6 ms·

I'm a European and I have very little trust in European governments. Not much trust in the US government, either.

blooalien 4y ago
I'm an American and I have next to zero trust for governments in general. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" and humanity has given too few entirely too much "absolute power". I feel much the same about most of the massive corporate entities as well.
- jen20 4y ago
  The difference is Europe is better at restricting corporate overreach than the US is, regardless of how similar their governments have become. That said, I'd take almost any European government over any US government of my entire lifetime, especially when it comes to actually enacting privacy legislation. I couldn't care less about web fonts though. I'm not downloading them from Google or "bunny.net" or anywhere else. My computer has some of the nicest-looking fonts around as system defaults, and websites can either work with that or get put into reader mode.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    Hmm. Well over the past century, European governments have collectively murdered a lot more people than any of the North American governments have.
  - junofan 4y ago
    Here are the GDPR fines: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ Enacting legislation is one thing. Somalia is excellent at enacting gun control legislation.
    - jen20 4y ago
      One must enact legislation before one can enforce it.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Yep, and also the whole EU... Every few months, they either want to make encrpytion illegal, scan more private data, scan files on end user devices, outright ban e2e encryption, or worse.
- dmix 4y ago
  And we can thank EU for the extremely annoying cookie pop-up’s on every website. Every site has a slightly different UI and the options/button labels always vary. Declining is always a multi-step process with various checkboxes. They are never geo-filtered either so everyone is forced to see them. I’m usually a big advocate for privacy and this was obviously done with good intentions but there were so many better ways to do it and I doubt 99% of people do anything but click okay without reading it. At least if the browsers did it the UI would be standardized and you could have default persistent settings. Now that there has been a massive effort to implement it I doubt it will ever get fixed or go away. Even though the decline of supercookies and Firefox’s new 3rd party policy has largely made it obsolete.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    > And we can thank EU for the extremely annoying cookie pop-up’s on every website. I've never heard anybody who wasn't in or adjacent to the tech surveillance industry complain about this.
    - dmix 4y ago
      It probably had 0.01% effect on their profits so I don't see why they would be upset.
      - robonerd 4y ago
        >I don't see why they would be upset. Feigning ignorance. People in or adjacent to the tech surveillance industry (either working in it or having a substantial portion of their net worth invested in the industry) whine about cookie consents constantly, but nobody else gives a shit. Are you telling me that you have no financial or professional stake in the matter? You haven't worked for or invested in a company that profits from tracking people online? Nor any of your friends or family?

I'm an American and I have next to zero trust for governments in general. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" and humanity has given too few entirely too much "absolute power". I feel much the same about most of the massive corporate entities as well.

jen20 4y ago
The difference is Europe is better at restricting corporate overreach than the US is, regardless of how similar their governments have become. That said, I'd take almost any European government over any US government of my entire lifetime, especially when it comes to actually enacting privacy legislation. I couldn't care less about web fonts though. I'm not downloading them from Google or "bunny.net" or anywhere else. My computer has some of the nicest-looking fonts around as system defaults, and websites can either work with that or get put into reader mode.
- robonerd 4y ago
  Hmm. Well over the past century, European governments have collectively murdered a lot more people than any of the North American governments have.
- junofan 4y ago
  Here are the GDPR fines: https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ Enacting legislation is one thing. Somalia is excellent at enacting gun control legislation.
  - jen20 4y ago
    One must enact legislation before one can enforce it.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

Yep, and also the whole EU... Every few months, they either want to make encrpytion illegal, scan more private data, scan files on end user devices, outright ban e2e encryption, or worse.

dmix 4y ago
And we can thank EU for the extremely annoying cookie pop-up’s on every website. Every site has a slightly different UI and the options/button labels always vary. Declining is always a multi-step process with various checkboxes. They are never geo-filtered either so everyone is forced to see them. I’m usually a big advocate for privacy and this was obviously done with good intentions but there were so many better ways to do it and I doubt 99% of people do anything but click okay without reading it. At least if the browsers did it the UI would be standardized and you could have default persistent settings. Now that there has been a massive effort to implement it I doubt it will ever get fixed or go away. Even though the decline of supercookies and Firefox’s new 3rd party policy has largely made it obsolete.
- robonerd 4y ago
  > And we can thank EU for the extremely annoying cookie pop-up’s on every website. I've never heard anybody who wasn't in or adjacent to the tech surveillance industry complain about this.
  - dmix 4y ago
    It probably had 0.01% effect on their profits so I don't see why they would be upset.
    - robonerd 4y ago
      >I don't see why they would be upset. Feigning ignorance. People in or adjacent to the tech surveillance industry (either working in it or having a substantial portion of their net worth invested in the industry) whine about cookie consents constantly, but nobody else gives a shit. Are you telling me that you have no financial or professional stake in the matter? You haven't worked for or invested in a company that profits from tracking people online? Nor any of your friends or family?