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Europe's big tech bill is coming to fruition

adamsb6 4y ago
This article is not at all skeptical of this regulation. I'm especially skeptical about legislation coming from the body responsible for making me click dozens of "Accept Cookies" buttons every day.
- timtom39 4y ago
  EasyList Cookie. uBlockOrigin has it built in. FF mobile can run it.
- Jochim 4y ago
  The website choosing to sell your browsing data is the reason you have to click those buttons.
  - jamiequint 4y ago
    I don't have to click them in the US (yet), so clearly not.
    - rat9988 4y ago
      Yes, but your data is getting collected and sold and you are powerless about it.
      - dnissley 4y ago
        Can you describe the concrete harm that comes from data collection?
        chezelenkoooo 4y ago
        I think that's besides the point. Shouldn't you have the option of deciding whether your data is sold or not?
        hash872 4y ago
        Is your contention that if I click 'no' on the GPDR nag screen it won't sell/harvest my data? The few times that I've looked at the T&Cs more closely, they simply say that some cookies are 'essential' for the website and that I can't opt out from them. I took that to mean that clicking anything was accepting their T&Cs to some degree- hence, I refuse to click any GPDR nag screens ever. If clicking 'no' is effective, it raises the question of why can't that just be done automatically for me by my browser, sparing me the obnoxious nag screens
        EMIRELADERO 4y ago
        > If clicking 'no' is effective, it raises the question of why can't that just be done automatically for me by my browser, sparing me the obnoxious nag screens Because it's in the website owner's best interest to make the rejecting process be as cumbersome and annoying as possible. The whole thing is a show of bad faith.
        Jochim 4y ago
        Essential cookies refer to cookies required for the technical operation of the site. There is no requirement to notify a user of essential cookies. Here are some examples of the type of functionality covered by essential cookies: - Persisting a shopping cart. - Storing your login session. - Identifying the node that should handle your requests. Site operators are forbidden by the law from using essential cookies for tracking purposes. If a site operator is classifying tracking cookies as essential, or using their essential cookies for tracking then they are very likely acting in violation of the law.
        personomas 4y ago
        No. When you visit your friends house, do you get to make the rules and tell them, what food you get for dinner, how you like your back rubbed, etc? No, if you don't like it, don't visit them. Forcing ridiculous laws on them does not lead to good.
      - csomar 4y ago
        Don't visit these websites?
        Jochim 4y ago
        How does the average user tell how a site might track them without first visiting it? How does the average user tell that a site that they initially found to be free from tracking hasn't started to track them since?
    - Jochim 4y ago
      If you live in California then you probably should be clicking them according to: https://www.cookielaw.org/regulations/ccpa/ https://www.cookielaw.org/regulations/ccpa/
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    No, the reason is quite clearly the EU legislation. It's largely predictable how companies will react to legislation, and it's 100% clear afterwards, and it's very much the fault of the EU for sticking to the path of cookie popups.
- andrewmutz 4y ago
  I completely agree. The GDPR had the best of intentions, but did not materially improve data privacy online. Meanwhile it has absolutely made the UX of the web worse. I know what the responses will be: "its a great law with poor enforcement". Perhaps that's true, but if so what makes us think additional EU tech regulations will be any better enforced?
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    > did not materially improve data privacy online. I personally saw drastic improvements. I remember marketing adding or rotating trackers every 3 months as they got pitches from random companies. Those basically vanished the day we had to keep track of which company stored their data in which region, and where in the privacy policy list we had to slot them. User data still goes to Google or Adobe, but getting rid of all the weird scammy players is a win in my book. And it also helped justify investing in stronger internal data management and analysis instead. Basically adding random third party libraries suddenly had a material cost, and I don't see any other initiative that could have realistically reached that result.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Was it better for you to click through popups and site redirects and dozens of JS trackers ? GDPR brought a lot of new UI to existing sites, but I don't get the feeling that we were on a good trend from the start, nor that the sites that care about their users got a lot worse because of it. I mean, at that time we were getting out of Flash inserts and the whole industry didn't seem to ever stop to think about what they were doing. The very notion of user consent was foreign to many agencies before GDPR. PS: even looking at the sheer amount of "subscribe to our newsletter" splash dialogs out there make the clumsiest cookie popups look cute to me.
justaman 4y ago
The internet doesn't need to be "safer".
- Guthur 4y ago
  Safer for them.
  - deathhand 4y ago
    Nothing allowed that could influence elections. Oh gee, I'm sure that wouldn't be abused at all.
    - Guthur 4y ago
