6 ms·

I think the EU has really hit the jackpot with Apple, Google, and the like. It's not that these big players don't deserve a slap on the wrist; it's more about h

by wslh 3y ago

I think the EU has really hit the jackpot with Apple, Google, and the like. It's not that these big players don't deserve a slap on the wrist; it's more about how long the EU waited to act and the deafening silence before now. Remember the Microsoft antitrust drama in 2001? [1] That saga said more about the political games than anything to do with Microsoft breaking the rules. It feels like today's crackdowns on the tech giants are more about putting on a show than enforcing the law fairly. I'm just hoping the EU doesn't decide we need another annoying pop-up or something. We've got enough of those already. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

tomas789 3y ago
I don’t know about milk cow. This is peanuts in the whole EU budget. I think that EU needs to keep a strong position to be compelling for many people. Therwise many might start to see it as an irrelevant institution.
- wslh 3y ago
  Why now and not years before? As web users, daily, we see all kind of blatant abuses that EU (and USA...) don't see. BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms.
  - shafyy 3y ago
    In the article, it says that Spotify filed the complained in 2019 and these big cases can take a long time. There's no big consipiracy theory, I'm sorry! > BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms. What?
    - wslh 3y ago
      This is not a conspiracy theory. Big cases shouldn't take a long time with the existing technology. It is on the political side to know how to execute laws faster. People around the world are silently accepting slow law systems instead of speeding them up. We are in 2024. BTW, I have experience working with lawyers and the legal system in significant cases. You will cry or laugh if you witness the processes and tools used.
      - microtonal 3y ago
        I am not sure where you are going with this. Yes, we would all like this to go faster. Bureaucracy is slow. But at least the EU has strong consumer protection, privacy, and anti-competitive laws and we all benefit from it (at least EU citizens).
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        wslh 3y ago
        No, bureacracy is accepted as slow and there are organizations who are responsible and are paid for improving this. This argument is not about the EU. People are accepting bureaucracies in a Kafkian way and in a time where there are no excuses. Regarding EU, you said that forcing websites to put UI dialogs asking for accepting cookies is a good consumer protection?
        microtonal 3y ago
        Regarding EU, you said that forcing websites to put UI dialogs asking for accepting cookies is a good consumer protection? You take one issue and try to nullify all consumer laws with it. First, cookie banners are not legal anymore. They should be a dialog where 'No' is the first and foremost option and 'Yes' (opt in to tracking) requires permission per type of tracking. IMO this is a large improvement over: don't even ask, just track users based on PII everywhere, which is the case pretty much everywhere outside the EU. The fact that you see banners everywhere is data hungriness of those websites. They could simply not track you by default and no banner would be needed. Though I wouldn't be surprised if a future iteration of the GDPR will forbid such banners and require no tracking to be the default. But leaving this specific points. There are many great consumer laws in the EU: * Your data bundle is valid in all EU countries. Before the EU intervened, providers would charge you through the nose for data outside your country. * A web shop in any EU country is required to deliver to any other EU country. You live in Germany, but see a phone at a Dutch web shop that is much cheaper? The Dutch web shop cannot refuse you service because you are in Germany. * You can return any online purchase within 14 days without justification (14 days after receiving the product). * There is a single Euro payment system (SEPA). How big this is, is hard to grasp if you are in a large country. But it was hard to transfer money between countries, let alone without incurring fees. Now you can transfer money to any account in the EU without fees using in a uniform way (IBAN account number). * Strong warranty laws. E.g. if a company does not solve an issue within a reasonable time, they are required to give you a full refund. I could go on and on, there are so many good examples where EU regulations improve day-to-day life.
    - wslh 3y ago
      >> BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms. >What? Please tell how it is relevant in macro politics.
      - LunaSea 3y ago
