8 ms·

> It's available in 174 countries. Basically the entire world, except countries that specifically targeted American Big Tech companies for increased regulation

by runako 3y ago

> It's available in 174 countries. Basically the entire world, except countries that specifically targeted American Big Tech companies for increased regulation. > Europe has gone to great lengths to make itself an incredibly hostile environment for online businesses to operate in. This is such an understated point. I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served by e.g. the pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations[1]. Do they feel like the benefits they get are worth it? What would it take for that calculus to change? 1 - Yes, some say that technically these are not required. But even official organs of the EU such as https://europa.eu https://europa.eu continue to use such banners.

fractalb 3y ago
There is no hope to redeem the Web of these banners :(
roboben 3y ago
Simple solution: Do not use cookies which are not strictly necessary and you don’t need a banner.
- runako 3y ago
  I was going to write something tongue in cheek but instead I will simply say that your "simple solution" automatically opts you out of a lot of tooling that site operators have grown to find indispensable over the last couple of decades. Compliance with the EU regulations such that you can legally operate a website without a cookie banner establishes a fairly retrograde set of bounds on how you operate your site. Which is their prerogative[1]. I'm just pointing out that the people who run the EU's official websites aren't able to operate inside those bounds, so it's fair to say those bounds are not commercially reasonable in general for functional sites. QED the banners are de facto required. 1 - The extensive reach of the law is breathtaking. The EU claims jurisdiction over any web property, based anywhere in the world, that might be seen by an EU national.
  - archerx 3y ago
    What tooling? There are no tools that I need to implement on my sites that requires third party cookies. Maybe I just respect my audience and not try to spy every last detail about them?
    - runako 3y ago
      Really not trying to make a value judgement here. Just observing that many Web professionals do find value in tools that use third-party cookies, and such value is not always about spying or selling data. For example, the European Parliament website uses third-party cookies for analytics and for Web streaming. Yes, they can run the whole stack themselves. It is also a) more work and b) not how most of the industry works. The European Parliament with the resources of the EU, finds it expeditious to use 3P cookies and just display a cookie banner. How reasonable is it to expect sites with fewer resources to do similar interesting things on the Web without also falling afoul of the EU law?
      - efdee 3y ago
        I don't get your point. You are allowed to use those tools, but if you do, you need to get the user's consent. What you are looking for is a way to use these tools, of which you don't really know what they're going to use this data for or how and why they are tracking me, without my consent. I find it very strange that this is something you object to.
        runako 3y ago
        > You are allowed to use those tools, but if you do, you need to get the user's consent. We are saying the same thing. Yes, you can use the tools, but then you require consent from the user as the very first thing they see on your website. > I find it very strange that this is something you object to. As a non-EU national, I don't derive the benefits of Do Not Delete etc. I do not ever care that a site is using 3P cookies to do e.g. on-page analytics. The cookie banners are a net negative for me.
t_mann 3y ago
I think that having the right to ask companies to tell you what personal data they're storing on you and asking them to delete it is well worth the minor annoyance of dealing with cookie banners, which are largely the result of the industry trying to discredit that regulation, btw (until they became something that can be de facto considered part of the law through adopted practice). As regards the lesser availability of American tech, I'm sure that's much more limited in China, which coincidentally happens to have the most notable domestic AI industry outside of the US. It's something that economists can be reluctant to admit, but for which there's solid evidence by now afaik, that at least temporary import barriers, if done right, can be a boost to industrial development. The thing that is weird about the EU regulation is that they're putting the same shackles on their domestic tech industry, which is dwarfed by the giant US incumbents who have more resources to invest in compliance than startups (apart from the bits that apparently only target said encumbants that some posters have mentioned here, which I don't know anything about).
- runako 3y ago
  To your first point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38553315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38553315 Again, folks say the cookie banners are not required, but even the EU web managers are unable to build a site without them. So maybe they are "practically" required for all sites? > they're putting the exact same shackles on their domestic tech industry The Digital Markets Act is an attempt to fix this by targeting the American tech companies specifically, without explicitly naming them in the law. I would venture that the DMA is why Gemini isn't available in the EU right now, like it is in the rest of the world where US companies are allowed to do commerce.
  - t_mann 3y ago
    On the second point, you were replying while I was updating my comment, sorry about that. I know it's a controversial opinion, but from the perspective of the EU, I think having regulation that effectively only targets US Tech makes sense for the reasons mentioned above. It may not exactly be 'fair game', but to anyone who thinks the US isn't doing the exact same thing, I'm sure Airbus executives for one would have some enlightening stories. On the first point, I think user rights trump developer convenience, so I stand by what I said.
andrewmutz 3y ago
The banners drive me absolutely crazy. And I don't care if the authors of the law never intended the banners, policy is judged on is consequences (not it's intent). Is it possible for the law to be amended so that non-EU citizens can use a browser flag that just says "I'm fine withe the cookies"? That way Europeans can enjoy all the cookie consent clicking and the rest of us can go back to how the web was before?
- berkes 3y ago
  We had (have?) that flag in browsers. But once too many people switched it in the 'do not track' mode, the industry decided to simply ignore it. You cannot get a more clear sign that government pressure and laws are needed, than that.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    I think there's a recent ruling states that web pages can't ignore the Do Not Track flag sent by the browser, and another one is coming for cookie preferences, too.
