5 ms·

Maybe it is the right call from the EU. I don't know honestly. BUT for a fact it seems the EU is just capable of doing antitrust over fb, google, msft, apple a

Maybe it is the right call from the EU. I don't know honestly. BUT for a fact it seems the EU is just capable of doing antitrust over fb, google, msft, apple and so on without creating such companies by it self... So maybe over regulated?

krageon 4y ago
So you don't know and do not care to explore further whether or not it's doing a good job, but you want it to do less of it. A really weird take to be honest.
- MichaelRazum 4y ago
  I would love to see EU companies like apple, fb, google and so on. Instead what I see is that the EU is just trying to regulate them, without having at least one champion in the same league. So maybe the laws are the reason that the EU is so far behind.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
    Behind on tech companies, or forward in consumer rights?
    - IMTDb 4y ago
      Behind in tech companies, forward in useless consumer nagging I am looking at you, EU cookie notice.
      - krageon 4y ago
        Please stop blaming these cookie notices on the law. The law clearly states no notice is required if no consent is required, but companies choose to annoy you.
        IMTDb 4y ago
        The law - not the companies - explicitly forbids me from expressing my preferences globally at the browser level. I know exactly what I am ready to accept - and what I want to reject. The law says "you have to repeat your preferences individually for each and every domain, you cannot have a system that applies your preferences automatically to everyone" As a consequence I stand my ground: The law - not the companies - is nagging me.
        ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
        Please provide a source for this claim. The GDPR is intentionally technically non-specific to allow for a wide array of technical solutions. In fact one of the failures of DNT was its lack of regulatory backing, and its successor is specifically being designed to be a browser wide, GDPR compliant solution.
        krageon 4y ago
        > The law [...] explicitly forbids me from expressing my preferences globally at the browser level. You are wrong. I have in fact read the law and if you think this you have not. Please do so if you are curious what it does in fact forbid, you can start here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN#d1e1374-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
        isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
        I think what they meant is that consent has to be informed and specific, and he wants to give uninformed consent to any and all data collection, or wants to never be asked for consent.
        krageon 4y ago
        I think (IANAL, but I have worked in this space with lawyers. Follow my advice at your own discretion, or rather please do not and ask a professional) a case could be made for global consent to be (broadly) appropriate, if your consent is indeed informed (i.e. the plugin asks you to read and understand what analytics cookies are, tracking cookies are and marketing cookies are). Of course, if your consent is "do to me what you want, even if it is an atrocity nobody has conceived of yet and I cannot be bothered to learn about", it is true that that cannot fall under such a requirement. Such consent would be meaningless and such a statement fundamentally indicative of what I can only term an extremely self-destructive frame of mind. I don't think that needs to be tolerated at this level, because it is not good for society to see this as anything but a problem.
  - krageon 4y ago
    I see it as the US government doing nothing to modulate the behaviour of the bullies it produces in companies, mostly because that is it's own foreign policy also. You are complaining about other countries not liking US corporate policy, which while a very US citizen thing to do simply is not very relevant. These corporations must be raised properly and reminded that they too have to follow the law, or they will do to the whole world what they have already done to the US. Nobody outside of the US is looking for such a society, so it makes sense to take as much action as is required to prevent it.
  - rtsil 4y ago
    To give but one example, the EU had a Youtube rival, Dailymotion, which was doing quite fine, until Google bought Youtube and used its immense power to artificially sustain it despite its massive losses. Youtube didn't prevail because of innovation or competitivity, but because of the massive weight thrown around by Google as a conglomerate. The same thing would happen with Spotify right now, if it's not protected. Amazon, Apple and Google don't need music to make money, they don't need to be competitive in that sector to sustain their music activity, they can just use their quasi-monopoly in other sectors to kill all the other players.
    - ksec 4y ago
      On the last part, I don’t think there are any thing inherently wrong when a bigger player is applying massive pressure. Such as the mentioned need of earning money from the those services. What I have a problem is certain most righteous company on the planet are claiming Spotify as evil because they paid less to labels / singers etc.
virgilp 4y ago
> So maybe over regulated? Doesn't look like FB, Google, MSFT or Apple are anywhere close to exiting the EU market because of regulations so ... maybe not?
jimnotgym 4y ago
Or perhaps those companies are simply not possible without anti-competetive, unethical or plain rent-seeking behaviour? Therefore if the EU can finally get to grips with the rule breakers from the US we will see a diverse range of providers in the market. So yes, the EU is more consumer friendly than the US
- MichaelRazum 4y ago
  Or perhaps those companies are simply not possible without anti-competetive, unethical or plain rent-seeking behaviour? The question is do you want companies like Apple to exists. If the answer is yes, then maybe you should make it as easy as possible to create them. It is obvious that for some reason's the EU is far behind. Also in other "new" areas like crypto or self driving there are far less innovations coming from the EU. In my opinion it is because of messy regulations where you have the EU + each Country has it's own rules.
  - seszett 4y ago
    > The question is do you want companies like Apple to exists. > If the answer is yes But the answer in the EU is clearly no. The EU doesn't want anti-competitive, unethical and rent-seeking companies to exist. The idea is that if such anti-competitive companies didn't exist, their niche might be occupied by companies fostering a real competitive environment which would benefit consumers.
    - emteycz 4y ago
      Speak for yourself, nobody in this entire country asked for this - but a small state has no say. First fix the democratic process, then make statements like this.
      - seszett 4y ago
        Well, this was a decision by the European Commission which is made up of one representative for each EU country, so this is one of the cases where every country has the same voice, yours as well as mine. Assuming from your login name that you are from Czech republic, our countries, both having 10 million inhabitants, are also clearly not "small states" regarding the EU although our local politicians like to make it seem like we are powerless within the EU. But my other country is France and since politicians there cannot reasonably complain about "being forgotten because we are small", they just find other excuses like Germany, or small countries - like ours - having too much decisional power. The first democratic process that needs to be fixed is at the level of countries. The EU is far from being the most important dysfunctional level of administration right now.
ivan_gammel 4y ago
Microsoft and Apple were founded before EU was created, Google was founded before Eurozone was created and Facebook was founded before Lisbon treaty signed - EU is late in this game as a political entity. Do we need companies with trillion dollar valuation here? No, we do not. Political weight of companies that worth more than GDP of majority of EU countries would be too big for a healthy democratic system. Still we have plenty of successful unicorns and established companies in digital space that are expanding beyond the EU (Spotify, SAP, Klarna, Flixbus, HelloFresh etc).

