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Privacy regulations can make it very difficult for competitors to gain traction for incumbents, so there is active lobbying to get regulatory barriers to compet
by indymike 4y ago
Privacy regulations can make it very difficult for competitors to gain traction for incumbents, so there is active lobbying to get regulatory barriers to competition in play. At the same time, far too much money is being made to allow laws and regulations to kill revenues... so it gets complicated. The easy way is to just say you are all for privacy, and then oppose it at every turn.
Another issue is this: breaking some of these privacy laws both in force and proposed, is really quite easy to do - as easy as a misconfigured logger or a developer including the wrong field in a query.
- thfuran 4y agoPlenty of existing laws take intent into consideration so its not unreasonable to suppose that a log that happens to accidentally contain some information that it shouldn't before being destroyed and the bug patched would be quite legally distinct from a log containing the same information but has a business unit processing and profiting from it.
- xyzzyz 4y agoIt is not unreasonable, I agree. However, the privacy laws passed by government are mostly intended to play performative and punitive role, and actual interest of the people in balancing their privacy and usability concerns are tertiary at best. The politicians pass those laws to look good on one side, and to attack the companies on the other. User concerns are mostly ignored.
- thfuran 4y ago>However, the privacy laws passed by government are mostly intended to play performative and punitive role Yeah, that seems to pretty well describe most all legislature these days.
- K0SM0S 4y ago> User concerns are mostly ignored. Indeed and I don't see how that changes _structurally_ when people "in the know" are always going to be a tiny minority — they say that about 3% of the population has the profile to work in tech, and I tend to agree anecdotally. I feel it's comparable to the inception of medicine for instance, and the solution was auto-regulation of the field by itself through the application of a loud (public and transparent) set of deontological rules of practice ("Primum non nocere", etc). Awareness of society about these issues re. privacy and information sanctity in a democracy will not come naturally, structurally as time goes by. Just like they don't really know how doctors make life-or-death decisions on the spot. Nevertheless, the right principles should eventually exist, be known, and abode to, by those who work in the field. It should be loud and clear that we all have ethics (rules, implementing guiding principles), and which exactly. A deontology of information technology and its practice in relation to human beings is one big "TODO" of this century, and it should concern anyone even remotely skilled to understand the problem.
- scarface74 4y agoSo what are the chances that a judge cares about “intent” on site that doesn’t conform to their belief system?
- thfuran 4y agoYou're asking what the odds are that a judge will refrain from flagrant malfeasance. I'd imagine it's pretty high, though surely not 100%.
- scarface74 4y agoYou trust the legal system far more than I do.
- thfuran 4y agoSo, what, we shouldn't attempt to have privacy protections because some corrupt judge might fine a company that shouldn't have been fined?
- scarface74 4y agoWe shouldn’t give the government more power for them to abuse…period.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoBetter defacto, unelected governments in the form of huge companies with armies of lobbyists and forced arbitration agreements.
- scarface74 4y agoBecause of how both the electoral college works and gerrymandering, the elected officials don’t represent the majority. Besides, private companies don’t have the force of law to force people to do anything. Giving the government more power over your freedom is never the answer.
- sneak 4y ago...and the national military surveillance operationalizing it. This isn't just about revenue. People are assassinated by the US government without trial based on metadata.
- shadowgovt 4y agoHow much did Google get smacked for for collecting unencrypted packet data while they were building out their SSID-based localization improvements?
- falcolas 4y agoReality is, many such consumer protection laws include revenue minimums to avoid this very problem. See, as an example, the proposed law in CA allowing parents to sue social media companies.
- endisneigh 4y agoWhy should your privacy depend on the revenue of the company?
- t-3 4y agoHow are the loopholes gonna be exploited if there aren't any loopholes? C'mon, get with the program.
- pkos98 4y agoBecause the insights from the data do depend on the scale of the dataset. Thats why the number of users is taken into account in data privacy laws such as GDPR (No. of users correlates with revenue).
- izacus 4y agoObviously when the little car mechanic at the end of the street sells your private information to data aggregators for ad spam, it's all fine. /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- falcolas 4y agoIt mitigates the fear about its primary use being regulatory capture. Which is also quite important.
- DANK_YACHT 4y ago> Privacy regulations can make it very difficult for competitors to gain traction for incumbents This is an oft repeated argument that makes no sense. The point of privacy legislation is not to increase competition. The point is to increase privacy. The government has other legislative tools to increase competition should it wish to do so.
- ghayes 4y agoYes, but the side-effects of laws are the direct effects of laws and cannot be simply dismissed. This is the primary concern for any law, that it may impose other costs on society than just its intended consequences.
- spicybright 4y agoIt's like saying "Regulations against dumping garbage into oceans can make it very competitors to gain traction for incumbents."
- hhw 4y agoI think the point he was trying to make is that big tech can use privacy regulations to keep out new competitors, rather than encourage them, as compliance with privacy regulations can create a higher barrier to entry
- yulaow 4y agoHow? You just need to not save user data outside of that strictly required for providing your service and you easily comply even with the most stringent GDPR directives. To be honest caring about privacy lowers a lot your barrier to entry, unless you whole business is based around tracking ads or reselling of data to shady third parties.
- shadowgovt 4y agoOr collecting samples of user-provided data to build machine learning systems, which is how Google bootstrapped its search, spam filter, and voice recognition technologies.
- Spooky23 4y agoThat’s the social media equivalent of “guns don’t kill people, people do”. Nobody is unseating social incumbents. The industry is out of the growth phase and needs a firmer hand.
- cycomanic 4y ago>Another issue is this: breaking some of these privacy laws both in force and proposed, is really quite easy to do - as easy as a misconfigured logger or a developer including the wrong field in a query. So if I drive accidentally over the speed limit I should not get a ticket? That's a weird argument isn't it? Moreover, we are talking about companies with billions of revenue, they can afford to pay people to make sure things work. If you are worried about large incumbents using the laws as barriers (a weird argument, should we not protect people first, not companies?), just lobby for fines to be a fraction of revenue. Moreover, the behavior of the big companies in Europe shows that they have and continue to intentionally skirt and break the rules as much as possible until they get hit with fines. I really have very little empathy with Google, Meta et al.
- ouid 4y agoYou should not get a ticket for accidentally driving over the speed limit (unless you are driving over every plausible speed limit), but a corporation should. This is not an arbitrary distinction, and equivocating as you have hurts your argument.
- the_cramer 4y agoYou should absolutely get a ticket for accidently driving over the speed limit, as the company should too. Its about safety and awareness. If you are not paying attention to the road signs and/or your cars speed, who knows what else you are not aware of. Maybe a child crossing the road in front of you.
- dwhit 4y agoShould you get a ticket for accidentally driving over the speed limit because your speedometer was broken? Should the company who made the speedometer get the ticket? What if the speedometer was broken due to a bug software the speedometer company bought? Should that company get the ticket?
- hansvm 4y ago
- 8note 4y agoThere's a nit in there: Privacy regulations can make it very difficult to for competitors to start up with abusing information.
- heavyset_go 4y agoSimilar laws proposed in the EU limit the applicable companies to those with market caps over $80 billion.