5 ms·

You think GDPR is good? It entrenches the monopolies of the Googles and makes it harder for a startup in a garage in Berlin. - I am sure there are some people

You think GDPR is good? It entrenches the monopolies of the Googles and makes it harder for a startup in a garage in Berlin. - I am sure there are some people who clearly enjoy pressing on the cookie popups when they travel to Europe like popping zits. Maybe it is the Eurocrats in Brussels.

jacquesm 5y ago
This is nonsense. You could simply decide not to track you users and then your garage in Berlin works just as well as your garage in Palo Alto would (though the latter would likely lead to an easier round of funding).
- flipbrad 5y ago
  GDPR also applies to the data you process about your prospective, current and former employees; the data you hold about your customers in order to fulfil your contracts with them; their feedback; etc. You can't avoid GDPR just by not tracking users; that does help you avoid a different law though (the ePrivacy directive's so-called "cookie rule".)
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, which is excellent. But the start-up in a garage example was - at least, that's the way I read it - meant as there currently not being a level playing field with respect to end users, not necessarily employees. And let's be perfectly clear here: employers that are callous with their employees data are to be avoided like the plague, no matter where they are located. As for your customers: yes, you should be careful with that data, and no, their feedback does not necessarily fall under the GDPR, only when it concerns the privacy of the individuals mentioned therein. But normally speaking such feedback would not be about such specifics but about the product itself. Not tracking your users has a big impact on how a company is set up, what data marketing has access to, what data system administrators and sometimes even programmers have access to. Storing your data in an anonymized way can make good sense. It likely will impact your business, but leaking of that data will impact the lives of your customers more, so that's why the GDPR is written the way it is: you minimize your footprint to that which you need and you will be doing just fine.
    - flipbrad 5y ago
      "I like your Widget Max Pro, it's better than the Rival X1 I had last year. But I dropped it in the toilet and now it won't turn on, so I suspect you're lying about its IP56 rating". Let's says that 1 out of every 3 product / service reviews is like this. Do you (a) block/filter them out and treat the remaining ones as non-personal data, or (b) treat your feedback pipelines/database as personal data regardless of whether some of the reviews are, somehow, devoid of personal data? (Or (c), do you not think the example above contains personal data?)
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        C
        flipbrad 5y ago
        Because it fails the Breyer test (no reasonably likely means of identification of the data subject), or the Nowak test (no link to a particular individual, by virtue of the data's content, purpose or effect)? I'd say it definitely is my personal data, telling you - inter alia - about the objects I own, the opinions I hold, and my recent behaviour.
stavros 5y ago
> It entrenches the monopolies of the Googles and makes it harder for a startup in a garage in Berlin. In what way?
- adventured 5y ago
  The start-up in the Berlin garage is hampered in its ability to make money via advertising vs the US-based Google (or Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon). Unless the plan is to go straight to the US market, to domicile there and to hire employees there to get started, as it's a radically more lucrative advertising market than the EU, in part thanks to GDPR. The US market still largely has a comparatively laissez-faire approach to advertising, personal information and privacy. In the US you can still build a tech juggernaut in the way Google and Facebook did, by way of rather invasive advertising practices. You can't do that in the EU today, zero chance. In the US market you can jump-start a company that way, and if you have to later on you can look at dialing back or changing your exact business model. You don't have that option in the EU, you're far more heavily restricted, it cuts off your ability to liberally utilize a gigantic advertising market in the way US companies can. It provides US start-ups a big advantage. You set up in the US, grow into the huge US market, then use your resources to go into Europe and comply with their various requirements (along with paying their slap-on-the-wrist fines inevitably).
  - stavros 5y ago
    So the startup in the EU can't play fast and loose with my data to get rich? And that's bad how?
flipbrad 5y ago
The GDPR isn't great, but several of its more bureaucratic requirements kick in only once you have over 250 employees (assuming you're not doing relatively risky/intrusive stuff with data), so it's not the end of the world for startups.
turbinerneiter 5y ago
The cookie banners are a good example for a perversion of the law and if companies will keep up the dark patterns and law-hacking, the EU will update the GDPR laws to also forbid dark pattern cookie banners and BS EULAs and all the other crap.

