    - downandout 8y ago
      This comment is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say that you people have drunk the Kool Aid. What you typed above seems to be the party line - those complaining are evil, there are no downsides to it, etc. Sounds awfully cultish, and it also happens to be wrong. The reality is that startup investment in the EU will shrink across the board because of the risks imposed by the GDPR. Additionally, any business that planned to use advertising as its revenue model probably shouldn't bother even starting up in the EU. I'm not talking about ad tech companies alone - I'm talking about publishers, news sites, social networks, companies that want to make mobile games, etc. The GDPR also outlaws most machine learning applications, so that whole industry is toast over there. It's not just a "small subset of leeches". I know that's the party line, and is probably what the PR campaign over there has been saying, but that simply isn't the case.
perl4ever 8y ago
I don't short stocks. Most of my savings are currently in a fund based on an FTSE small cap ex-US index.[1] Average market cap is $1.8B and about 37% is in Europe. [1]https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/vss https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/vss
_o_ 8y ago
But there is not going to be a pulic outcry, I was asking people around, also those that were using the "I have nothing to hide" phrase in past and they are all satisfied with the GDPR. People want this, also in US, but there it will take some time to adopt some law like GDPR as US goverment is working in interest of industry, not people.
- downandout 8y ago
  Nothing remotely close to GDPR will ever pass in the US. There will likely be some privacy reform, but it won't have vague wording and $20M fines for your neighbor's kid's blog.
  - TheForumTroll 8y ago
    So exactly like GDPR. Got it.
- taysic 8y ago
  People don't want this is in the US. At least I don't. I would be strongly opposed to it as GDPR violates the rights of a person to pay for a product through personalized, targeted advertising.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >I would be strongly opposed to it as GDPR violates the rights of a person to pay for a product through personalized, targeted advertising. How so? GDPR doesn't make personalized, targeted advertising illegal, rather it gives you (the targeted individual) the right to know how your data is being collected and sed, and to opt out of that collection if you want. If you want to continue paying for content with your identity, fair enough, but not everyone does.
    - taysic 8y ago
      Simply because it forces companies to give the same service away without personalized ads. As long as the options are clear, most people would choose non-personalized because there is nothing they get out of handing their data over. So under this system a user who doesn't mind personalized ads doesn't have the option to 'pay'. They have the ability to 'donate' their personal information but there would be no reason to do this. Now if GDPR had allowed companies to either choose personalized ads or pay for the content, that would have been different.
pjc50 8y ago
I'd happily put money on the stock market not budging. I'm not planning to adjust my portfolio.

ISL 8y ago

I looked at purchasing options for a similar bet, and walked away. I couldn't be certain of the drop. I've made a written prediction instead, and will see how I've done in August. What fraction of your investable wealth have you (downandabout) committed to the short?

downandout 8y ago
I have half of my high-risk portfolio bet against companies that are highly exposed to the EU ad market (so about 5% of the total). I did not bet against Facebook, as they have the market dominance to get users to agree to anything. Ad RPM and available inventory in the EU will drop for everyone including Facebook, but they may have gains elsewhere that offset these losses. However, there are a number of smaller companies that are heavily exposed under GDPR that I have spread out bets against.
- dahdum 8y ago
  Good strategy, I also believe the impact on ad revenue is not fully priced in, and the lawsuits against FB / Google will just fan the fear flames for a while.
- morsch 8y ago
  So most of the dozens if not hundreds of GDPR doomsday posts in the past days should come with a financial interest disclosure.
  - downandout 8y ago
    1) I have not made hundreds of posts about anything recently, much less GDPR 2) I have not made a single "doomsday" post about GDPR. I am realistic about its consequences, which happen to be negative for the most part. 3) There are many, many people on HN that invest in various things, and I have not once seen a financial disclosure about anything, even from incredibly high profile individuals on here that are known to be investors in or associated with the things they are talking about.
    - distances 8y ago
      You are one of the most vocal anti-GDPR commenters in HN. I'm not going to count your comments of course, but for each GDPR related topic in the last weeks (which means close to daily), I invariably encounter a discussion where you are warning of the threats and unknowns GDPR poses to companies. It's good to have multiple viewpoints of course, but I was a bit surprised by your commitment to anti-GDPR commenting. It's as if the previous discussions accounted for nothing, and it all has to be hashed out again. I would for sure classify your viewpoint as "doomsday" (or FUD), but I have to admit I'm probably biased by my opinion: I legitimately feel GDPR is the best thing to happen to not only privacy, but Internet in general in the last decade.
      - downandout 8y ago
        The problem over the last few weeks is that people kept repeating the same falsehoods about GDPR over and over again. So the same correct information needed to be posted in response. In every one of these threads, for example, somebody posts about how regulators must issue warnings and that companies must be given a chance to correct any problems well before they are issued a fine. This is patently false, and it needed to be corrected wherever I saw it posted. Everyone should have a chance to learn accurate facts about this nightmarish regulation, especially here on HN where we have many tech entrepreneurs. Most people don’t see every post on GDPR. For the record, I just searched for GDPR stories on here and it turns out I have commented on only a small percentage of the GDPR threads that have been submitted.
- ISL 8y ago
  Thanks for the reply -- I'm so accustomed to people claiming that "you should have been shorting X" without actually doing it that it was a real pleasure to hear that you've made the shorts. Bravo.