  - andybak 3y ago
    > But once too many people switched it in the 'do not track' mode, the industry decided to simply ignore it. My recollection was that it was Microsoft deciding to turn this flag on by default that led to it being ignored by Google. I.e. Microsoft saw a chance to use it against their biggest rival, diluting it in the process and gaining nothing. I think there's an argument for trying again but requiring an explicit choice. And then give it the force of law.
  - thrdbndndn 3y ago
    I do not use "do not track" mode but these banners are still there.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  The law might get fixed eventually, but I fear we will never go back to how the web was before because flooding people's screens with popups has become the norm everywhere and among all types of organisations with very few exceptions.
makeitdouble 3y ago
As a former EU citizen, yes it was great. Most of the dirty tricks pulled when you register or buy something online were off by default, and even if I somewhat got ropped in some stinky mailing list a litteral single click would get me out of it. Even killing your account could be done in one legally binding email. No 50 pages "do you really want to quit ?" and no "Do you not not not not not refuse to to not let us delete your account ?" last question. Now I'm feeling how bad it is on the other side of the fence, and the funny thing is people don't seem to give a shit because they never experienced decent regulation and being fucked by brands is just the way of life.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  The indoctrination of some US citizens into acceptance of the tech giants' rape and pillage of personal data for profit is surprisingly strong. But maybe it shouldn't be surprising given the example of Google's precedent-setting profitability from guiding that particular path.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > they never experienced decent regulation decent regulation like the cookie policy bullshit that makes people waste 30 minutes per day? Thanks bud
  - rizky05 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Popeyes 3y ago
    The flaw in regulation was not to respect the Do Not Track signal from the browser, that would have killed off a lot of cookie banners (and is an option that users). But I'm guessing that it was lobbied against. Similarly, it has generated a large industry in cookie compliance services.
Joeri 3y ago
I challenge you to point out the specific paragraphs of GDPR you object to as somehow unreasonable or targeting american tech companies. The cookie banners are a bad outcome for sure, but GDPR does not mandate them. They are an indirect result of the bureaucracy installed by GDPR which does not incentivize user-friendly design of privacy-aware features. I don’t want GDPR rolled back, even as a software developer, because I think it creates the kind of protections everyone in the world should have. But I would like a rule clarification on how to build compliant websites without cookie banners, so I blame the administration (the EU commission) but not the legislation. The digital markets act similarly is the kind of regulation we need everywhere. It’s only hostile to online businesses because other places don’t have those kind of guard rails on the abusive behavior of big tech. Now, as far as the EU AI act. I think that in its original intent when it was specifically targeting things like public face recognition by governments it was a very good idea, but it has been hijacked and in its current form it would be very harmful if passed. I don’t think it particularly targets american tech companies, because the biggest victims would be EU AI startups like Mistral.
- mahkeiro 3y ago
  Exactly, and this law is used everyday against European companies that tries to grab too much data. The US is the epitome of the surveillance society on par with China (look at how Apple wad sending push notification, or how phone companies just share your location data with the world). Here in Europe we fight by making sure that the data cannot be collected in the first place.
- runako 3y ago
  > specific paragraphs of GDPR GDPR doesn't target American tech companies, that's the DMA. Essentially, the framing is there are companies that are "gatekeepers" and then everyone else. The criteria for gatekeepers are theoretically objective, but they were written with a specific set of companies in mind. As a consequence, the designated companies except TikTok just so happen to be based in the US. Further, the rules were written such that EU firms like Spotify are not eligible. Also, Vodafone somehow is not considered a gatekeeper in any relevant digital market. Anyway, no judgement. We are in a time of rising protectionism. This may be good for Europe. But the DMA clearly targeted a set of West Coast US companies and it's doing what it was intended to do. I do wish they would modify GDPR to only apply to people e.g. physically in Europe or similar. It really does make the Web worse for billions of people who are not EU nationals and derive absolutely no benefits from the banners. While they're regulating browsers and plugs, could they make browser makers ship EU versions of their browsers that show the popups, while the rest of us save tons of clicks? EU nationals could install EU versions of their favorite browsers and the rest of us would just use the stock versions.
silversmith 3y ago
EU citizen - I love it. Couple clicks to tell a website not to profile me is nothing. You already are rejecting mailing lists and offers everywhere, what's one more thing. I don't get spam mailing lists or robocalls. I can safely sign up to services knowing I will be able to unsubscribe easily. I can buy things online knowing they can be easily returned. Yes, some of my clients lament the inability to use those patterns. I politely smile and nod.
- Notatheist 3y ago
  >I don't get spam mailing lists or robocalls Not strictly true. I get robocalls and WhatsApp spam messages from country code +1 all the time.
- IanCal 3y ago
  > Couple clicks to tell a website not to profile me is nothing Also with an ad blocker, see if you can turn on hiding the banners. Without you clicking "yes" they can't use consent for a reason, so this is equivalent to clicking "no".
Roark66 3y ago