krageon 4y ago

So you don't know and do not care to explore further whether or not it's doing a good job, but you want it to do less of it. A really weird take to be honest.

MichaelRazum 4y ago
I would love to see EU companies like apple, fb, google and so on. Instead what I see is that the EU is just trying to regulate them, without having at least one champion in the same league. So maybe the laws are the reason that the EU is so far behind.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
  Behind on tech companies, or forward in consumer rights?
  - IMTDb 4y ago
    Behind in tech companies, forward in useless consumer nagging I am looking at you, EU cookie notice.
    - krageon 4y ago
      Please stop blaming these cookie notices on the law. The law clearly states no notice is required if no consent is required, but companies choose to annoy you.
      - IMTDb 4y ago
        The law - not the companies - explicitly forbids me from expressing my preferences globally at the browser level. I know exactly what I am ready to accept - and what I want to reject. The law says "you have to repeat your preferences individually for each and every domain, you cannot have a system that applies your preferences automatically to everyone" As a consequence I stand my ground: The law - not the companies - is nagging me.
        ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
        Please provide a source for this claim. The GDPR is intentionally technically non-specific to allow for a wide array of technical solutions. In fact one of the failures of DNT was its lack of regulatory backing, and its successor is specifically being designed to be a browser wide, GDPR compliant solution.
        krageon 4y ago
        > The law [...] explicitly forbids me from expressing my preferences globally at the browser level. You are wrong. I have in fact read the law and if you think this you have not. Please do so if you are curious what it does in fact forbid, you can start here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN#d1e1374-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
        isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y ago
        I think what they meant is that consent has to be informed and specific, and he wants to give uninformed consent to any and all data collection, or wants to never be asked for consent.
        krageon 4y ago
        I think (IANAL, but I have worked in this space with lawyers. Follow my advice at your own discretion, or rather please do not and ask a professional) a case could be made for global consent to be (broadly) appropriate, if your consent is indeed informed (i.e. the plugin asks you to read and understand what analytics cookies are, tracking cookies are and marketing cookies are). Of course, if your consent is "do to me what you want, even if it is an atrocity nobody has conceived of yet and I cannot be bothered to learn about", it is true that that cannot fall under such a requirement. Such consent would be meaningless and such a statement fundamentally indicative of what I can only term an extremely self-destructive frame of mind. I don't think that needs to be tolerated at this level, because it is not good for society to see this as anything but a problem.
- krageon 4y ago
  I see it as the US government doing nothing to modulate the behaviour of the bullies it produces in companies, mostly because that is it's own foreign policy also. You are complaining about other countries not liking US corporate policy, which while a very US citizen thing to do simply is not very relevant. These corporations must be raised properly and reminded that they too have to follow the law, or they will do to the whole world what they have already done to the US. Nobody outside of the US is looking for such a society, so it makes sense to take as much action as is required to prevent it.
- rtsil 4y ago
  To give but one example, the EU had a Youtube rival, Dailymotion, which was doing quite fine, until Google bought Youtube and used its immense power to artificially sustain it despite its massive losses. Youtube didn't prevail because of innovation or competitivity, but because of the massive weight thrown around by Google as a conglomerate. The same thing would happen with Spotify right now, if it's not protected. Amazon, Apple and Google don't need music to make money, they don't need to be competitive in that sector to sustain their music activity, they can just use their quasi-monopoly in other sectors to kill all the other players.
  - ksec 4y ago
    On the last part, I don’t think there are any thing inherently wrong when a bigger player is applying massive pressure. Such as the mentioned need of earning money from the those services. What I have a problem is certain most righteous company on the planet are claiming Spotify as evil because they paid less to labels / singers etc.

