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The "reasonable interpretation of GDPR" would kill nearly every tech company that offers services to the general public for free. You can say good bye to Maps,

The "reasonable interpretation of GDPR" would kill nearly every tech company that offers services to the general public for free. You can say good bye to Maps, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc. The EU fundamentally does not understand what it takes to run the services it relies on.

PeterisP 3y ago
They're free to run non-tracking ads, they're free to charge money and refuse service to non-payers, they're free to quit EU market, but they're not free to track people who do not want to be tracked (no matter if they're paying or not, no matter if they're seeing ads or not), privacy in EU is not something the users can trade away or sell in a contract, it either has to be gifted as free choice (and free to revoke) or Meta can't use it, GDPR doesn't allow for a legal option to "buy" it with discounts or free service. GDPR is a relatively uncontroversial law within EU, it's not a narrow-niche-lobby law, it's democratically passed with general acceptance from all EU regions and diverse party groups, and there is no meaningful opposition to it from EU voters, and it works quite well for all the mainstream use cases (telecomms, banking, various loyalty programs of physical and online stores and the big retail chains, targeting for phone and mail marketing, treatment of data by landlords and creditors, healthcare data, all the intermediaries for insurance or healthcare or hiring, etc, etc) which arguably are far more important to one's daily life than whatever Meta does, and only the niche of internet ads is still lagging behind due to political reasons related to how global companies run their operations through Ireland and the tiny Irish DPA couldn't (or wouldn't, there are some perverse incentives at play) enforce things in a timely manner. While I personally don't think that it "would kill nearly every tech company that offers services to the general public for free. You can say good bye to Maps, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc.", I'll accept that on this aspect perhaps I'm mistaken and you're totally right, however, that has little to do with the grandparent argument that it's hard to interpret - the law is reasonably clear to interpret and that (anti-tracking) interpretation has been reaffirmed when challenged in courts, and even if it turns out that the EU voters are making a mistake because they(we) fundamentally don't understand something, that's still not an accidental mistake, that is intentional choice. And IMHO it's quite straightforward that they(we) in EU have the right to make that choice even if it turns out to be stupid in the long run, and Meta doesn't have the right (neither legal nor moral) to deny EU people that choice, they have to follow the law as intended or leave.

PeterisP 3y ago

They're free to run non-tracking ads, they're free to charge money and refuse service to non-payers, they're free to quit EU market, but they're not free to track people who do not want to be tracked (no matter if they're paying or not, no matter if they're seeing ads or not), privacy in EU is not something the users can trade away or sell in a contract, it either has to be gifted as free choice (and free to revoke) or Meta can't use it, GDPR doesn't allow for a legal option to "buy" it with discounts or free service. GDPR is a relatively uncontroversial law within EU, it's not a narrow-niche-lobby law, it's democratically passed with general acceptance from all EU regions and diverse party groups, and there is no meaningful opposition to it from EU voters, and it works quite well for all the mainstream use cases (telecomms, banking, various loyalty programs of physical and online stores and the big retail chains, targeting for phone and mail marketing, treatment of data by landlords and creditors, healthcare data, all the intermediaries for insurance or healthcare or hiring, etc, etc) which arguably are far more important to one's daily life than whatever Meta does, and only the niche of internet ads is still lagging behind due to political reasons related to how global companies run their operations through Ireland and the tiny Irish DPA couldn't (or wouldn't, there are some perverse incentives at play) enforce things in a timely manner. While I personally don't think that it "would kill nearly every tech company that offers services to the general public for free. You can say good bye to Maps, YouTube, WhatsApp, etc.", I'll accept that on this aspect perhaps I'm mistaken and you're totally right, however, that has little to do with the grandparent argument that it's hard to interpret - the law is reasonably clear to interpret and that (anti-tracking) interpretation has been reaffirmed when challenged in courts, and even if it turns out that the EU voters are making a mistake because they(we) fundamentally don't understand something, that's still not an accidental mistake, that is intentional choice. And IMHO it's quite straightforward that they(we) in EU have the right to make that choice even if it turns out to be stupid in the long run, and Meta doesn't have the right (neither legal nor moral) to deny EU people that choice, they have to follow the law as intended or leave.