      Exactly, and it's not that them are actually an evil cabal in control. I feel it's just that they act in concert to guard their own selfish desires. And they could be any of us, there is very few humans that can remain selfless. I feel it boils down to Prophets or Psychopaths, we get one or the other, unfortunately the latter is way more common.
vlovich123 4y ago
> That said, the bill makes it clear that platforms aren’t liable for illegal user-generated content, unless they are aware of the content and fail to remove it. Is there any clarity as to what "aware of" constitutes here? For example, telephone providers are aware that people are using their service for illicit things but knowing which account / phone call is illicit suddenly makes that all less clear. Honestly, I'm not quite as bullish on the ability to regulate safety on the internet, considering a not insignificant amount of the privacy violations is promulgated by ad networks collecting information on behalf of intelligence agencies to work around those pesky constitutional provisions. The history of the internet is filled with "make you safer" legislation that achieves questionable results at best.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  Oh goody. > Only if the flagged content is evidently manifestly illegal can such notices give rise to ‘actual knowledge’. According to the text of the Digital Services Act (section 63), “Information should be considered to be manifestly illegal content and notices or complaints should be considered manifestly unfounded where it is evident to a layperson, without any substantive analysis, that the content is illegal or, respectively, that the notices or complaints are unfounded.” So glad we're leaving this up to a vague obviousness standard. Not like copyright and other kinds of illicit content is notoriously hard even for experts to decipher and get right.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    American copyright laws already makes these platforms delete anything that could hint at being copyright infringement, I don't see how this could make things worse.
    - einpoklum 4y ago
      > I don't see how this could make things worse. Believe me, you just lack imagination. Censoring can get soooo much worse.
    - vlovich123 4y ago
rom-antics 4y ago
Well that's a loaded title. (EDIT: The article title, not the changed HN title) Another take: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/enforcement-overreach-could-turn-out-be-real-problem-eus-digital-services-act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/enforcement-overreach-... Read the section on Trusted Flaggers to find out what that word "safer" really means.
colpabar 4y ago
https://archive.ph/U5Vwa https://archive.ph/U5Vwa
jawns 4y ago
I'm curious about the outlawing of shadow banning. As a former content moderator, I found shadow banning to be remarkably effective for our most pernicious actors, who would otherwise quickly realize that their account is banned and create multiple new ones.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  It's not transparent so it's easily abused with the victim possibly not even knowing they've been punished, let alone having any recourse. We saw that with Twitter shadowbanning people in ambiguous ways for political reasons to manipulate the public opinion. This might sound funny since I'm shadowbanned on here myself :P But I probably deserved it.
- aaron695 4y ago
  [dead]
- Gigachad 4y ago
  These days the most effective method is phone number verification. It's possible but significantly harder to get around this.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    It's fine if you don't mind losing legit users and keep the more motivated spammers. Phone numbers have been so abused that it's a leap of faith to give it to an additional service hoping they wont go to town with it. Then you'll find a number of services that will attribute virtual numbers that can receive SMS, so it won't stop motivated spammers/scammers (tbf nothing will ? but now you have them "verified")) All in all it feels like a losing proposition to me, but I don't know your situation.
seydor 4y ago
Requiring "trusted flaggers" should clash with freedom of press so i don't see this passing through parliaments. Transparency of algorithms is unenforceable to irrelevant. Things like "no personalized recommendations" are dead in the water- things like ai chat don't personalize, they just use the chat history, which can be stored locally. Mandatory data sharing breaks international trade agreements A lot of the other stuff is standard stuff that every website does https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe-and-accountable-online-environment_en https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32022R2065&qid=1666857835014#d1e2731-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... There stuff in the regulation that is simply laughably worded: >Providers of online platforms shall not design, organise or operate their online interfaces in a way that deceives or manipulates the recipients of their service or in a way that otherwise materially distorts or impairs the ability of the recipients of their service to make free and informed decisions.
- Jensson 4y ago
  [flagged]
- pjc50 4y ago
  The "trusted flaggers": https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0045b1bf-165b-4ee9-93a9-011cf8b796d4 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0045b1bf-165b... It's not that different from existing ad-hoc systems for dealing with CSAM, like the IWF in the UK. And it will be within the exemptions of Article 10 ECHR. The only country that might object is Germany.
  - seydor 4y ago
