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The problem is that to afford those social benefits, Europe inevitably also needs to care for its economy. Since tech is now the biggest economic sector and wil

by epups 3y ago

The problem is that to afford those social benefits, Europe inevitably also needs to care for its economy. Since tech is now the biggest economic sector and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future, it is concerning if the tech sector in the Europe gets suffocated by regulations. Perhaps you think this particular one is fine, but in general I agree with the sentiment that the regulatory approach in EU hinders progress and economic growth for not so tangible trade-offs.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Sure, but Europe's inability to compete with the US in consumer facing software is not because EU as stricter privacy regulations, but because of its incredibly diverse linguistic, legal and cultural fragmentation which makes gaining "escape velocity" a huge challenge for any business not just tech, versus the US where (nearly) everyone is an American citizen (there is no EU citizenship) and speaks the same language everywhere (there is no EU language) and has similar culture, business, spending habits, regardless of state. Gaining escape velocity is just not possible in the EU where every member state still has full legal sovereignty, a different language, different governing and business laws, different governing body, different economy, sometimes different currency, different legal framework, different military and different consumer habits. The EU has unified some items like the currency for most members and some common laws, but still too few compared to the US which is a full-on country, not a membership of sovereign nations. Also, while the US has undoubtably won the tech war financially speaking, due to it being unscrupulous at any level including privacy and justifying it to itself as "well China does it anyway so we should do it too otherwise we loose", but if you were to ask the average American on the street, and especially those queuing at the blood-bank to donate blood the second time this month to afford to pay bills, what would they prefer to have, either Europe's social benefits or the US winning the tech superiority and having the most tech billionaires, I think the answer would be clear and not the one you'd like to hear.
- cm2012 3y ago
  The privacy regulations are brutal though. Let me give you an example. Say you want to target HR decision makers using Facebook ads. The most efficient and cutting edge way (that we do in the USA) is make a broad, master audience to target, and use "conversion events" (something that happens on your website that correlations to revenue later, like a qualified lead coming) to train the Meta algorithm to find more of them. In Europe you used to be able do this across the entire EU, the Meta would target efficiently and could automatically use different language ads. Because FB's targeting algorithm is such a powerful AI, it could find qualified leads. Now, many EU companies feel they can't or shouldn't use the tags or server to server integrations needed to power conversion events. Which means they have to do manual campaigns by country which is much less efficient. This is just one solid example of many I've run into.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Say you want to target HR decision makers using Facebook ads. But such limitations are not all due to GDPR, and EU's economy is not stagnating just because you can't target all EU citizens with fakebook ads.
- epups 3y ago
  I think you're resorting to quite a few strawmen here. Americans are not queuing up to the blood bank en masse, and I live in Europe and appreciate its standard of living. However I believe to have any chance of maintaining it, Europe will have to make tradeoffs that it's economic rivals are very willing to make. I am very skeptical that the issue is about Europe's linguistic, cultural or economic diversity. We are debating whether the regulations can have an economic impact and it's clear they do. Some modern AI tools are getting a late release in Europe because of regulation, some major apps like Threads are not even released here. And for what? Some of our governments are still part of mass surveillance initiatives. Spying apps like TikTok and Facebook are able to hoover up data because people simply want to give it to them. I just don't see this future where Europeans have data privacy, I see a future where regulatory efforts are sparse, selective and harmful.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Some modern AI tools are getting a late release in Europe because of regulation, some major apps like Threads are not even released here. Sure, but how much of EU's economy is negatively impacted by Threads not launching here earlier? And regarding AI tools, I too want them regulated in the sense that they must prove the models are trained exclusively on non-copyrighted material, or material they own the license for. Sorry, I don't want to live an a wild-west where unscrupulous trillion dollar mega-corporations can just train their models on content without the owners' permission, and us citizens should just back off and support that blatant IP theft, because otherwise that poor trillion dollar corporation will not dominate the world and loose the AI wars.

by epups 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Sure, but Europe's inability to compete with the US in consumer facing software is not because EU as stricter privacy regulations, but because of its incredibly diverse linguistic, legal and cultural fragmentation which makes gaining "escape velocity" a huge challenge for any business not just tech, versus the US where (nearly) everyone is an American citizen (there is no EU citizenship) and speaks the same language everywhere (there is no EU language) and has similar culture, business, spending habits, regardless of state. Gaining escape velocity is just not possible in the EU where every member state still has full legal sovereignty, a different language, different governing and business laws, different governing body, different economy, sometimes different currency, different legal framework, different military and different consumer habits. The EU has unified some items like the currency for most members and some common laws, but still too few compared to the US which is a full-on country, not a membership of sovereign nations. Also, while the US has undoubtably won the tech war financially speaking, due to it being unscrupulous at any level including privacy and justifying it to itself as "well China does it anyway so we should do it too otherwise we loose", but if you were to ask the average American on the street, and especially those queuing at the blood-bank to donate blood the second time this month to afford to pay bills, what would they prefer to have, either Europe's social benefits or the US winning the tech superiority and having the most tech billionaires, I think the answer would be clear and not the one you'd like to hear.

cm2012 3y ago
The privacy regulations are brutal though. Let me give you an example. Say you want to target HR decision makers using Facebook ads. The most efficient and cutting edge way (that we do in the USA) is make a broad, master audience to target, and use "conversion events" (something that happens on your website that correlations to revenue later, like a qualified lead coming) to train the Meta algorithm to find more of them. In Europe you used to be able do this across the entire EU, the Meta would target efficiently and could automatically use different language ads. Because FB's targeting algorithm is such a powerful AI, it could find qualified leads. Now, many EU companies feel they can't or shouldn't use the tags or server to server integrations needed to power conversion events. Which means they have to do manual campaigns by country which is much less efficient. This is just one solid example of many I've run into.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Say you want to target HR decision makers using Facebook ads. But such limitations are not all due to GDPR, and EU's economy is not stagnating just because you can't target all EU citizens with fakebook ads.
epups 3y ago
I think you're resorting to quite a few strawmen here. Americans are not queuing up to the blood bank en masse, and I live in Europe and appreciate its standard of living. However I believe to have any chance of maintaining it, Europe will have to make tradeoffs that it's economic rivals are very willing to make. I am very skeptical that the issue is about Europe's linguistic, cultural or economic diversity. We are debating whether the regulations can have an economic impact and it's clear they do. Some modern AI tools are getting a late release in Europe because of regulation, some major apps like Threads are not even released here. And for what? Some of our governments are still part of mass surveillance initiatives. Spying apps like TikTok and Facebook are able to hoover up data because people simply want to give it to them. I just don't see this future where Europeans have data privacy, I see a future where regulatory efforts are sparse, selective and harmful.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Some modern AI tools are getting a late release in Europe because of regulation, some major apps like Threads are not even released here. Sure, but how much of EU's economy is negatively impacted by Threads not launching here earlier? And regarding AI tools, I too want them regulated in the sense that they must prove the models are trained exclusively on non-copyrighted material, or material they own the license for. Sorry, I don't want to live an a wild-west where unscrupulous trillion dollar mega-corporations can just train their models on content without the owners' permission, and us citizens should just back off and support that blatant IP theft, because otherwise that poor trillion dollar corporation will not dominate the world and loose the AI wars.