virgilp 4y ago

> So maybe over regulated? Doesn't look like FB, Google, MSFT or Apple are anywhere close to exiting the EU market because of regulations so ... maybe not?

jimnotgym 4y ago

Or perhaps those companies are simply not possible without anti-competetive, unethical or plain rent-seeking behaviour? Therefore if the EU can finally get to grips with the rule breakers from the US we will see a diverse range of providers in the market. So yes, the EU is more consumer friendly than the US

MichaelRazum 4y ago
Or perhaps those companies are simply not possible without anti-competetive, unethical or plain rent-seeking behaviour? The question is do you want companies like Apple to exists. If the answer is yes, then maybe you should make it as easy as possible to create them. It is obvious that for some reason's the EU is far behind. Also in other "new" areas like crypto or self driving there are far less innovations coming from the EU. In my opinion it is because of messy regulations where you have the EU + each Country has it's own rules.
- seszett 4y ago
  > The question is do you want companies like Apple to exists. > If the answer is yes But the answer in the EU is clearly no. The EU doesn't want anti-competitive, unethical and rent-seeking companies to exist. The idea is that if such anti-competitive companies didn't exist, their niche might be occupied by companies fostering a real competitive environment which would benefit consumers.
  - emteycz 4y ago
    Speak for yourself, nobody in this entire country asked for this - but a small state has no say. First fix the democratic process, then make statements like this.
    - seszett 4y ago
      Well, this was a decision by the European Commission which is made up of one representative for each EU country, so this is one of the cases where every country has the same voice, yours as well as mine. Assuming from your login name that you are from Czech republic, our countries, both having 10 million inhabitants, are also clearly not "small states" regarding the EU although our local politicians like to make it seem like we are powerless within the EU. But my other country is France and since politicians there cannot reasonably complain about "being forgotten because we are small", they just find other excuses like Germany, or small countries - like ours - having too much decisional power. The first democratic process that needs to be fixed is at the level of countries. The EU is far from being the most important dysfunctional level of administration right now.

ivan_gammel 4y ago

Microsoft and Apple were founded before EU was created, Google was founded before Eurozone was created and Facebook was founded before Lisbon treaty signed - EU is late in this game as a political entity. Do we need companies with trillion dollar valuation here? No, we do not. Political weight of companies that worth more than GDP of majority of EU countries would be too big for a healthy democratic system. Still we have plenty of successful unicorns and established companies in digital space that are expanding beyond the EU (Spotify, SAP, Klarna, Flixbus, HelloFresh etc).