    But they allow a government to directly remove content. This is potentially evil, no matter how trusted a state (thinks) it is. The status of ‘trusted flagger’ under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entity, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established, to an applicant that has demonstrated that it meets all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it is independent from any provider of online platforms; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices diligently, accurately and objectively.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
"in mice" or something like that. The internet is about to get a lot more balkanized and more heavily regulated. That doesn't make it safer, it just puts government back in the driver's seat for who gets to decide what is allowed where, sans those messy election things. > Proponents of the legislation say the bill will help bring an end to the era of tech companies’ self-regulating. “I don’t want the companies to decide what is and what isn’t forbidden without any separation of power, without any accountability, without any reporting, without any possibility to contest,” Verdier says. “It’s very dangerous.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
newaccount74 4y ago
The EU regulations need a lot more enforcement and agencies really need to go after companies trying to exploit loopholes. For example, consumers are entitled to return goods and services purchased online for 14 days, with some exceptions. Almost all app stores include some weasel wording how that 14 day rule doesn't apply, or they employ some kind of intermediate currency to get around the rule (eg. you have to buy Minecoins to buy content in Minecraft). The result is that a lot of digital markets are a wild west where the consumer protection rules don't apply (eg. if you buy a fake mod in Minecraft, you just lost 5€ and there is nothing you can do about it) Another way companies get around the 14 day return policy is to just not offer services starting today, but you have to buy services 14 days ahead of time, so when the service starts you no longer have a right to reverse the contract.
- krzyk 4y ago
  IANAL but the above won't fly in court. At least the last part, 14 day return policy applies from the time you receive the goods/service, not when you give a business money for that good/service. E.g. you can return preordered goods, for which you sometimes wait a month. Even steam allows returning a game in 14 days (and you played at most 2 hours, which is fair).
  - debugnik 4y ago
    > Even steam allows returning a game in 14 days I believe that's their own policy, digital goods that are consumable immediately can be sold with a renounce of your return period.
    - krzyk 4y ago
      Exactly, so I have no idea what the grandparent meant about app stores and "weasel wording". Digital goods are exempted from the rule (rightfully so, because you could consume it immediately). A larger list of exceptions: 14-day cooling off period does not apply to all purchases. Some of the exemptions are: * plane and train tickets, as well as concert tickets, hotel bookings, car rental reservations and catering services for specific dates * goods and drinks delivered to you by regular delivery – for example grocery shopping delivered by your local supermarket * goods made to order or clearly personalised – such as a tailor-made suit * sealed audio, video or computer software, such as DVDs, which you have opened (unsealed) upon receipt * online digital content, if you have already started downloading or streaming it and you agreed that you would lose your right of withdrawal by starting the performance * goods bought from a private individual rather than a company * urgent repairs and maintenance contracts – if you call a plumber to repair a leaking shower, you can't cancel the work once you have agreed on the price of the service
ParksNet 4y ago
[flagged]
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > De-anonymize speech online anonymity for political speech has been known and debated for four hundred years in the West. Of course some actors come down on one side or the other. Twitter v0.1 was supposed to be a failsafe for that; now its 2023.
arbuge 4y ago
I am continually reminded of PG's joke on Twitter a few years ago: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1231699385525903360?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1231699385525903360?lang=en
Barrin92 4y ago
"The DSA will effectively outlaw shadow banning (the practice of deprioritizing content without notice), curb cyberviolence against women, and ban targeted advertising for users under 18. There will also be a lot more public data around how recommendation algorithms, advertisements, content, and account management work on the platforms, shedding new light on how the biggest tech companies operate" Although it comes very late, better than never. I think this bill is fantastic. It brings important decisions on how platforms work from tech companies to the public, which is where they ought to belong in the first place.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
whywhywhydude 4y ago
Europe’s modus operandi when it comes to tech- we can’t innovate, lets regulate and extract a few billion here and there.
- djvdq 4y ago
  [flagged]
- umeshunni 4y ago
  China: We'll bring the hardware US/India: We'll bring the software Europe: We'll bring the lawyers
  - PyWoody 4y ago
    Oracle in shambles.
- sinity 4y ago
