5 ms·

There is kind of a "boy who cried wolf" thing going on where the tech industry has pushed back hard on pretty much any sort of regulation and oversight that the

There is kind of a "boy who cried wolf" thing going on where the tech industry has pushed back hard on pretty much any sort of regulation and oversight that the regulators automatically assume "they’re saying no because they just don’t like it.".

fallingknife 3y ago
And for what proposed regulation of the tech industry was the pushback unwarranted?
- tadfisher 3y ago
  The Apple/Google marketplace rules are common-sense, and address legitimate concerns. I moderate /r/androiddev, and we get at least 10 posts per week that are basically "I make a living from Android apps and Google has banned my developer account and denied my appeals". There needs to be some kind of public check on this behavior when livelihoods are at stake, and I don't trust either company for a second when they say this will ruin their app stores.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    Yeah that's a great point. If bundling IE with Windows was an anti trust issue back in the 90s, I don't understand how totally locking down your ecosystem on mobile can possibly be allowed. That doesn't require new regulations, though. Just need to enforce the existing law.
    - hgsgm 3y ago
      You have the freedom to chopse between 4, oops, 2, totally locked down ecosystems.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    The trouble is 9 out of 10 of those people will have been pushing the boundary in some way and probably deserve their treatment. Open the app stores up and they will become a cesspit.
- watwut 3y ago
  Quite a lot of complains about GDPR were pure hysterics.
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    Only because the regulators have taken an extremely soft approach to enforcement.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  Right to Repair, USB-C chargers, DSA, ...
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
A big part of the problem here is that most of the proposals to regulate tech companies actually are terribly crafted attempts to regulate something the drafters poorly understand, or naked power grabs by other industries (legacy media conglomerates being a common perpetrator). A good heuristic is to look at which part of the industry is opposing it. If it's opposed by small businesses or individual developers or civil liberties organizations, that's a bad rule even (or especially) if huge tech conglomerates like it. But if it's the reverse -- like antitrust enforcement -- now you might be onto something necessary.
- rhaway84773 3y ago
  The EU has been passing great laws which at worst have meant some annoying banners so no, it’s not just bad laws.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    GDPR has honestly been fantastic so far, the problem the old cookie law has that it's defacto unenforced and site owners aren't ever fined for dark patterns of having to uncheck a 2000 item list of trackers. If they properly cracked down on it with only compliant 'yes or no' banners left as the law actually states we'd be in a much better place.
    - wilde 3y ago
      What positive effects have you seen?
    - bad_user 3y ago
      DPAs seem to be understaffed and overwhelmed. On the other hand, people said that nothing would happen to the likes of Google or Facebook, as they'll just work around it. Well, that prediction aged poorly, the lawsuits have been progressing, and it takes only one DPA from one country to change things. Like how it was deemed that Facebook's ads targeting isn't a legitimate purpose, so they'll be forced to ask for consent without denying service for those that refuse. Meta knows that GDPR spells doom for their business model, which is why they abstained from releasing Threads in EU, as a sort of warning perhaps. But it won't work, because the EU market is too big to pull from, which is why EU legislation has teeth. And GDPR actually works, even if it takes some time for DPAs to solve existing cases. And the "cookie law" works too. People complaining about banners miss the forest from the trees: banners are mostly needed when doing spyware shit, and they serve as a great warning to visitors. There are no cookie banners on Mastodon.
timmaxw 3y ago
> pushed back hard on pretty much any sort of regulation and oversight I think there's a selection effect going on here: If tech and politicians agree that some policy is a good idea, then tech does it voluntarily, so no regulation is needed. The only cases where it becomes a matter of regulation are the cases where tech and politicians disagree. For example: Remember the privacy discussion around COVID-19 exposure-tracking apps? If the exposure-tracking apps had been implemented in a naive way, they would have been incredibly invasive to privacy. But tech proactively figured out good solutions to the privacy questions, so it never became an issue. If some politician _had_ proposed regulation saying that exposure-tracking apps needed to protect privacy, then tech wouldn't have pushed back, because that's what they were already doing anyway. But because tech was already doing it, politicians didn't propose the regulation. So, because an issue never becomes a matter of regulation unless tech pushes back on it, it ends up looks like "tech pushes back on all regulation". Furthermore, in the cases where tech and politicians disagree, the politicians haven't always been right. For example, GDPR cookie banners are a joke. California's AB5 law is another example, as the original article mentioned. So, I don't think "boy who cried wolf" is a fair analogy. Tech companies aren't always right, but it's not as if they're automatically opposed to all new policies; and when they do oppose politicians' proposed policies, it's sometimes for good reasons.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > If tech and politicians agree that some policy is a good idea, then tech does it voluntarily, so no regulation is needed. The only cases where it becomes a matter of regulation are the cases where tech and politicians disagree. And these cases are the utter majority. > For example, GDPR cookie banners are a joke. They are, but only for those services that want to squeeze their customers like they're data lemons. What you need to do to provide the customer with the service they desire is covered automatically, the thing where you need a GDPR consent banner is if you want to include a truckload of external services to track your users across the Internet.
  - DocTomoe 3y ago
    I set up a nice little webpage, that did not use any tracking at all. There was one cookie for a home-brew login functionality, and even that was only linked to an extremely limited amount of data (namely, the login name, and the password, didn't even mandate email...). By all means, this one cookie - whose use was completely voluntary - was a 'technical cookie' which I do not need consent for under the EU's cookie laws. It took about 30 minutes after the go-live before the first madmen came around and started shouting at me that I needed a cookie banner. The problem with that law is not only that it caused everyone to set up a cookie banner to operate as they used to, it also is that it created a class of people who are self-declared data protection vigilantes. I do consider publishing on Gopher (or Gemini) in the future, if only to prevent zealots - who often have no technical knowledge - from accessing my services. The people I address are capable - and willing - to use other protocols.

