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The EU isn't really protecting the privacy of its citizens with the GDPR as much as people think for at least two reasons. First there is the practical impleme

The EU isn't really protecting the privacy of its citizens with the GDPR as much as people think for at least two reasons. First there is the practical implementation. As we've seen the current stand-off between US government security laws and EU government privacy laws is still being decided in favour of transferring personal data for processing in the US. That might even be the preferable way to break the deadlock for the immediate future because the cost to the European economy and particularly the tech sector of suddenly cutting off all US-based services when the EU has no native competitors would be enormous and as things stand that appears to be the only safe way to guarantee legal compliance on both sides of the Atlantic. There is also the hypocrisy angle. The GDPR allows for EU government access to personal data under their own security laws that is not so different to what the US laws allow the US government to have. There are definitely some double standards in the typical arguments about how the GDPR protects personal data from unwarranted government intrusion and overly broad security laws. I'm also firmly in the pro-privacy camp on principle but the rules do still need to be workable or everyone is just going to ignore them anyway. It's not clear to me that the way the GDPR is currently being used against big US tech companies is a good way to go.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> cutting off all US-based services when the EU has no native competitors would be enormous I think you have it wrong way round - EU business was late, and 5he market was sevured by US corps. I dont think EU will ban US business, but if they did, that would create opportunity for homegrown co petition to emerge. By now, cloud services are not rocket science.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  I dont think EU will ban US business, but if they did, that would create opportunity for homegrown co petition to emerge. That's one theory. The problem is the several years of lag time between the opportunity being created and anyone actually exploiting it at scale. In the meantime countless SMEs that depend on modern online services for their day to day operations would probably have failed. By now, cloud services are not rocket science. And yet the US keeps producing them at a far higher rate than we do over here. Much of that has been due to the VCs almost casually giving away millions in funding in the hope of backing the next unicorn among all the failures, which is an investment culture you don't see so much in Europe. But there are also reasons investors tend to favour some countries over others and the regulatory environment is usually second on that list (after taxes/subsidies) if it's not first. And in their regulatory environments the EU and US are almost polar opposites. The US is very lightly regulated (apart from the problems of regulatory capture, where the US seems to do much worse when it does happen) but that means tech firms engage in practices we might not like. The EU is very heavily regulated but that means added overheads even for well-behaved businesses that can eventually add up to being less competitive in a global market. Maybe there is a sweet spot in between but certainly neither the US nor the EU have found it yet.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> cutting off all US-based services when the EU has no native competitors would be enormous I think you have it wrong way round - EU business was late, and 5he market was sevured by US corps. I dont think EU will ban US business, but if they did, that would create opportunity for homegrown co petition to emerge. By now, cloud services are not rocket science.

Silhouette 3y ago
I dont think EU will ban US business, but if they did, that would create opportunity for homegrown co petition to emerge. That's one theory. The problem is the several years of lag time between the opportunity being created and anyone actually exploiting it at scale. In the meantime countless SMEs that depend on modern online services for their day to day operations would probably have failed. By now, cloud services are not rocket science. And yet the US keeps producing them at a far higher rate than we do over here. Much of that has been due to the VCs almost casually giving away millions in funding in the hope of backing the next unicorn among all the failures, which is an investment culture you don't see so much in Europe. But there are also reasons investors tend to favour some countries over others and the regulatory environment is usually second on that list (after taxes/subsidies) if it's not first. And in their regulatory environments the EU and US are almost polar opposites. The US is very lightly regulated (apart from the problems of regulatory capture, where the US seems to do much worse when it does happen) but that means tech firms engage in practices we might not like. The EU is very heavily regulated but that means added overheads even for well-behaved businesses that can eventually add up to being less competitive in a global market. Maybe there is a sweet spot in between but certainly neither the US nor the EU have found it yet.