  This thread is gold: https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1509832349986562048 https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1509832349986562048 > I watched a panel on AI (machine learning) at a conference hosted by the European Commission. > 9 people on the panel > Everyone agreed that the USA was 100 miles ahead of EU in machine learning and China was 99 miles ahead > In any case, everyone agreed that in the most important technology of the 21st century, the EU was not on the map. > The last person on the panel was an entrepreneur. > He noted that the EU had as many AI startups as Israel (a country 1/50th the size) and, btw, two thirds of those were in London that was heading out the door due to Brexit. > So basically the EU had 1/3 the AI startups of Israel (this was a few years ago) > So the panel discussion turned to "What should the EU do?" > And the more or less unanimous conclusion (except for the entrepreneur) was "We are going to build on the success of GDPR and aim to be the REGULATORY LEADER of machine learning" > I literally laughed out loud > Being the "Regulatory Leader" is NOT A REAL THING. > Imagine it is the early 20th century and imagine that cars were invented and that the USA and China were producing a lot of cars. > The EU of today would say "Building cars looks hard, but we will be the leader in STOP SIGNs" > This is defeatism, this is surrender, this is deciding to be a vassal state of the United States and China in the 21st century. > The EU is already a Web 2 vassal to the US tech companies (none of its own, so it has to try to limit their power)
none_to_remain 4y ago
Perhaps they'll finally finish off Spotify and complete their victory
einpoklum 4y ago
> The internet is about to get a lot safer Uh-oh. When I hear that, I'm assuming that it will: 1. Going to be more tightly controlled 2. Going to be more strongly censored 3. Probably not going to be actually safer for people like me. > This article is from The Technocrat Is it now?... that does not bode well. > If you use Google, Instagram, Wikipedia, or YouTube Oh, you mean _that_ Internet. 4 sites which get a huge part of the traffic. Well, the first, second and fourth of these are quite unsafe: They surveil your activities for commercial manipulation purposes and also let the US (and maybe other) governments get some of that information. As for Wikipedia, its editorial/censorship/moderation policies are variegated and complex, and while I'm not well-read about that, it does seem that they have at least some sort of a mainstream-politics bias. > The DSA will require these companies to assess risks on their platforms, like the likelihood of illegal content Lots of things can be illegal, especially in world states with more restrictive laws. That doesn't sound very safe. > The DSA will require these companies to assess risks on their platforms, like ... election manipulation, Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So this is formalizing the drumming-up-hysteria-about-Russia shenanigans we've seen in recent years. Once there were witches and gremlins and leprechauns who caused mischief, now it's those evil Russian hackers, which were sent by evil Putin, since why not, right? Just recently we read in the Twitter files how the twitter people were pressured by the US government to come up with supposed Russian meddling, and they were panicking since there wasn't any, so they had to cook something up. > Perhaps most important, the DSA requires that companies significantly increase transparency That's good, but about what? > ... through reporting obligations for “terms of service” Uh, that's not so interesting. Plus, they still get to have outrageous "terms of service". Those things shouldn't be enforceable anyway, it's not like you can seriously negotiate those terms. > hate speech, misinformation, and violence. And who decides which information is valid and which isn't? Also, what if governments engages in misinformation or violence, as they often do? I'm pretty sure it's going to be the "information we don't like", which is sometimes misinformation, and sometimes - not. > You will be able to participate in content moderation decisions that companies make and formally contest them Such platforms should probably just be recognized as semi-public so that commercial companies can't censor them without a court order. , you're going to start noticing changes to content moderation, transparency, and safety features on those sites over the next six months.
PKop 4y ago
Regulating "election manipulation" i.e. "democracy" and "free speech". This is just government censorship of information that threatens their power.
Eumenes 4y ago
I'm so glad I don't live in the EU
- personomas 4y ago
  It affects us all.
- djvdq 4y ago
  I'm so glad I live in the EU
  - Eumenes 4y ago
    I like visiting tho!
neverrroot 4y ago
Not very excited about this, overall the costs outweigh the benefits, and we will all be worse off.
mrangle 4y ago
Censorship Bills are garbage for democracy. Anyone not reflexively alarmed by the dishonest newspeak phrasing, specifically surrounding "safety", needs to brush up on history. There's nothing more axiomatic in a democracy than the fact that a government cannot be left to censor election speech. Not to mention anything else.
Connor_Creegan 4y ago
You wanna talk about safe internet - the only think I think that is safe is solid gold bars like from Looney Toons. You wanna be safe - you wanna start up a nonprofit, grant yourself eehhhh SIX figure salaries. You wanna be safe? Build a bomb shelter. You want safe? AK-47 automatic assault rifle. House rigged with live grenades and sawed-off shotguns. Other than that, you ain't safe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRc1XndgaWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRc1XndgaWM