fallingknife 3y ago

And for what proposed regulation of the tech industry was the pushback unwarranted?

tadfisher 3y ago
The Apple/Google marketplace rules are common-sense, and address legitimate concerns. I moderate /r/androiddev, and we get at least 10 posts per week that are basically "I make a living from Android apps and Google has banned my developer account and denied my appeals". There needs to be some kind of public check on this behavior when livelihoods are at stake, and I don't trust either company for a second when they say this will ruin their app stores.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  Yeah that's a great point. If bundling IE with Windows was an anti trust issue back in the 90s, I don't understand how totally locking down your ecosystem on mobile can possibly be allowed. That doesn't require new regulations, though. Just need to enforce the existing law.
  - hgsgm 3y ago
    You have the freedom to chopse between 4, oops, 2, totally locked down ecosystems.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  The trouble is 9 out of 10 of those people will have been pushing the boundary in some way and probably deserve their treatment. Open the app stores up and they will become a cesspit.
watwut 3y ago
Quite a lot of complains about GDPR were pure hysterics.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  Only because the regulators have taken an extremely soft approach to enforcement.
Ensorceled 3y ago
Right to Repair, USB-C chargers, DSA, ...

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

A big part of the problem here is that most of the proposals to regulate tech companies actually are terribly crafted attempts to regulate something the drafters poorly understand, or naked power grabs by other industries (legacy media conglomerates being a common perpetrator). A good heuristic is to look at which part of the industry is opposing it. If it's opposed by small businesses or individual developers or civil liberties organizations, that's a bad rule even (or especially) if huge tech conglomerates like it. But if it's the reverse -- like antitrust enforcement -- now you might be onto something necessary.

rhaway84773 3y ago
The EU has been passing great laws which at worst have meant some annoying banners so no, it’s not just bad laws.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  GDPR has honestly been fantastic so far, the problem the old cookie law has that it's defacto unenforced and site owners aren't ever fined for dark patterns of having to uncheck a 2000 item list of trackers. If they properly cracked down on it with only compliant 'yes or no' banners left as the law actually states we'd be in a much better place.
  - wilde 3y ago
    What positive effects have you seen?
  - bad_user 3y ago
    DPAs seem to be understaffed and overwhelmed. On the other hand, people said that nothing would happen to the likes of Google or Facebook, as they'll just work around it. Well, that prediction aged poorly, the lawsuits have been progressing, and it takes only one DPA from one country to change things. Like how it was deemed that Facebook's ads targeting isn't a legitimate purpose, so they'll be forced to ask for consent without denying service for those that refuse. Meta knows that GDPR spells doom for their business model, which is why they abstained from releasing Threads in EU, as a sort of warning perhaps. But it won't work, because the EU market is too big to pull from, which is why EU legislation has teeth. And GDPR actually works, even if it takes some time for DPAs to solve existing cases. And the "cookie law" works too. People complaining about banners miss the forest from the trees: banners are mostly needed when doing spyware shit, and they serve as a great warning to visitors. There are no cookie banners on Mastodon.

timmaxw 3y ago

> pushed back hard on pretty much any sort of regulation and oversight I think there's a selection effect going on here: If tech and politicians agree that some policy is a good idea, then tech does it voluntarily, so no regulation is needed. The only cases where it becomes a matter of regulation are the cases where tech and politicians disagree. For example: Remember the privacy discussion around COVID-19 exposure-tracking apps? If the exposure-tracking apps had been implemented in a naive way, they would have been incredibly invasive to privacy. But tech proactively figured out good solutions to the privacy questions, so it never became an issue. If some politician _had_ proposed regulation saying that exposure-tracking apps needed to protect privacy, then tech wouldn't have pushed back, because that's what they were already doing anyway. But because tech was already doing it, politicians didn't propose the regulation. So, because an issue never becomes a matter of regulation unless tech pushes back on it, it ends up looks like "tech pushes back on all regulation". Furthermore, in the cases where tech and politicians disagree, the politicians haven't always been right. For example, GDPR cookie banners are a joke. California's AB5 law is another example, as the original article mentioned. So, I don't think "boy who cried wolf" is a fair analogy. Tech companies aren't always right, but it's not as if they're automatically opposed to all new policies; and when they do oppose politicians' proposed policies, it's sometimes for good reasons.

mschuster91 3y ago
> If tech and politicians agree that some policy is a good idea, then tech does it voluntarily, so no regulation is needed. The only cases where it becomes a matter of regulation are the cases where tech and politicians disagree. And these cases are the utter majority. > For example, GDPR cookie banners are a joke. They are, but only for those services that want to squeeze their customers like they're data lemons. What you need to do to provide the customer with the service they desire is covered automatically, the thing where you need a GDPR consent banner is if you want to include a truckload of external services to track your users across the Internet.
- DocTomoe 3y ago
  I set up a nice little webpage, that did not use any tracking at all. There was one cookie for a home-brew login functionality, and even that was only linked to an extremely limited amount of data (namely, the login name, and the password, didn't even mandate email...). By all means, this one cookie - whose use was completely voluntary - was a 'technical cookie' which I do not need consent for under the EU's cookie laws. It took about 30 minutes after the go-live before the first madmen came around and started shouting at me that I needed a cookie banner. The problem with that law is not only that it caused everyone to set up a cookie banner to operate as they used to, it also is that it created a class of people who are self-declared data protection vigilantes. I do consider publishing on Gopher (or Gemini) in the future, if only to prevent zealots - who often have no technical knowledge - from accessing my services. The people I address are capable - and willing - to use other protocols.