As an EU citizen I hate it (cookie popups). I think the stupid regulation achieved nothing and essentially "broke the Internet" by normalising popups that obscure content while anyone that tracks can do so using alternatives. Sadly the EU is being led by a clique of unelected beaurocrats (commisars - like in the USSR) and the most democratic of institutions - the EU parliament as well as national parliaments have very little influence on what is being proposed and bulldozed in. For example, let's say in a given country literaly everyone is opposed to ACTA and the country has the balls to veto it (despite the beaurocrat's usual tricks of rolling in together things everyone wants and needs with absolute crap like ACTA). The same idea is brought back again 2 years later (ACTA v2). It is vetoed again, it is brought back again 2 years later and this time bypasses the veto by being "voluntary". "Countries that don't want it don't need to implement" - great on paper. Until you realise most people in the EU oppose it, including in the countries that implement it and by the fact of implementing it in the majority they make it a de-facto standard which increases the cost of doing business affected in the countries that now have differing regulations. Same thing is being done with the "EU constitution". No one, other than it's rulers, wants the EU to be a country. The idea got shot down immediately in a popular vote. So they are essentially implementing it anyway bit by bit by stretching the law and outright breaking it (especially against countries that vote in parties that are not in the EPP club). I'm a big fan of the idea of EU as it was before the treaty of Nice. It was a group of countries with similar values creating an open market and agreeing to make decisions affecting it together. Sadly the institutions that were created to oversee that structure have the priorities of their own (increasing their own power) and using both the method mentioned above and simply doing things "extra legally" (as lawyers say) they do whatever they want and if the extremely corrupt "court" tied to them decides it's OK there is no way to question it. These bastards say they are "strenghtening the EU". They are destroying it. Anti EU sentiment is increasing especially amongst younger voters in many countries and guess who will be very happy when it all goes tits up? One guy called Putin who has been financing a lot of the corruption we see (through countries like Qatar etc).
- suslik 3y ago
  I hope we will find a way to fix it without ruining all the good stuff - open borders, free market, consistent regulatory practices. European land is soacked with blood, Alsace–Lorraine, all that. A war between France and Germany seems absolutely unimaginable now - but it shouldn't be. Only 70-odd years ago Germans were exterminating French citizens of jewish descent while Brits were bombing german cities to the ground). When I say to my friends this horrible past is not gone for good and can come back if we're not careful, they think I'm mental, but I'm not. Russia and Ukraine is a lesson of a bad joke that became a reality. That's exactly why the nationalistic resentiment in Europe is so dangerous - we all know all to well what exactly it can culminate into. Unfortunately, I don't see a trend towards fixing the problems within EU - the beauracrats fully embraced old european maximas, "After me, the flood" and "Let them eat cake". Someone should remind them where all that leads to.
bayindirh 3y ago
Being able to tell a webpage that they can't share my data to their 780 data partners in a legally binding way with a click is priceless.
pjmlp 3y ago
Yes, I feel well served and we should regulate even more. And even though I tend to complain about UNIX like OSes, maybe they are the key to free Europe from US corporations operating systems, like a few other countries are already doing as well. We should stick to international regulated programing languages and OSes, that free us from dependencies on export technology regulations.
gmerc 3y ago
The EU is preventing a wholesale sellout of the continent. It’s great.
sussmannbaka 3y ago
The banners (in their annoying form) are illegal under gdpr and sites are pivoting away. The DNT header will replace it, as it entirely suffices to signal my opting out: I tell the site owner in a machine readable form that I don’t wish to be tracked. There was no legal basis for this to mean anything before. It feels pretty good to not be sold out by my government to the highest bidding tech company and if the price I’m paying is having no access to wildly overhyped AI toys, I’ll manage.
- IanCal 3y ago
  > The banners (in their annoying form) are illegal under gdpr and sites are pivoting away This needs to be more widely known. Also, because they need active consent - any cookie banner blocking extension (weird to see so few people talk about this when it's seen as obvious we need ad blockers) means no consent and is perfectly fine under GDPR. You're not required to signal "no".
- anhner 3y ago
  > if the price I’m paying is having no access to wildly overhyped AI toys wildly overhyped AI toys that are not even available in the countries where they launched (Gemini Pro is not multimodal as others have pointed out, Gemini Ultra will be available only next year)
jug 3y ago
I think the cookie banners didn't work as intended and they're a good example of the lack of insight in the web and how web designers tick by people writing the laws. Other than those though, I like most of the regulations including Digital Markets Act that is (probably) behind this delay. They give us much better control over where and how our data is handled, give us leverage to have corporations delete said data. Microsoft even built a better version of Windows 11 for us* (but only for us) and that was awesome to watch happen. The difference will probably be even greater in Windows 12. Without the EU, very little of this would have happened and that's simply too much power to corporations. Yes, "you chose to use them so you decided to follow their terms of use and privacy clauses" but key here is how you're more and more often required to use certain services online or you're put at significant disadvantages ranging from keeping in touch with your family or friends to being disadvantaged in the job market. * https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/previewing-changes-in-windows-to-comply-with-the-digital-markets-act-in-the-european-economic-area/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/preview...
MyFirstSass 3y ago
As a EU citizen; The intentions are good, some of GDPR is great, and some of the huge fines have been welcome in a world where corporations usually gets tiny fines. That said, as with most heavy bureaucracies there's just not enough internal organisational tech education so lobbying and misunderstandings end up diluting the process. Example is the cookie banners leading people away from smaller competitors strengthening monopolies, and teaching people to click at 100 banners a day because no one has time to read so much. Another is GDPR policies which are great but a huge hassle for smaller orgs and companies, and not really targeted them in the first place. Everything always ends up a win for the largest players, while the smaller ones struggle to maintain legality. That has been my experience with a few GDPR processes. Another annoying thing is the forced Public Procurements of software solutions if you're more than 50% publicly funded in EU. Again good intentions but it just makes the big players hire huge amounts of lawyers and sales people to game the process to win then create bad software. That's the problem with regulation. The free market is definitely not free after consolidation and monopolisation but if you're going to regulate you need the absolute best consultants to guide the process and somehow that step always gets bungled.