This article is not at all skeptical of this regulation. I'm especially skeptical about legislation coming from the body responsible for making me click dozens of "Accept Cookies" buttons every day.

timtom39 4y ago
EasyList Cookie. uBlockOrigin has it built in. FF mobile can run it.
Jochim 4y ago
The website choosing to sell your browsing data is the reason you have to click those buttons.
- jamiequint 4y ago
  I don't have to click them in the US (yet), so clearly not.
  - rat9988 4y ago
    Yes, but your data is getting collected and sold and you are powerless about it.
    - dnissley 4y ago
      Can you describe the concrete harm that comes from data collection?
      - chezelenkoooo 4y ago
        I think that's besides the point. Shouldn't you have the option of deciding whether your data is sold or not?
        hash872 4y ago
        Is your contention that if I click 'no' on the GPDR nag screen it won't sell/harvest my data? The few times that I've looked at the T&Cs more closely, they simply say that some cookies are 'essential' for the website and that I can't opt out from them. I took that to mean that clicking anything was accepting their T&Cs to some degree- hence, I refuse to click any GPDR nag screens ever. If clicking 'no' is effective, it raises the question of why can't that just be done automatically for me by my browser, sparing me the obnoxious nag screens
        EMIRELADERO 4y ago
        > If clicking 'no' is effective, it raises the question of why can't that just be done automatically for me by my browser, sparing me the obnoxious nag screens Because it's in the website owner's best interest to make the rejecting process be as cumbersome and annoying as possible. The whole thing is a show of bad faith.
        Jochim 4y ago
        Essential cookies refer to cookies required for the technical operation of the site. There is no requirement to notify a user of essential cookies. Here are some examples of the type of functionality covered by essential cookies: - Persisting a shopping cart. - Storing your login session. - Identifying the node that should handle your requests. Site operators are forbidden by the law from using essential cookies for tracking purposes. If a site operator is classifying tracking cookies as essential, or using their essential cookies for tracking then they are very likely acting in violation of the law.
        personomas 4y ago
        No. When you visit your friends house, do you get to make the rules and tell them, what food you get for dinner, how you like your back rubbed, etc? No, if you don't like it, don't visit them. Forcing ridiculous laws on them does not lead to good.
    - csomar 4y ago
      Don't visit these websites?
      - Jochim 4y ago
        How does the average user tell how a site might track them without first visiting it? How does the average user tell that a site that they initially found to be free from tracking hasn't started to track them since?
  - Jochim 4y ago
    If you live in California then you probably should be clicking them according to: https://www.cookielaw.org/regulations/ccpa/ https://www.cookielaw.org/regulations/ccpa/
- crazygringo 4y ago
  No, the reason is quite clearly the EU legislation. It's largely predictable how companies will react to legislation, and it's 100% clear afterwards, and it's very much the fault of the EU for sticking to the path of cookie popups.
andrewmutz 4y ago
I completely agree. The GDPR had the best of intentions, but did not materially improve data privacy online. Meanwhile it has absolutely made the UX of the web worse. I know what the responses will be: "its a great law with poor enforcement". Perhaps that's true, but if so what makes us think additional EU tech regulations will be any better enforced?
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > did not materially improve data privacy online. I personally saw drastic improvements. I remember marketing adding or rotating trackers every 3 months as they got pitches from random companies. Those basically vanished the day we had to keep track of which company stored their data in which region, and where in the privacy policy list we had to slot them. User data still goes to Google or Adobe, but getting rid of all the weird scammy players is a win in my book. And it also helped justify investing in stronger internal data management and analysis instead. Basically adding random third party libraries suddenly had a material cost, and I don't see any other initiative that could have realistically reached that result.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Was it better for you to click through popups and site redirects and dozens of JS trackers ? GDPR brought a lot of new UI to existing sites, but I don't get the feeling that we were on a good trend from the start, nor that the sites that care about their users got a lot worse because of it. I mean, at that time we were getting out of Flash inserts and the whole industry didn't seem to ever stop to think about what they were doing. The very notion of user consent was foreign to many agencies before GDPR. PS: even looking at the sheer amount of "subscribe to our newsletter" splash dialogs out there make the clumsiest cookie popups look cute to me.