jacquesm 5y ago

This is nonsense. You could simply decide not to track you users and then your garage in Berlin works just as well as your garage in Palo Alto would (though the latter would likely lead to an easier round of funding).

flipbrad 5y ago
GDPR also applies to the data you process about your prospective, current and former employees; the data you hold about your customers in order to fulfil your contracts with them; their feedback; etc. You can't avoid GDPR just by not tracking users; that does help you avoid a different law though (the ePrivacy directive's so-called "cookie rule".)
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Yes, which is excellent. But the start-up in a garage example was - at least, that's the way I read it - meant as there currently not being a level playing field with respect to end users, not necessarily employees. And let's be perfectly clear here: employers that are callous with their employees data are to be avoided like the plague, no matter where they are located. As for your customers: yes, you should be careful with that data, and no, their feedback does not necessarily fall under the GDPR, only when it concerns the privacy of the individuals mentioned therein. But normally speaking such feedback would not be about such specifics but about the product itself. Not tracking your users has a big impact on how a company is set up, what data marketing has access to, what data system administrators and sometimes even programmers have access to. Storing your data in an anonymized way can make good sense. It likely will impact your business, but leaking of that data will impact the lives of your customers more, so that's why the GDPR is written the way it is: you minimize your footprint to that which you need and you will be doing just fine.
  - flipbrad 5y ago
    "I like your Widget Max Pro, it's better than the Rival X1 I had last year. But I dropped it in the toilet and now it won't turn on, so I suspect you're lying about its IP56 rating". Let's says that 1 out of every 3 product / service reviews is like this. Do you (a) block/filter them out and treat the remaining ones as non-personal data, or (b) treat your feedback pipelines/database as personal data regardless of whether some of the reviews are, somehow, devoid of personal data? (Or (c), do you not think the example above contains personal data?)
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      C
      - flipbrad 5y ago
        Because it fails the Breyer test (no reasonably likely means of identification of the data subject), or the Nowak test (no link to a particular individual, by virtue of the data's content, purpose or effect)? I'd say it definitely is my personal data, telling you - inter alia - about the objects I own, the opinions I hold, and my recent behaviour.

stavros 5y ago

> It entrenches the monopolies of the Googles and makes it harder for a startup in a garage in Berlin. In what way?

adventured 5y ago
The start-up in the Berlin garage is hampered in its ability to make money via advertising vs the US-based Google (or Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Amazon). Unless the plan is to go straight to the US market, to domicile there and to hire employees there to get started, as it's a radically more lucrative advertising market than the EU, in part thanks to GDPR. The US market still largely has a comparatively laissez-faire approach to advertising, personal information and privacy. In the US you can still build a tech juggernaut in the way Google and Facebook did, by way of rather invasive advertising practices. You can't do that in the EU today, zero chance. In the US market you can jump-start a company that way, and if you have to later on you can look at dialing back or changing your exact business model. You don't have that option in the EU, you're far more heavily restricted, it cuts off your ability to liberally utilize a gigantic advertising market in the way US companies can. It provides US start-ups a big advantage. You set up in the US, grow into the huge US market, then use your resources to go into Europe and comply with their various requirements (along with paying their slap-on-the-wrist fines inevitably).
- stavros 5y ago
  So the startup in the EU can't play fast and loose with my data to get rich? And that's bad how?

flipbrad 5y ago

The GDPR isn't great, but several of its more bureaucratic requirements kick in only once you have over 250 employees (assuming you're not doing relatively risky/intrusive stuff with data), so it's not the end of the world for startups.

turbinerneiter 5y ago

The cookie banners are a good example for a perversion of the law and if companies will keep up the dark patterns and law-hacking, the EU will update the GDPR laws to also forbid dark pattern cookie banners and BS EULAs and all the other crap.