sensanaty 3y ago
> I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served... Yes, because I can tell them to fuck off from harvesting all my data and have an easy, legally enforceable way to tell them to delete whatever data they've harvested off me. I've reported a few websites that have done shady shit with the cookie banners and even saw them get some fines, so I'm perfectly happy that companies can't hoover up any and all data about me that they want to feed the pockets of some rich assholes an ocean over. If a company can't exist without massive privacy violations and personal data exfiltration then they deserve to die.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > Yes, because I can tell them to fuck off from harvesting all my data and have an easy, legally enforceable way to tell them to delete whatever data they've harvested off me you are living in a dream. the NSA collects data on everyone and you can't delete your data there.
  - sensanaty 3y ago
    Right, so let's just give up on every random online entity stealing all your personal data! Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good. I don't like that gov't agencies do it either, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy that there's at least some consequences for others that are trying to do it. Also if a nation-state level entity is targeting me specifically, then I'm screwed even if they don't have any of my personal data.
drakonka 3y ago
As an EU citizen, yes I feel well-served. Having been burned by companies refusing to delete my personal information before when trying to close accounts, I appreciate having some regulations and basic rights in this respect. I also feel safer shopping online and not getting "stalked" by personalized ads everywhere is nice. It was a bit of a pain to manually reject all the _purposefully_ annoying cookie consent banners that companies started pulling, but now there's plugins for that, which rejects everything for me by default.
IanCal 3y ago
> This is such an understated point. I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served by e.g. the pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations[1]. Do they feel like the benefits they get are worth it? What would it take for that calculus to change? Absolutely. It goes far beyond cookie management, it's a fundamental thing about what you're allowed to do with my data without my consent. You know you can block them right? Ublock origin has "annoyances" in the lists, just tick that.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > Ublock origin has "annoyances" in the lists, just tick that. you know quite a few people use the things called mobile phones?
  - fiforpg 3y ago
    Firefox supports ublock on mobile.
    - andelink 3y ago
      Same with Orion browser on iOS
    - sensanaty 3y ago
      Plus DNS-level blocking is also better than nothing and works just fine on phones. Not affiliated just a happy customer, but I have NextDNS on my work iPhone and it manages to block most of the really annoying stuff even in Safari.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      And has zero market share. Thanks for the valuable comment.
  - IanCal 3y ago
    If you tone down the sarcasm, you could have just asked how to do it on mobile phones. Then you might have realised that's a question you could have asked elsewhere as a search, and you'd have found your answer. I've found that moving towards a much friendlier/professional tone on HN leads to better outcomes and more importantly better thinking through what I'm saying. As others have said, get a browser that supports addons and enjoy browsing the web without ads and these banners.
ubercore 3y ago
As an American living in Europe now, yeah it's great. Also, you see how hostile some stuff in the US is to non-US visitors. Lots of local US news sites, for instance, just throw a plain HTTP error at you because they don't want to mess with GDPR.
RandomLensman 3y ago
A lot of people in the large EU countries basically want their countries to be museums - so keeping new things out is fine with them.
stefs 3y ago
if "hostile environment for online businesses" means they aren't free to do as they please without repercussions and do have to implement at least the simplest and most basic consumer protection rules then yes, i absolutely feel well served. you're picking out the cookie banner (which is annoying mostly because companies aren't implementing it properly) which is just a small part of a wealth of regulations which give us control over our data. and then you're ignoring all the other extremely valuable regulations that protect customers. and online shops are still able to make a profit here. they just can't completely abuse their customers as they please. yet. for the most part.
dimask 3y ago
Yes I do feel. I have no invested interest in the online advertising industry as to not be.
scriptproof 3y ago
"pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations" It is very annoyous but it is also the choice of the sites, you can put a discret banner at the bottom and not disrupt the reading if you want to not annoy people. These "regulations against us giants" may also have positive effects. They forced Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers on Windows, something requested by Firefox and Opera and that killed Internet Explorer and permitted modern browsers including Google Chrome to florish.
- runako 3y ago
  > They forced Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers on Windows Wasn't this an outcome of the US antitrust trial against Microsoft in the late 1990s?
Version467 3y ago
Absolutely. We got a usb c iPhone, apple will have to allow sideloading in the very near future, there’s some repairability stuff in the works, etc. All in all, as an EU citizen I very much feel like the regulation has been a big benefit for consumers.
jacomoRodriguez 3y ago
Yes, I'm very happy the the EU is trying to protect the privacy and data of its citisense. I prefer this much to the "friss oder stirb" mentality of other countries regulations. And also let me mention the unified usb-c atpater regulation, the opening of messenger protocols and app shops! I honestly believe the EU is making tech better for the whole world!
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > the EU is trying to protect the privacy and data of its citisense Thats the same EU which is trying to break encryption we are talking about?
  - jacomoRodriguez 3y ago
    actually, fair point. Not sure what's going wrong there, but I really hope that does not go through as proposed. But I hold on to the opinion that the EU is generally doing a lot of beneficial regulations in the tech space.