justaman 4y ago

The internet doesn't need to be "safer".

Guthur 4y ago
Safer for them.
- deathhand 4y ago
  Nothing allowed that could influence elections. Oh gee, I'm sure that wouldn't be abused at all.
  - Guthur 4y ago
    Exactly, and it's not that them are actually an evil cabal in control. I feel it's just that they act in concert to guard their own selfish desires. And they could be any of us, there is very few humans that can remain selfless. I feel it boils down to Prophets or Psychopaths, we get one or the other, unfortunately the latter is way more common.

vlovich123 4y ago

> That said, the bill makes it clear that platforms aren’t liable for illegal user-generated content, unless they are aware of the content and fail to remove it. Is there any clarity as to what "aware of" constitutes here? For example, telephone providers are aware that people are using their service for illicit things but knowing which account / phone call is illicit suddenly makes that all less clear. Honestly, I'm not quite as bullish on the ability to regulate safety on the internet, considering a not insignificant amount of the privacy violations is promulgated by ad networks collecting information on behalf of intelligence agencies to work around those pesky constitutional provisions. The history of the internet is filled with "make you safer" legislation that achieves questionable results at best.

vlovich123 4y ago
Oh goody. > Only if the flagged content is evidently manifestly illegal can such notices give rise to ‘actual knowledge’. According to the text of the Digital Services Act (section 63), “Information should be considered to be manifestly illegal content and notices or complaints should be considered manifestly unfounded where it is evident to a layperson, without any substantive analysis, that the content is illegal or, respectively, that the notices or complaints are unfounded.” So glad we're leaving this up to a vague obviousness standard. Not like copyright and other kinds of illicit content is notoriously hard even for experts to decipher and get right.
- Jensson 4y ago
  American copyright laws already makes these platforms delete anything that could hint at being copyright infringement, I don't see how this could make things worse.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    > I don't see how this could make things worse. Believe me, you just lack imagination. Censoring can get soooo much worse.
  - vlovich123 4y ago

rom-antics 4y ago

Well that's a loaded title. (EDIT: The article title, not the changed HN title) Another take: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/enforcement-overreach-could-turn-out-be-real-problem-eus-digital-services-act https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/enforcement-overreach-... Read the section on Trusted Flaggers to find out what that word "safer" really means.

colpabar 4y ago

https://archive.ph/U5Vwa https://archive.ph/U5Vwa

jawns 4y ago

I'm curious about the outlawing of shadow banning. As a former content moderator, I found shadow banning to be remarkably effective for our most pernicious actors, who would otherwise quickly realize that their account is banned and create multiple new ones.

sacrosancty 4y ago
It's not transparent so it's easily abused with the victim possibly not even knowing they've been punished, let alone having any recourse. We saw that with Twitter shadowbanning people in ambiguous ways for political reasons to manipulate the public opinion. This might sound funny since I'm shadowbanned on here myself :P But I probably deserved it.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
Gigachad 4y ago
These days the most effective method is phone number verification. It's possible but significantly harder to get around this.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  It's fine if you don't mind losing legit users and keep the more motivated spammers. Phone numbers have been so abused that it's a leap of faith to give it to an additional service hoping they wont go to town with it. Then you'll find a number of services that will attribute virtual numbers that can receive SMS, so it won't stop motivated spammers/scammers (tbf nothing will ? but now you have them "verified")) All in all it feels like a losing proposition to me, but I don't know your situation.

seydor 4y ago

Requiring "trusted flaggers" should clash with freedom of press so i don't see this passing through parliaments. Transparency of algorithms is unenforceable to irrelevant. Things like "no personalized recommendations" are dead in the water- things like ai chat don't personalize, they just use the chat history, which can be stored locally. Mandatory data sharing breaks international trade agreements A lot of the other stuff is standard stuff that every website does https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe-and-accountable-online-environment_en https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32022R2065&qid=1666857835014#d1e2731-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... There stuff in the regulation that is simply laughably worded: >Providers of online platforms shall not design, organise or operate their online interfaces in a way that deceives or manipulates the recipients of their service or in a way that otherwise materially distorts or impairs the ability of the recipients of their service to make free and informed decisions.

