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The article lays out its thesis pretty well. In the wild wild days of little regulation on personal data, everyone vacuumed up as much as they could, because it

The article lays out its thesis pretty well. In the wild wild days of little regulation on personal data, everyone vacuumed up as much as they could, because it might be useful someday, and there were few laws with teeth to stop them. Usually, this was used for analytics and 'big data', but frequently, it cycled back into targeted ads. Entire conglomerates made most of their revenue this way: Google, Facebook, Verizon+AOL+Yahoo. I'm not sure Amazon really fits here, because they make most of their money by selling you actual things (compute, products) rather than your data to an outside party, but they do collect a fair bit of data about one's preferences, so let's keep them here. Now, the door's been shut behind them. It's fair to assume that big companies are better equipped to hire experts to navigate the issue of compliance than a random 8-person startup fresh off the press; whereas 10, 20 years ago these exact sort of new ventures are what grew into data harvesting machines that were usually acquired by someone with bigger wallets. This is one of the mechanisms of regulatory capture: even if the law is good for the public, most of the companies that engaged in the now-illegal tactics can pivot to something else or figure out how to stay in compliance, while any new players hoping to use the same mechanism are forbidden from doing so. This is a fairly typical outcome when regulation is first applied in a space where it wasn't before. The twist is that some of the same players that engaged in the harvesting and trafficking of personal data have also branched out into cloud computing and various value-add SaaS to sell B2B, and they can capture some revenue from other companies that are just going about their everyday business and are looking to stay compliant with the new regulation. This is a boon for the likes of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, who've engaged in both targeted ad tracking and cloud computing. Increased uptake in their cloud offerings will help insulate them from the tightening of the targeted ad space. The substance of the article is solid. But for those alleging FUD, keep in mind that TechCrunch is owned by Oath, the content subsidiary of Verizon, a content and infrastructure company without a strong story in B2B cloud computing, and whose revenue is chiefly derived from (1) providing bulk telecom interconnect, (2) being an ISP, both wired and wireless, and (3) correlating user behavior across their portfolio of sites and using their network. One can easily make the case that these sorts of companies are among the most vulnerable to this sort of regulation.

dasil003 8y ago
It really depends on whether the regulation actually changes practices and cuts into their core business model. A big part of GDPR is simply making consumers aware of how their data is being used. As awareness and scrutiny increases, it's entirely possible that ad tech as a whole suffers, and that will hurt Facebook/Google disproportionately. If the landscape changes significantly, that is advantageous to startups because they can choose to avoid quagmires entirely. It's really the middle-stage ad tech companies that don't have the cash to comply, but have too much momentum to change course that will really be fucked. Of course it's true that you can't start another Google or Facebook today, but that is for many reasons among which privacy regulation is merely a footnote. I get that a lot of fortunes were made in ad tech, but innovation will not stop because practices need to change.
- deleted 8y ago
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- Mirioron 8y ago
  It's not about the fortunes that were made. It's about the fact that these kinds of rules could put an end to the relatively free internet we have had so far. It makes it harder for smaller sites to pay for maintenance costs while also increasing the barrier to entry even on the very lowest level. Remember the teenagers that were setting up their forums and messing about? You can't do that anymore. The chance that people like that would follow these laws are tiny. The effects of something like this are very hard to predict, because we know that hobbyists gave us many cool things over the years and they ended up transitioning into lucrative careers. This kind of an avenue is severely hampered by this. I'm afraid that this kind of regulation is simply the first step to wrestle control over the internet, and if governments manage to do that then the internet stops being free.
  - dasil003 8y ago
    This is pure FUD. For a forum to be GDPR compliant all you have to do is tell the user what you plan on using their data for (probably just posting to the forum) and give them an option to delete their account. Also, the chances of regulators coming after hobby projects is nil. A lot of people seem to be parroting these talking points that are straight out of an ad-tech lobbyists handbook. The sky is not falling, and the threat to the free internet is far less than what we are facing from ISPs.

dasil003 8y ago

It really depends on whether the regulation actually changes practices and cuts into their core business model. A big part of GDPR is simply making consumers aware of how their data is being used. As awareness and scrutiny increases, it's entirely possible that ad tech as a whole suffers, and that will hurt Facebook/Google disproportionately. If the landscape changes significantly, that is advantageous to startups because they can choose to avoid quagmires entirely. It's really the middle-stage ad tech companies that don't have the cash to comply, but have too much momentum to change course that will really be fucked. Of course it's true that you can't start another Google or Facebook today, but that is for many reasons among which privacy regulation is merely a footnote. I get that a lot of fortunes were made in ad tech, but innovation will not stop because practices need to change.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Mirioron 8y ago
It's not about the fortunes that were made. It's about the fact that these kinds of rules could put an end to the relatively free internet we have had so far. It makes it harder for smaller sites to pay for maintenance costs while also increasing the barrier to entry even on the very lowest level. Remember the teenagers that were setting up their forums and messing about? You can't do that anymore. The chance that people like that would follow these laws are tiny. The effects of something like this are very hard to predict, because we know that hobbyists gave us many cool things over the years and they ended up transitioning into lucrative careers. This kind of an avenue is severely hampered by this. I'm afraid that this kind of regulation is simply the first step to wrestle control over the internet, and if governments manage to do that then the internet stops being free.
- dasil003 8y ago
  This is pure FUD. For a forum to be GDPR compliant all you have to do is tell the user what you plan on using their data for (probably just posting to the forum) and give them an option to delete their account. Also, the chances of regulators coming after hobby projects is nil. A lot of people seem to be parroting these talking points that are straight out of an ad-tech lobbyists handbook. The sky is not falling, and the threat to the free internet is far less than what we are facing from ISPs.