by runako 3y ago

fractalb 3y ago

There is no hope to redeem the Web of these banners :(

roboben 3y ago

Simple solution: Do not use cookies which are not strictly necessary and you don’t need a banner.

runako 3y ago
I was going to write something tongue in cheek but instead I will simply say that your "simple solution" automatically opts you out of a lot of tooling that site operators have grown to find indispensable over the last couple of decades. Compliance with the EU regulations such that you can legally operate a website without a cookie banner establishes a fairly retrograde set of bounds on how you operate your site. Which is their prerogative[1]. I'm just pointing out that the people who run the EU's official websites aren't able to operate inside those bounds, so it's fair to say those bounds are not commercially reasonable in general for functional sites. QED the banners are de facto required. 1 - The extensive reach of the law is breathtaking. The EU claims jurisdiction over any web property, based anywhere in the world, that might be seen by an EU national.
- archerx 3y ago
  What tooling? There are no tools that I need to implement on my sites that requires third party cookies. Maybe I just respect my audience and not try to spy every last detail about them?
  - runako 3y ago
    Really not trying to make a value judgement here. Just observing that many Web professionals do find value in tools that use third-party cookies, and such value is not always about spying or selling data. For example, the European Parliament website uses third-party cookies for analytics and for Web streaming. Yes, they can run the whole stack themselves. It is also a) more work and b) not how most of the industry works. The European Parliament with the resources of the EU, finds it expeditious to use 3P cookies and just display a cookie banner. How reasonable is it to expect sites with fewer resources to do similar interesting things on the Web without also falling afoul of the EU law?
    - efdee 3y ago
      I don't get your point. You are allowed to use those tools, but if you do, you need to get the user's consent. What you are looking for is a way to use these tools, of which you don't really know what they're going to use this data for or how and why they are tracking me, without my consent. I find it very strange that this is something you object to.
      - runako 3y ago
        > You are allowed to use those tools, but if you do, you need to get the user's consent. We are saying the same thing. Yes, you can use the tools, but then you require consent from the user as the very first thing they see on your website. > I find it very strange that this is something you object to. As a non-EU national, I don't derive the benefits of Do Not Delete etc. I do not ever care that a site is using 3P cookies to do e.g. on-page analytics. The cookie banners are a net negative for me.

t_mann 3y ago

I think that having the right to ask companies to tell you what personal data they're storing on you and asking them to delete it is well worth the minor annoyance of dealing with cookie banners, which are largely the result of the industry trying to discredit that regulation, btw (until they became something that can be de facto considered part of the law through adopted practice). As regards the lesser availability of American tech, I'm sure that's much more limited in China, which coincidentally happens to have the most notable domestic AI industry outside of the US. It's something that economists can be reluctant to admit, but for which there's solid evidence by now afaik, that at least temporary import barriers, if done right, can be a boost to industrial development. The thing that is weird about the EU regulation is that they're putting the same shackles on their domestic tech industry, which is dwarfed by the giant US incumbents who have more resources to invest in compliance than startups (apart from the bits that apparently only target said encumbants that some posters have mentioned here, which I don't know anything about).

runako 3y ago
To your first point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38553315 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38553315 Again, folks say the cookie banners are not required, but even the EU web managers are unable to build a site without them. So maybe they are "practically" required for all sites? > they're putting the exact same shackles on their domestic tech industry The Digital Markets Act is an attempt to fix this by targeting the American tech companies specifically, without explicitly naming them in the law. I would venture that the DMA is why Gemini isn't available in the EU right now, like it is in the rest of the world where US companies are allowed to do commerce.
- t_mann 3y ago
  On the second point, you were replying while I was updating my comment, sorry about that. I know it's a controversial opinion, but from the perspective of the EU, I think having regulation that effectively only targets US Tech makes sense for the reasons mentioned above. It may not exactly be 'fair game', but to anyone who thinks the US isn't doing the exact same thing, I'm sure Airbus executives for one would have some enlightening stories. On the first point, I think user rights trump developer convenience, so I stand by what I said.

andrewmutz 3y ago

The banners drive me absolutely crazy. And I don't care if the authors of the law never intended the banners, policy is judged on is consequences (not it's intent). Is it possible for the law to be amended so that non-EU citizens can use a browser flag that just says "I'm fine withe the cookies"? That way Europeans can enjoy all the cookie consent clicking and the rest of us can go back to how the web was before?

berkes 3y ago
We had (have?) that flag in browsers. But once too many people switched it in the 'do not track' mode, the industry decided to simply ignore it. You cannot get a more clear sign that government pressure and laws are needed, than that.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  I think there's a recent ruling states that web pages can't ignore the Do Not Track flag sent by the browser, and another one is coming for cookie preferences, too.
- andybak 3y ago
  > But once too many people switched it in the 'do not track' mode, the industry decided to simply ignore it. My recollection was that it was Microsoft deciding to turn this flag on by default that led to it being ignored by Google. I.e. Microsoft saw a chance to use it against their biggest rival, diluting it in the process and gaining nothing. I think there's an argument for trying again but requiring an explicit choice. And then give it the force of law.
- thrdbndndn 3y ago
  I do not use "do not track" mode but these banners are still there.
fauigerzigerk 3y ago
The law might get fixed eventually, but I fear we will never go back to how the web was before because flooding people's screens with popups has become the norm everywhere and among all types of organisations with very few exceptions.