        It's the largest unified market in the world?
        wslh 3y ago
        [flagged]
        LunaSea 3y ago
        Is this relevant regarding consumer market importance for a brand? If I recall correctly, in the matter of the Ukraine war, the US already folded no?
        wslh 3y ago
        I mentioned realpolitik and you continued the discussion from that point.
        izacus 3y ago
        You spewed out some bull and people called you on it to provide some support.
        ttepasse 3y ago
        The EU itself is the biggest financier of the Ukraine. That is in addition to the individual contributions of the EU member states. The military assistance is of course a member state prerogative, but pure financial support is not nothing – after all Ukraine tries to run a country while fighting a war. And Ukraine uses that money to purchase that military equipment. Source: IFW Ukraine Support Tracker https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
  - bsder 3y ago
    > Why now and not years before? You would prefer that the EU slap businesses around with arbitrary fines faster? Be careful what you wish for; you might get it. Law and government do not move fast. Yeah, sometimes that sucks. However, you want your law mostly predictable. You don't want to suddenly wind up in jail because some activity is making Dear Leader look bad on Weibo today.
microtonal 3y ago
Not this again. These fines are barely a blip on the radar compared to the yearly EU budget and the budgets of Western European countries. Also, the EU has handed out fines to anti-competitive companies for a long time. E.g. 855 million Euro in 2001 for vitamin cartels: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_01_1625 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_01_... Intel for 1B in 2009 for abusing its dominant position in x86 CPUs: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_745 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_... Also various car companies, like Daimler in 2016 for 1B. The EU is really different than the US, in that most citizens and countries believe in market regulation. And all these regulations like GDPR, DMA, DSA, etc. are all expressions of that. It just takes years for these regulations, to land, first because writing such regulations is complex, especially because companies try to find loopholes. Secondly, we are 27 nations, and that just makes things go slower. After they are accepted they are usually effective, e.g. takeout functionality of various large services were mostly a side-effect or EU legislation requiring that users can get their stored data and get it removed. It just takes many years to finetune, because companies unintentionally or intentionally misinterpret them (like the many websites that have a GDPR popup, where opt-in is a single click and opt-out is multiple clicks, which is illegal under the GDPR).
- withinboredom 3y ago
  > because companies unintentionally or intentionally misinterpret them The GDPR basically boils down to 1) don't be an asshole. 2) explain how you are using personal data and who you are sharing it with. 3) let people delete their personal data (within reason). 4) if you get hacked, let your customers know within a reasonable time frame. It's pretty hard to fuck that up and the number of companies that fuck it up is sad.
- lucianbr 3y ago
  I am european, I live in Europe and I much prefer the EU approach to the US approach. I still feel that the EU drags its feet on enforcing rules on large european companies, like the automakers, while moving slightly better on US companies. Yeah, they did eventually fine Volkswagen. After the US got the ball rolling, and it became impossible to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Of course, the US does the same thing. The 737 MAX was grounded in Europe, while the US FAA dragged their feet until it really became obvious that it must be done. The GDPR DMA DSA are really great. I'm not at all sure we would have them if the internet giants were european. How many laws requiring interoperability between car parts or industrial machine parts do we have? Thank bog there are still competing governments.
pgeorgi 3y ago
> I'm just hoping the EU doesn't decide we need another annoying pop-up or something. We've got enough of those already. It didn't. The website operators decided to be a pain towards their customers so they can continue to track the hell out of them. They could just, you know, not do that.
- microtonal 3y ago
  100% this. Though in the end they'll only end up hurting themselves, because if it doesn't work, I would not be surprised if the GDPR gets updated to require opt-out by default without any user action and opt-in as an explicit action.
  - hugi 3y ago