Jensson 4y ago
[flagged]
pjc50 4y ago
The "trusted flaggers": https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0045b1bf-165b-4ee9-93a9-011cf8b796d4 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0045b1bf-165b... It's not that different from existing ad-hoc systems for dealing with CSAM, like the IWF in the UK. And it will be within the exemptions of Article 10 ECHR. The only country that might object is Germany.
- seydor 4y ago
  But they allow a government to directly remove content. This is potentially evil, no matter how trusted a state (thinks) it is. The status of ‘trusted flagger’ under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon application by any entity, by the Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is established, to an applicant that has demonstrated that it meets all of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content; (b) it is independent from any provider of online platforms; (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting notices diligently, accurately and objectively.

slowmovintarget 4y ago

"in mice" or something like that. The internet is about to get a lot more balkanized and more heavily regulated. That doesn't make it safer, it just puts government back in the driver's seat for who gets to decide what is allowed where, sans those messy election things. > Proponents of the legislation say the bill will help bring an end to the era of tech companies’ self-regulating. “I don’t want the companies to decide what is and what isn’t forbidden without any separation of power, without any accountability, without any reporting, without any possibility to contest,” Verdier says. “It’s very dangerous.”

deleted 4y ago
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newaccount74 4y ago

The EU regulations need a lot more enforcement and agencies really need to go after companies trying to exploit loopholes. For example, consumers are entitled to return goods and services purchased online for 14 days, with some exceptions. Almost all app stores include some weasel wording how that 14 day rule doesn't apply, or they employ some kind of intermediate currency to get around the rule (eg. you have to buy Minecoins to buy content in Minecraft). The result is that a lot of digital markets are a wild west where the consumer protection rules don't apply (eg. if you buy a fake mod in Minecraft, you just lost 5€ and there is nothing you can do about it) Another way companies get around the 14 day return policy is to just not offer services starting today, but you have to buy services 14 days ahead of time, so when the service starts you no longer have a right to reverse the contract.

krzyk 4y ago
IANAL but the above won't fly in court. At least the last part, 14 day return policy applies from the time you receive the goods/service, not when you give a business money for that good/service. E.g. you can return preordered goods, for which you sometimes wait a month. Even steam allows returning a game in 14 days (and you played at most 2 hours, which is fair).
- debugnik 4y ago
  > Even steam allows returning a game in 14 days I believe that's their own policy, digital goods that are consumable immediately can be sold with a renounce of your return period.
  - krzyk 4y ago
    Exactly, so I have no idea what the grandparent meant about app stores and "weasel wording". Digital goods are exempted from the rule (rightfully so, because you could consume it immediately). A larger list of exceptions: 14-day cooling off period does not apply to all purchases. Some of the exemptions are: * plane and train tickets, as well as concert tickets, hotel bookings, car rental reservations and catering services for specific dates * goods and drinks delivered to you by regular delivery – for example grocery shopping delivered by your local supermarket * goods made to order or clearly personalised – such as a tailor-made suit * sealed audio, video or computer software, such as DVDs, which you have opened (unsealed) upon receipt * online digital content, if you have already started downloading or streaming it and you agreed that you would lose your right of withdrawal by starting the performance * goods bought from a private individual rather than a company * urgent repairs and maintenance contracts – if you call a plumber to repair a leaking shower, you can't cancel the work once you have agreed on the price of the service

ParksNet 4y ago

[flagged]

mistrial9 4y ago
> De-anonymize speech online anonymity for political speech has been known and debated for four hundred years in the West. Of course some actors come down on one side or the other. Twitter v0.1 was supposed to be a failsafe for that; now its 2023.

arbuge 4y ago

I am continually reminded of PG's joke on Twitter a few years ago: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1231699385525903360?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1231699385525903360?lang=en

Barrin92 4y ago

"The DSA will effectively outlaw shadow banning (the practice of deprioritizing content without notice), curb cyberviolence against women, and ban targeted advertising for users under 18. There will also be a lot more public data around how recommendation algorithms, advertisements, content, and account management work on the platforms, shedding new light on how the biggest tech companies operate" Although it comes very late, better than never. I think this bill is fantastic. It brings important decisions on how platforms work from tech companies to the public, which is where they ought to belong in the first place.

deleted 4y ago

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whywhywhydude 4y ago

Europe’s modus operandi when it comes to tech- we can’t innovate, lets regulate and extract a few billion here and there.