makeitdouble 3y ago

As a former EU citizen, yes it was great. Most of the dirty tricks pulled when you register or buy something online were off by default, and even if I somewhat got ropped in some stinky mailing list a litteral single click would get me out of it. Even killing your account could be done in one legally binding email. No 50 pages "do you really want to quit ?" and no "Do you not not not not not refuse to to not let us delete your account ?" last question. Now I'm feeling how bad it is on the other side of the fence, and the funny thing is people don't seem to give a shit because they never experienced decent regulation and being fucked by brands is just the way of life.

deleted 3y ago
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BLKNSLVR 3y ago
The indoctrination of some US citizens into acceptance of the tech giants' rape and pillage of personal data for profit is surprisingly strong. But maybe it shouldn't be surprising given the example of Google's precedent-setting profitability from guiding that particular path.
ekianjo 3y ago
> they never experienced decent regulation decent regulation like the cookie policy bullshit that makes people waste 30 minutes per day? Thanks bud
- rizky05 3y ago
  [dead]
- Popeyes 3y ago
  The flaw in regulation was not to respect the Do Not Track signal from the browser, that would have killed off a lot of cookie banners (and is an option that users). But I'm guessing that it was lobbied against. Similarly, it has generated a large industry in cookie compliance services.

Joeri 3y ago

I challenge you to point out the specific paragraphs of GDPR you object to as somehow unreasonable or targeting american tech companies. The cookie banners are a bad outcome for sure, but GDPR does not mandate them. They are an indirect result of the bureaucracy installed by GDPR which does not incentivize user-friendly design of privacy-aware features. I don’t want GDPR rolled back, even as a software developer, because I think it creates the kind of protections everyone in the world should have. But I would like a rule clarification on how to build compliant websites without cookie banners, so I blame the administration (the EU commission) but not the legislation. The digital markets act similarly is the kind of regulation we need everywhere. It’s only hostile to online businesses because other places don’t have those kind of guard rails on the abusive behavior of big tech. Now, as far as the EU AI act. I think that in its original intent when it was specifically targeting things like public face recognition by governments it was a very good idea, but it has been hijacked and in its current form it would be very harmful if passed. I don’t think it particularly targets american tech companies, because the biggest victims would be EU AI startups like Mistral.

mahkeiro 3y ago
Exactly, and this law is used everyday against European companies that tries to grab too much data. The US is the epitome of the surveillance society on par with China (look at how Apple wad sending push notification, or how phone companies just share your location data with the world). Here in Europe we fight by making sure that the data cannot be collected in the first place.
runako 3y ago
> specific paragraphs of GDPR GDPR doesn't target American tech companies, that's the DMA. Essentially, the framing is there are companies that are "gatekeepers" and then everyone else. The criteria for gatekeepers are theoretically objective, but they were written with a specific set of companies in mind. As a consequence, the designated companies except TikTok just so happen to be based in the US. Further, the rules were written such that EU firms like Spotify are not eligible. Also, Vodafone somehow is not considered a gatekeeper in any relevant digital market. Anyway, no judgement. We are in a time of rising protectionism. This may be good for Europe. But the DMA clearly targeted a set of West Coast US companies and it's doing what it was intended to do. I do wish they would modify GDPR to only apply to people e.g. physically in Europe or similar. It really does make the Web worse for billions of people who are not EU nationals and derive absolutely no benefits from the banners. While they're regulating browsers and plugs, could they make browser makers ship EU versions of their browsers that show the popups, while the rest of us save tons of clicks? EU nationals could install EU versions of their favorite browsers and the rest of us would just use the stock versions.

silversmith 3y ago

EU citizen - I love it. Couple clicks to tell a website not to profile me is nothing. You already are rejecting mailing lists and offers everywhere, what's one more thing. I don't get spam mailing lists or robocalls. I can safely sign up to services knowing I will be able to unsubscribe easily. I can buy things online knowing they can be easily returned. Yes, some of my clients lament the inability to use those patterns. I politely smile and nod.

Notatheist 3y ago
>I don't get spam mailing lists or robocalls Not strictly true. I get robocalls and WhatsApp spam messages from country code +1 all the time.
IanCal 3y ago
> Couple clicks to tell a website not to profile me is nothing Also with an ad blocker, see if you can turn on hiding the banners. Without you clicking "yes" they can't use consent for a reason, so this is equivalent to clicking "no".