    Seconded. I find it absolutely amazing that people try to paint the EU in a bad light for obliging web sites to let their users know they're being tracked. I'm grateful that I'm protected by institutions that work for the people, not for the corporations.
- lloeki 3y ago
  Yup, it merely surfaces all the bad actors out there that were previously unseen (except on your CPU/network/flamegraph) I mean when one pushes me a banner with a clear CTA to accept everything and an intractable rat's nest of dark patterns to reject anything then I clearly and unambiguously know which side of the line they stand. IOW GDPR works as expected.
- weberer 3y ago
  >They could just, you know, not do that. Would you rather take a 50% pay cut, or slightly annoy somebody else? Because that's essentially the choices they're giving companies. They should have 100% seen through this, and made the do-not-track header enforceable. Legislators actively chose not to though.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Browsers could have implemented something that was compatible and sent the header accordingly, but they didn't. It's not the government's fault this is the way the industry implemented the law.
izacus 3y ago
I'm absolutely happy if those companies fund the new north/south rail corridor, it'll help us in EU much more than airpods. And if they decide to leave and let local companies take over certain parts of the market, keeping profits and jobs locally (instead of Bermuda and Cayman islands) then all the better. I don't think we can lose here as EU citizens. It's not like Trump will do anything different to protect US when he gets elected.
troupo 3y ago
> I'm just hoping the EU doesn't decide we need another annoying pop-up or something. We've got enough of those already. Literally nothing in the GDPR or the (updated) ePrivacy Directive requires those popups. Nothing. Nada. Zero.
- austinkhale 3y ago
  Is your contention that all of these websites and providers all simultaneously decided, incorrectly, to use these popups and that there is no legal requirement for them?
  - gls2ro 3y ago
    I think the assertion is correct: IANAL: GDPR does not require any website/webapp by default to show a popup. What GDPR requires is consent for tracking PII. If you or anyone run a website and dont track/store/process any PII tracking information without user consent you dont need the popup. Here is an example: Do not put any GA or tracking analytics that tracks PII on your web app and you can still have signups and login if you gave a good terms of use and you require consent for the user when they signup. You can even use cookies in the login/signup flow but use them only for making the auth work and not for tracking. PS: If you do signups please read the GDPR and offer to the user the option to manage their consent for accepting to provide data when they created their account: for example (IANAL) the user should be able to delete their account, download their data, retract the consent and have their account with all the info provided destroyed. You can keep data for legal reason for the minimum required period.
  - troupo 3y ago
    > Is your contention It's not my "contention". You could read the text of the law and point out the exact places where it talks about cookies, popups, or browsers: https://gdpr.eu/tag/gdpr/ https://gdpr.eu/tag/gdpr/ (Hint: there are no such places) > all of these websites and providers all simultaneously decided, incorrectly, to use these popups and that there is no legal requirement for them Yes. Yes they did. The bigger players decided that they have god-given right to your data. Facebook has literally spent the past several years arguing that in courts. The smaller players rely on a handful of literal ad-industry-owned leeches like IAB[1] or OneTrust to get their popup banners from because people are stupid and/or lazy and don't want to deal with details. So they, like you, were sold a lie of "to be compliant use our services". Sometimes sanity prevails. Here's GitHub: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ --- start quote --- Well, EU law requires you to use cookie banners if your website contains cookies that are not required for it to work. Common examples of such cookies are those used by third-party analytics, tracking, and advertising services. These services collect information about people’s behavior across the web, store it in their databases, and can use it to serve personalized ads. At GitHub, we want to protect developer privacy, and we find cookie banners quite irritating, so we decided to look for a solution. After a brief search, we found one: just don’t use any non-essential cookies. Pretty simple, really. --- end quote --- [1] Literally Interactive Advertisement Bureau. Fined 250 000 euros in 2022 for non-compliance.