djvdq 4y ago
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umeshunni 4y ago
China: We'll bring the hardware US/India: We'll bring the software Europe: We'll bring the lawyers
- PyWoody 4y ago
  Oracle in shambles.
sinity 4y ago
This thread is gold: https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1509832349986562048 https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1509832349986562048 > I watched a panel on AI (machine learning) at a conference hosted by the European Commission. > 9 people on the panel > Everyone agreed that the USA was 100 miles ahead of EU in machine learning and China was 99 miles ahead > In any case, everyone agreed that in the most important technology of the 21st century, the EU was not on the map. > The last person on the panel was an entrepreneur. > He noted that the EU had as many AI startups as Israel (a country 1/50th the size) and, btw, two thirds of those were in London that was heading out the door due to Brexit. > So basically the EU had 1/3 the AI startups of Israel (this was a few years ago) > So the panel discussion turned to "What should the EU do?" > And the more or less unanimous conclusion (except for the entrepreneur) was "We are going to build on the success of GDPR and aim to be the REGULATORY LEADER of machine learning" > I literally laughed out loud > Being the "Regulatory Leader" is NOT A REAL THING. > Imagine it is the early 20th century and imagine that cars were invented and that the USA and China were producing a lot of cars. > The EU of today would say "Building cars looks hard, but we will be the leader in STOP SIGNs" > This is defeatism, this is surrender, this is deciding to be a vassal state of the United States and China in the 21st century. > The EU is already a Web 2 vassal to the US tech companies (none of its own, so it has to try to limit their power)

none_to_remain 4y ago

Perhaps they'll finally finish off Spotify and complete their victory

einpoklum 4y ago

> The internet is about to get a lot safer Uh-oh. When I hear that, I'm assuming that it will: 1. Going to be more tightly controlled 2. Going to be more strongly censored 3. Probably not going to be actually safer for people like me. > This article is from The Technocrat Is it now?... that does not bode well. > If you use Google, Instagram, Wikipedia, or YouTube Oh, you mean _that_ Internet. 4 sites which get a huge part of the traffic. Well, the first, second and fourth of these are quite unsafe: They surveil your activities for commercial manipulation purposes and also let the US (and maybe other) governments get some of that information. As for Wikipedia, its editorial/censorship/moderation policies are variegated and complex, and while I'm not well-read about that, it does seem that they have at least some sort of a mainstream-politics bias. > The DSA will require these companies to assess risks on their platforms, like the likelihood of illegal content Lots of things can be illegal, especially in world states with more restrictive laws. That doesn't sound very safe. > The DSA will require these companies to assess risks on their platforms, like ... election manipulation, Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So this is formalizing the drumming-up-hysteria-about-Russia shenanigans we've seen in recent years. Once there were witches and gremlins and leprechauns who caused mischief, now it's those evil Russian hackers, which were sent by evil Putin, since why not, right? Just recently we read in the Twitter files how the twitter people were pressured by the US government to come up with supposed Russian meddling, and they were panicking since there wasn't any, so they had to cook something up. > Perhaps most important, the DSA requires that companies significantly increase transparency That's good, but about what? > ... through reporting obligations for “terms of service” Uh, that's not so interesting. Plus, they still get to have outrageous "terms of service". Those things shouldn't be enforceable anyway, it's not like you can seriously negotiate those terms. > hate speech, misinformation, and violence. And who decides which information is valid and which isn't? Also, what if governments engages in misinformation or violence, as they often do? I'm pretty sure it's going to be the "information we don't like", which is sometimes misinformation, and sometimes - not. > You will be able to participate in content moderation decisions that companies make and formally contest them Such platforms should probably just be recognized as semi-public so that commercial companies can't censor them without a court order. , you're going to start noticing changes to content moderation, transparency, and safety features on those sites over the next six months.

PKop 4y ago

Regulating "election manipulation" i.e. "democracy" and "free speech". This is just government censorship of information that threatens their power.

Eumenes 4y ago

I'm so glad I don't live in the EU

personomas 4y ago
It affects us all.
djvdq 4y ago
I'm so glad I live in the EU
- Eumenes 4y ago
  I like visiting tho!

neverrroot 4y ago

Not very excited about this, overall the costs outweigh the benefits, and we will all be worse off.

mrangle 4y ago

Censorship Bills are garbage for democracy. Anyone not reflexively alarmed by the dishonest newspeak phrasing, specifically surrounding "safety", needs to brush up on history. There's nothing more axiomatic in a democracy than the fact that a government cannot be left to censor election speech. Not to mention anything else.

Connor_Creegan 4y ago

You wanna talk about safe internet - the only think I think that is safe is solid gold bars like from Looney Toons. You wanna be safe - you wanna start up a nonprofit, grant yourself eehhhh SIX figure salaries. You wanna be safe? Build a bomb shelter. You want safe? AK-47 automatic assault rifle. House rigged with live grenades and sawed-off shotguns. Other than that, you ain't safe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRc1XndgaWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRc1XndgaWM