Roark66 3y ago

As an EU citizen I hate it (cookie popups). I think the stupid regulation achieved nothing and essentially "broke the Internet" by normalising popups that obscure content while anyone that tracks can do so using alternatives. Sadly the EU is being led by a clique of unelected beaurocrats (commisars - like in the USSR) and the most democratic of institutions - the EU parliament as well as national parliaments have very little influence on what is being proposed and bulldozed in. For example, let's say in a given country literaly everyone is opposed to ACTA and the country has the balls to veto it (despite the beaurocrat's usual tricks of rolling in together things everyone wants and needs with absolute crap like ACTA). The same idea is brought back again 2 years later (ACTA v2). It is vetoed again, it is brought back again 2 years later and this time bypasses the veto by being "voluntary". "Countries that don't want it don't need to implement" - great on paper. Until you realise most people in the EU oppose it, including in the countries that implement it and by the fact of implementing it in the majority they make it a de-facto standard which increases the cost of doing business affected in the countries that now have differing regulations. Same thing is being done with the "EU constitution". No one, other than it's rulers, wants the EU to be a country. The idea got shot down immediately in a popular vote. So they are essentially implementing it anyway bit by bit by stretching the law and outright breaking it (especially against countries that vote in parties that are not in the EPP club). I'm a big fan of the idea of EU as it was before the treaty of Nice. It was a group of countries with similar values creating an open market and agreeing to make decisions affecting it together. Sadly the institutions that were created to oversee that structure have the priorities of their own (increasing their own power) and using both the method mentioned above and simply doing things "extra legally" (as lawyers say) they do whatever they want and if the extremely corrupt "court" tied to them decides it's OK there is no way to question it. These bastards say they are "strenghtening the EU". They are destroying it. Anti EU sentiment is increasing especially amongst younger voters in many countries and guess who will be very happy when it all goes tits up? One guy called Putin who has been financing a lot of the corruption we see (through countries like Qatar etc).

suslik 3y ago
I hope we will find a way to fix it without ruining all the good stuff - open borders, free market, consistent regulatory practices. European land is soacked with blood, Alsace–Lorraine, all that. A war between France and Germany seems absolutely unimaginable now - but it shouldn't be. Only 70-odd years ago Germans were exterminating French citizens of jewish descent while Brits were bombing german cities to the ground). When I say to my friends this horrible past is not gone for good and can come back if we're not careful, they think I'm mental, but I'm not. Russia and Ukraine is a lesson of a bad joke that became a reality. That's exactly why the nationalistic resentiment in Europe is so dangerous - we all know all to well what exactly it can culminate into. Unfortunately, I don't see a trend towards fixing the problems within EU - the beauracrats fully embraced old european maximas, "After me, the flood" and "Let them eat cake". Someone should remind them where all that leads to.

bayindirh 3y ago

Being able to tell a webpage that they can't share my data to their 780 data partners in a legally binding way with a click is priceless.

pjmlp 3y ago

Yes, I feel well served and we should regulate even more. And even though I tend to complain about UNIX like OSes, maybe they are the key to free Europe from US corporations operating systems, like a few other countries are already doing as well. We should stick to international regulated programing languages and OSes, that free us from dependencies on export technology regulations.

gmerc 3y ago

The EU is preventing a wholesale sellout of the continent. It’s great.

sussmannbaka 3y ago

The banners (in their annoying form) are illegal under gdpr and sites are pivoting away. The DNT header will replace it, as it entirely suffices to signal my opting out: I tell the site owner in a machine readable form that I don’t wish to be tracked. There was no legal basis for this to mean anything before. It feels pretty good to not be sold out by my government to the highest bidding tech company and if the price I’m paying is having no access to wildly overhyped AI toys, I’ll manage.

IanCal 3y ago
> The banners (in their annoying form) are illegal under gdpr and sites are pivoting away This needs to be more widely known. Also, because they need active consent - any cookie banner blocking extension (weird to see so few people talk about this when it's seen as obvious we need ad blockers) means no consent and is perfectly fine under GDPR. You're not required to signal "no".
anhner 3y ago
> if the price I’m paying is having no access to wildly overhyped AI toys wildly overhyped AI toys that are not even available in the countries where they launched (Gemini Pro is not multimodal as others have pointed out, Gemini Ultra will be available only next year)

jug 3y ago

I think the cookie banners didn't work as intended and they're a good example of the lack of insight in the web and how web designers tick by people writing the laws. Other than those though, I like most of the regulations including Digital Markets Act that is (probably) behind this delay. They give us much better control over where and how our data is handled, give us leverage to have corporations delete said data. Microsoft even built a better version of Windows 11 for us* (but only for us) and that was awesome to watch happen. The difference will probably be even greater in Windows 12. Without the EU, very little of this would have happened and that's simply too much power to corporations. Yes, "you chose to use them so you decided to follow their terms of use and privacy clauses" but key here is how you're more and more often required to use certain services online or you're put at significant disadvantages ranging from keeping in touch with your family or friends to being disadvantaged in the job market. * https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/previewing-changes-in-windows-to-comply-with-the-digital-markets-act-in-the-european-economic-area/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/preview...

MyFirstSass 3y ago

As a EU citizen; The intentions are good, some of GDPR is great, and some of the huge fines have been welcome in a world where corporations usually gets tiny fines. That said, as with most heavy bureaucracies there's just not enough internal organisational tech education so lobbying and misunderstandings end up diluting the process. Example is the cookie banners leading people away from smaller competitors strengthening monopolies, and teaching people to click at 100 banners a day because no one has time to read so much. Another is GDPR policies which are great but a huge hassle for smaller orgs and companies, and not really targeted them in the first place. Everything always ends up a win for the largest players, while the smaller ones struggle to maintain legality. That has been my experience with a few GDPR processes. Another annoying thing is the forced Public Procurements of software solutions if you're more than 50% publicly funded in EU. Again good intentions but it just makes the big players hire huge amounts of lawyers and sales people to game the process to win then create bad software. That's the problem with regulation. The free market is definitely not free after consolidation and monopolisation but if you're going to regulate you need the absolute best consultants to guide the process and somehow that step always gets bungled.