by wslh 3y ago

tomas789 3y ago

I don’t know about milk cow. This is peanuts in the whole EU budget. I think that EU needs to keep a strong position to be compelling for many people. Therwise many might start to see it as an irrelevant institution.

wslh 3y ago
Why now and not years before? As web users, daily, we see all kind of blatant abuses that EU (and USA...) don't see. BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms.
- shafyy 3y ago
  In the article, it says that Spotify filed the complained in 2019 and these big cases can take a long time. There's no big consipiracy theory, I'm sorry! > BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms. What?
  - wslh 3y ago
    This is not a conspiracy theory. Big cases shouldn't take a long time with the existing technology. It is on the political side to know how to execute laws faster. People around the world are silently accepting slow law systems instead of speeding them up. We are in 2024. BTW, I have experience working with lawyers and the legal system in significant cases. You will cry or laugh if you witness the processes and tools used.
    - microtonal 3y ago
      I am not sure where you are going with this. Yes, we would all like this to go faster. Bureaucracy is slow. But at least the EU has strong consumer protection, privacy, and anti-competitive laws and we all benefit from it (at least EU citizens).
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - wslh 3y ago
        No, bureacracy is accepted as slow and there are organizations who are responsible and are paid for improving this. This argument is not about the EU. People are accepting bureaucracies in a Kafkian way and in a time where there are no excuses. Regarding EU, you said that forcing websites to put UI dialogs asking for accepting cookies is a good consumer protection?
        microtonal 3y ago
        Regarding EU, you said that forcing websites to put UI dialogs asking for accepting cookies is a good consumer protection? You take one issue and try to nullify all consumer laws with it. First, cookie banners are not legal anymore. They should be a dialog where 'No' is the first and foremost option and 'Yes' (opt in to tracking) requires permission per type of tracking. IMO this is a large improvement over: don't even ask, just track users based on PII everywhere, which is the case pretty much everywhere outside the EU. The fact that you see banners everywhere is data hungriness of those websites. They could simply not track you by default and no banner would be needed. Though I wouldn't be surprised if a future iteration of the GDPR will forbid such banners and require no tracking to be the default. But leaving this specific points. There are many great consumer laws in the EU: * Your data bundle is valid in all EU countries. Before the EU intervened, providers would charge you through the nose for data outside your country. * A web shop in any EU country is required to deliver to any other EU country. You live in Germany, but see a phone at a Dutch web shop that is much cheaper? The Dutch web shop cannot refuse you service because you are in Germany. * You can return any online purchase within 14 days without justification (14 days after receiving the product). * There is a single Euro payment system (SEPA). How big this is, is hard to grasp if you are in a large country. But it was hard to transfer money between countries, let alone without incurring fees. Now you can transfer money to any account in the EU without fees using in a uniform way (IBAN account number). * Strong warranty laws. E.g. if a company does not solve an issue within a reasonable time, they are required to give you a full refund. I could go on and on, there are so many good examples where EU regulations improve day-to-day life.
  - wslh 3y ago
    >> BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms. >What? Please tell how it is relevant in macro politics.
    - LunaSea 3y ago
      It's the largest unified market in the world?
      - wslh 3y ago
        [flagged]
        LunaSea 3y ago
        Is this relevant regarding consumer market importance for a brand? If I recall correctly, in the matter of the Ukraine war, the US already folded no?
        wslh 3y ago
        I mentioned realpolitik and you continued the discussion from that point.
        izacus 3y ago
        You spewed out some bull and people called you on it to provide some support.
        ttepasse 3y ago
        The EU itself is the biggest financier of the Ukraine. That is in addition to the individual contributions of the EU member states. The military assistance is of course a member state prerogative, but pure financial support is not nothing – after all Ukraine tries to run a country while fighting a war. And Ukraine uses that money to purchase that military equipment. Source: IFW Ukraine Support Tracker https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
- bsder 3y ago
  > Why now and not years before? You would prefer that the EU slap businesses around with arbitrary fines faster? Be careful what you wish for; you might get it. Law and government do not move fast. Yeah, sometimes that sucks. However, you want your law mostly predictable. You don't want to suddenly wind up in jail because some activity is making Dear Leader look bad on Weibo today.

microtonal 3y ago

Not this again. These fines are barely a blip on the radar compared to the yearly EU budget and the budgets of Western European countries. Also, the EU has handed out fines to anti-competitive companies for a long time. E.g. 855 million Euro in 2001 for vitamin cartels: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_01_1625 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_01_... Intel for 1B in 2009 for abusing its dominant position in x86 CPUs: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_745 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_... Also various car companies, like Daimler in 2016 for 1B. The EU is really different than the US, in that most citizens and countries believe in market regulation. And all these regulations like GDPR, DMA, DSA, etc. are all expressions of that. It just takes years for these regulations, to land, first because writing such regulations is complex, especially because companies try to find loopholes. Secondly, we are 27 nations, and that just makes things go slower. After they are accepted they are usually effective, e.g. takeout functionality of various large services were mostly a side-effect or EU legislation requiring that users can get their stored data and get it removed. It just takes many years to finetune, because companies unintentionally or intentionally misinterpret them (like the many websites that have a GDPR popup, where opt-in is a single click and opt-out is multiple clicks, which is illegal under the GDPR).

withinboredom 3y ago
> because companies unintentionally or intentionally misinterpret them The GDPR basically boils down to 1) don't be an asshole. 2) explain how you are using personal data and who you are sharing it with. 3) let people delete their personal data (within reason). 4) if you get hacked, let your customers know within a reasonable time frame. It's pretty hard to fuck that up and the number of companies that fuck it up is sad.
lucianbr 3y ago
I am european, I live in Europe and I much prefer the EU approach to the US approach. I still feel that the EU drags its feet on enforcing rules on large european companies, like the automakers, while moving slightly better on US companies. Yeah, they did eventually fine Volkswagen. After the US got the ball rolling, and it became impossible to sweep the whole thing under the rug. Of course, the US does the same thing. The 737 MAX was grounded in Europe, while the US FAA dragged their feet until it really became obvious that it must be done. The GDPR DMA DSA are really great. I'm not at all sure we would have them if the internet giants were european. How many laws requiring interoperability between car parts or industrial machine parts do we have? Thank bog there are still competing governments.