tpm 8y ago

GDPR will have some negative effects, but why is lowering online ad revenue (if that is what will happen) one of them? What I mean is, why is that a negative effect for the whole society, not an industry? Stopping a war has the negative effect of having to manufacture less war supplies, but the overall effect tends to be positive.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
downandout 8y ago
GDPR will have some negative effects, but why is lowering online ad revenue (if that is what will happen) one of them? It's simple math. The ad industry has gotten so large because complex ad targeting tools made it possible to deploy ad campaigns profitably. With those tools extremely watered down due to GDPR, most ads that were profitable on May 24th are not profitable today. Most companies will not sustain these losses for long, and will simply shift their ad spend to other markets where they can still make a profit. Some brand advertisers might stick around in the EU market - Coke, Pepsi, maybe Apple, etc. But with most everyone else out of the picture, the market will shrink. It will likely never again be the size that it was on May 24th.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jeena 8y ago
  scratching my head - that sounds to me like a positive thing. If a industry has gotten big by doing something bad (misusing private data or using slaves as workers) and a law comes along and forbids that practice than I can't see how this is something negative for the sociaty overall.
  - downandout 8y ago
    You're comparing a retargeting pixel to slavery? That is the kind of mentality that brought us GDPR.

Freak_NL 8y ago

> the general public over there seems to have drunk the Kool Aid Seriously? Comparing privacy regulations with blithely following a cult leader into mass suicide? Aside from a few emails asking for permission to keep sending newsletters and announcing new privacy policies being mildly annoying, most EU citizens just gained a few basic rights without any significant downsides.

downandout 8y ago
I deleted that part of the comment almost as soon as I posted it, you must have somehow gotten that line when you accessed the page. However, the comparison isn't wrong. Convincing 500 million people to get on board with an initiative that will forever slow down the pace of innovation in your country, get you locked out of a large percentage of the Internet because your data (including your IP address) is radioactive, kill many existing businesses inside your own borders, and stop many others from ever being formed, is a difficult thing to do. It's definitely a feat worthy of the Kool Aid reference.
- snovv_crash 8y ago
  It slows down the innovation in a small subset of leeches which were taking advantage of new technology to abuse the citizens and residents of the EU. Cry me a river.
  - downandout 8y ago
    This comment is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say that you people have drunk the Kool Aid. What you typed above seems to be the party line - those complaining are evil, there are no downsides to it, etc. Sounds awfully cultish, and it also happens to be wrong. The reality is that startup investment in the EU will shrink across the board because of the risks imposed by the GDPR. Additionally, any business that planned to use advertising as its revenue model probably shouldn't bother even starting up in the EU. I'm not talking about ad tech companies alone - I'm talking about publishers, news sites, social networks, companies that want to make mobile games, etc. The GDPR also outlaws most machine learning applications, so that whole industry is toast over there. It's not just a "small subset of leeches". I know that's the party line, and is probably what the PR campaign over there has been saying, but that simply isn't the case.

perl4ever 8y ago

I don't short stocks. Most of my savings are currently in a fund based on an FTSE small cap ex-US index.[1] Average market cap is $1.8B and about 37% is in Europe. [1]https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/vss https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/vss

_o_ 8y ago

But there is not going to be a pulic outcry, I was asking people around, also those that were using the "I have nothing to hide" phrase in past and they are all satisfied with the GDPR. People want this, also in US, but there it will take some time to adopt some law like GDPR as US goverment is working in interest of industry, not people.

downandout 8y ago
Nothing remotely close to GDPR will ever pass in the US. There will likely be some privacy reform, but it won't have vague wording and $20M fines for your neighbor's kid's blog.
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  So exactly like GDPR. Got it.
taysic 8y ago
People don't want this is in the US. At least I don't. I would be strongly opposed to it as GDPR violates the rights of a person to pay for a product through personalized, targeted advertising.
- krapp 8y ago
  >I would be strongly opposed to it as GDPR violates the rights of a person to pay for a product through personalized, targeted advertising. How so? GDPR doesn't make personalized, targeted advertising illegal, rather it gives you (the targeted individual) the right to know how your data is being collected and sed, and to opt out of that collection if you want. If you want to continue paying for content with your identity, fair enough, but not everyone does.
  - taysic 8y ago
    Simply because it forces companies to give the same service away without personalized ads. As long as the options are clear, most people would choose non-personalized because there is nothing they get out of handing their data over. So under this system a user who doesn't mind personalized ads doesn't have the option to 'pay'. They have the ability to 'donate' their personal information but there would be no reason to do this. Now if GDPR had allowed companies to either choose personalized ads or pay for the content, that would have been different.

pjc50 8y ago

I'd happily put money on the stock market not budging. I'm not planning to adjust my portfolio.