sensanaty 3y ago

> I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served... Yes, because I can tell them to fuck off from harvesting all my data and have an easy, legally enforceable way to tell them to delete whatever data they've harvested off me. I've reported a few websites that have done shady shit with the cookie banners and even saw them get some fines, so I'm perfectly happy that companies can't hoover up any and all data about me that they want to feed the pockets of some rich assholes an ocean over. If a company can't exist without massive privacy violations and personal data exfiltration then they deserve to die.

ekianjo 3y ago
> Yes, because I can tell them to fuck off from harvesting all my data and have an easy, legally enforceable way to tell them to delete whatever data they've harvested off me you are living in a dream. the NSA collects data on everyone and you can't delete your data there.
- sensanaty 3y ago
  Right, so let's just give up on every random online entity stealing all your personal data! Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good. I don't like that gov't agencies do it either, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy that there's at least some consequences for others that are trying to do it. Also if a nation-state level entity is targeting me specifically, then I'm screwed even if they don't have any of my personal data.

drakonka 3y ago

As an EU citizen, yes I feel well-served. Having been burned by companies refusing to delete my personal information before when trying to close accounts, I appreciate having some regulations and basic rights in this respect. I also feel safer shopping online and not getting "stalked" by personalized ads everywhere is nice. It was a bit of a pain to manually reject all the _purposefully_ annoying cookie consent banners that companies started pulling, but now there's plugins for that, which rejects everything for me by default.

IanCal 3y ago

> This is such an understated point. I wonder if EU citizens feel well-served by e.g. the pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations[1]. Do they feel like the benefits they get are worth it? What would it take for that calculus to change? Absolutely. It goes far beyond cookie management, it's a fundamental thing about what you're allowed to do with my data without my consent. You know you can block them right? Ublock origin has "annoyances" in the lists, just tick that.

ekianjo 3y ago
> Ublock origin has "annoyances" in the lists, just tick that. you know quite a few people use the things called mobile phones?
- fiforpg 3y ago
  Firefox supports ublock on mobile.
  - andelink 3y ago
    Same with Orion browser on iOS
  - sensanaty 3y ago
    Plus DNS-level blocking is also better than nothing and works just fine on phones. Not affiliated just a happy customer, but I have NextDNS on my work iPhone and it manages to block most of the really annoying stuff even in Safari.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    And has zero market share. Thanks for the valuable comment.
- IanCal 3y ago
  If you tone down the sarcasm, you could have just asked how to do it on mobile phones. Then you might have realised that's a question you could have asked elsewhere as a search, and you'd have found your answer. I've found that moving towards a much friendlier/professional tone on HN leads to better outcomes and more importantly better thinking through what I'm saying. As others have said, get a browser that supports addons and enjoy browsing the web without ads and these banners.

ubercore 3y ago

As an American living in Europe now, yeah it's great. Also, you see how hostile some stuff in the US is to non-US visitors. Lots of local US news sites, for instance, just throw a plain HTTP error at you because they don't want to mess with GDPR.

RandomLensman 3y ago

A lot of people in the large EU countries basically want their countries to be museums - so keeping new things out is fine with them.

stefs 3y ago

if "hostile environment for online businesses" means they aren't free to do as they please without repercussions and do have to implement at least the simplest and most basic consumer protection rules then yes, i absolutely feel well served. you're picking out the cookie banner (which is annoying mostly because companies aren't implementing it properly) which is just a small part of a wealth of regulations which give us control over our data. and then you're ignoring all the other extremely valuable regulations that protect customers. and online shops are still able to make a profit here. they just can't completely abuse their customers as they please. yet. for the most part.

dimask 3y ago

Yes I do feel. I have no invested interest in the online advertising industry as to not be.

scriptproof 3y ago

"pop-up banners that afflict the global web as a result of their regulations" It is very annoyous but it is also the choice of the sites, you can put a discret banner at the bottom and not disrupt the reading if you want to not annoy people. These "regulations against us giants" may also have positive effects. They forced Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers on Windows, something requested by Firefox and Opera and that killed Internet Explorer and permitted modern browsers including Google Chrome to florish.

runako 3y ago
> They forced Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers on Windows Wasn't this an outcome of the US antitrust trial against Microsoft in the late 1990s?

Version467 3y ago

Absolutely. We got a usb c iPhone, apple will have to allow sideloading in the very near future, there’s some repairability stuff in the works, etc. All in all, as an EU citizen I very much feel like the regulation has been a big benefit for consumers.

jacomoRodriguez 3y ago

Yes, I'm very happy the the EU is trying to protect the privacy and data of its citisense. I prefer this much to the "friss oder stirb" mentality of other countries regulations. And also let me mention the unified usb-c atpater regulation, the opening of messenger protocols and app shops! I honestly believe the EU is making tech better for the whole world!

ekianjo 3y ago
> the EU is trying to protect the privacy and data of its citisense Thats the same EU which is trying to break encryption we are talking about?
- jacomoRodriguez 3y ago
  actually, fair point. Not sure what's going wrong there, but I really hope that does not go through as proposed. But I hold on to the opinion that the EU is generally doing a lot of beneficial regulations in the tech space.