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I already get a lot of "We are sorry, but for legal reasons we are prevented from providing this service where you live" when I'm accessing American websites.

I already get a lot of "We are sorry, but for legal reasons we are prevented from providing this service where you live" when I'm accessing American websites. Recent European judgements seems to make it illegal to embed content from YouTube or Vimeo for example. I don't see how dividing services up by region will help me anyway. I'd rather be able to choose from a few (I imagine there are more than a few at the moment) international Mailchimps than one in EU.

chaostheory 5y ago
I feel that the whole point of this is to mimic China’s achievement of driving out foreign competition through legislation. It’s similar to the UK’s pornography laws being more about surveillance and censorship rather than protecting children.
- foxfluff 5y ago
  If you flip the scenario around in your mind.. how would you feel if virtually every site or service you visit scoops up your data and sends it to [China|Russia|...] and hosts all your private data on servers operated by the [Chinese|Russians|...] and are subject to [Chinese|Russian|...] rule and disregard whatever laws your country has enacted? How would you feel if you couldn't opt out without virtually opting out of the entire internet, including all the services your friends and family and local associations & companies use for messaging? That's how the internet has been. That's how I feel about US tech giants getting all my data. They write their privacy policy, they dictate their terms, they follow US laws. I have absolutely no choice or voice or vote, unless one considers "yo dawg just build your own internet" a realistic choice. I don't feel like the purpose is to drive out foreign competition. I feel like the purpose is to enforce privacy as a right, and I fully support it. I also fully support the right to transmit data across borders as long as the destination country also respects my privacy and rights instead of treating me as an alien and potential terrorist. Is that too much to ask for? And in general, is following the rules of the country you offer a service in too much to ask for? Local laws apply to brick and mortar business; if Walmart wants to come to my neighborhood, sure go ahead, but please respect our laws. I don't see why internet companies should be above the law either. GDPR is replacing rules dictated by US corporations with democratically established rules written by our representatives. It's unfortunate that there's now a clash between US laws and EU laws, but it's not the end of the world.
  - chaostheory 5y ago
    Simple. If you have a free market, I would just use competing services instead of the "Chinese" ones. No one is forced to use TikTok. If people really wanted a privacy focused service, a new one will arrive. DuckDuckGo's success is an example of that. imo it's just a thinly veiled protectionist law that will fracture the internet all for the sake of propping up EU incumbents who can't innovate.
    - foxfluff 5y ago
      Yes it's simple in dreams and an economic theory stuck in an era where a potato is a potato and it doesn't matter much whose potato you buy. Unfortunately the free market tends to be a race to the bottom, for complicated reasons. The market is also not effective nor is it rational, nor is it good at displacing entrenched players and natural monopolies, least of all ones that don't give a crap about ethics. It's not effective against deliberate lock-in and network effects, nor against externalities and exploitation. It's not effective where effect requires individual sacrifice multiplied by millions. If free market were effective, we wouldn't have needed labour laws to keep people from dying in factories where they work 16 hours a day, we wouldn't need laws to make vehicles safe, we wouldn't be desperately looking for agreements to curb pollution and climate change, we wouldn't need laws to protect minorities against discrimination.. hell, I don't think we'd need laws at all because everyone would just rationally and effectively choose good actors & displace bad actors. It's a nice fantasy, but it's not one we live in.
      - chaostheory 5y ago
        The free market isn't perfect, but it's been historically better than centralized economic planning.
        timeon 5y ago
        I'd like to think that there are gradients between opposite peaks.
        5y ago
estaseuropano 5y ago
Its not illegal, but it requires consent. Plenty of solutions to offer a video without loading third party code until the user clicks it.
- sdoering 5y ago
  You could also use something like 'embetty' [1] and proxy your users from YouTube, Twitter and the likes to ensure their privacy. [1] https://github.com/heiseonline/embetty-server https://github.com/heiseonline/embetty-server

chaostheory 5y ago

I feel that the whole point of this is to mimic China’s achievement of driving out foreign competition through legislation. It’s similar to the UK’s pornography laws being more about surveillance and censorship rather than protecting children.

foxfluff 5y ago
If you flip the scenario around in your mind.. how would you feel if virtually every site or service you visit scoops up your data and sends it to [China|Russia|...] and hosts all your private data on servers operated by the [Chinese|Russians|...] and are subject to [Chinese|Russian|...] rule and disregard whatever laws your country has enacted? How would you feel if you couldn't opt out without virtually opting out of the entire internet, including all the services your friends and family and local associations & companies use for messaging? That's how the internet has been. That's how I feel about US tech giants getting all my data. They write their privacy policy, they dictate their terms, they follow US laws. I have absolutely no choice or voice or vote, unless one considers "yo dawg just build your own internet" a realistic choice. I don't feel like the purpose is to drive out foreign competition. I feel like the purpose is to enforce privacy as a right, and I fully support it. I also fully support the right to transmit data across borders as long as the destination country also respects my privacy and rights instead of treating me as an alien and potential terrorist. Is that too much to ask for? And in general, is following the rules of the country you offer a service in too much to ask for? Local laws apply to brick and mortar business; if Walmart wants to come to my neighborhood, sure go ahead, but please respect our laws. I don't see why internet companies should be above the law either. GDPR is replacing rules dictated by US corporations with democratically established rules written by our representatives. It's unfortunate that there's now a clash between US laws and EU laws, but it's not the end of the world.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  Simple. If you have a free market, I would just use competing services instead of the "Chinese" ones. No one is forced to use TikTok. If people really wanted a privacy focused service, a new one will arrive. DuckDuckGo's success is an example of that. imo it's just a thinly veiled protectionist law that will fracture the internet all for the sake of propping up EU incumbents who can't innovate.
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    Yes it's simple in dreams and an economic theory stuck in an era where a potato is a potato and it doesn't matter much whose potato you buy. Unfortunately the free market tends to be a race to the bottom, for complicated reasons. The market is also not effective nor is it rational, nor is it good at displacing entrenched players and natural monopolies, least of all ones that don't give a crap about ethics. It's not effective against deliberate lock-in and network effects, nor against externalities and exploitation. It's not effective where effect requires individual sacrifice multiplied by millions. If free market were effective, we wouldn't have needed labour laws to keep people from dying in factories where they work 16 hours a day, we wouldn't need laws to make vehicles safe, we wouldn't be desperately looking for agreements to curb pollution and climate change, we wouldn't need laws to protect minorities against discrimination.. hell, I don't think we'd need laws at all because everyone would just rationally and effectively choose good actors & displace bad actors. It's a nice fantasy, but it's not one we live in.
    - chaostheory 5y ago
      The free market isn't perfect, but it's been historically better than centralized economic planning.
      - timeon 5y ago
        I'd like to think that there are gradients between opposite peaks.
      - 5y ago

estaseuropano 5y ago

Its not illegal, but it requires consent. Plenty of solutions to offer a video without loading third party code until the user clicks it.

sdoering 5y ago
You could also use something like 'embetty' [1] and proxy your users from YouTube, Twitter and the likes to ensure their privacy. [1] https://github.com/heiseonline/embetty-server https://github.com/heiseonline/embetty-server