pgeorgi 3y ago

> I'm just hoping the EU doesn't decide we need another annoying pop-up or something. We've got enough of those already. It didn't. The website operators decided to be a pain towards their customers so they can continue to track the hell out of them. They could just, you know, not do that.

microtonal 3y ago
100% this. Though in the end they'll only end up hurting themselves, because if it doesn't work, I would not be surprised if the GDPR gets updated to require opt-out by default without any user action and opt-in as an explicit action.
- hugi 3y ago
  Seconded. I find it absolutely amazing that people try to paint the EU in a bad light for obliging web sites to let their users know they're being tracked. I'm grateful that I'm protected by institutions that work for the people, not for the corporations.
lloeki 3y ago
Yup, it merely surfaces all the bad actors out there that were previously unseen (except on your CPU/network/flamegraph) I mean when one pushes me a banner with a clear CTA to accept everything and an intractable rat's nest of dark patterns to reject anything then I clearly and unambiguously know which side of the line they stand. IOW GDPR works as expected.
weberer 3y ago
>They could just, you know, not do that. Would you rather take a 50% pay cut, or slightly annoy somebody else? Because that's essentially the choices they're giving companies. They should have 100% seen through this, and made the do-not-track header enforceable. Legislators actively chose not to though.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Browsers could have implemented something that was compatible and sent the header accordingly, but they didn't. It's not the government's fault this is the way the industry implemented the law.

izacus 3y ago

I'm absolutely happy if those companies fund the new north/south rail corridor, it'll help us in EU much more than airpods. And if they decide to leave and let local companies take over certain parts of the market, keeping profits and jobs locally (instead of Bermuda and Cayman islands) then all the better. I don't think we can lose here as EU citizens. It's not like Trump will do anything different to protect US when he gets elected.

troupo 3y ago

> I'm just hoping the EU doesn't decide we need another annoying pop-up or something. We've got enough of those already. Literally nothing in the GDPR or the (updated) ePrivacy Directive requires those popups. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

austinkhale 3y ago
Is your contention that all of these websites and providers all simultaneously decided, incorrectly, to use these popups and that there is no legal requirement for them?
- gls2ro 3y ago
  I think the assertion is correct: IANAL: GDPR does not require any website/webapp by default to show a popup. What GDPR requires is consent for tracking PII. If you or anyone run a website and dont track/store/process any PII tracking information without user consent you dont need the popup. Here is an example: Do not put any GA or tracking analytics that tracks PII on your web app and you can still have signups and login if you gave a good terms of use and you require consent for the user when they signup. You can even use cookies in the login/signup flow but use them only for making the auth work and not for tracking. PS: If you do signups please read the GDPR and offer to the user the option to manage their consent for accepting to provide data when they created their account: for example (IANAL) the user should be able to delete their account, download their data, retract the consent and have their account with all the info provided destroyed. You can keep data for legal reason for the minimum required period.
- troupo 3y ago
  > Is your contention It's not my "contention". You could read the text of the law and point out the exact places where it talks about cookies, popups, or browsers: https://gdpr.eu/tag/gdpr/ https://gdpr.eu/tag/gdpr/ (Hint: there are no such places) > all of these websites and providers all simultaneously decided, incorrectly, to use these popups and that there is no legal requirement for them Yes. Yes they did. The bigger players decided that they have god-given right to your data. Facebook has literally spent the past several years arguing that in courts. The smaller players rely on a handful of literal ad-industry-owned leeches like IAB[1] or OneTrust to get their popup banners from because people are stupid and/or lazy and don't want to deal with details. So they, like you, were sold a lie of "to be compliant use our services". Sometimes sanity prevails. Here's GitHub: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/ --- start quote --- Well, EU law requires you to use cookie banners if your website contains cookies that are not required for it to work. Common examples of such cookies are those used by third-party analytics, tracking, and advertising services. These services collect information about people’s behavior across the web, store it in their databases, and can use it to serve personalized ads. At GitHub, we want to protect developer privacy, and we find cookie banners quite irritating, so we decided to look for a solution. After a brief search, we found one: just don’t use any non-essential cookies. Pretty simple, really. --- end quote --- [1] Literally Interactive Advertisement Bureau. Fined 250 000 euros in 2022 for non-compliance.