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GDPR led directly to many US local news sites blocking access to Europe, but that was at the start of the EU Commission's anti-tech turn. Back then the GDPR's p

GDPR led directly to many US local news sites blocking access to Europe, but that was at the start of the EU Commission's anti-tech turn. Back then the GDPR's percentage-of-global-revenue based fine was novel and shocking, now they're doing it for nearly everything. In the mean time the costs of excluding the EU have been going down as RoW grows economically, whilst the fines generated by being in the market keep going up. And the perception has become in the US that GDPR wasn't a one-off motivated by genuinely different beliefs about privacy in Europe, it was just a politically and financially motivated grab at US firms from a government that has proven itself uninterested in enabling a competitive tech landscape, meaning engaging in compliance activities just invites yet more onerous regulation. This is then doubled up by a second problem. The EU is an ideology and HN is full of "EU citizens" who deny this basic problem, but a lot of people have direct experience now of working on regulatory compliance for the EU and have come away baffled by rules that appear literally impossible to follow no matter what you do. Even the most obvious good faith attempts will be mysteriously revealed years later to have been illegal from the start, amongst a chorus of cheers from those who claimed that everyone should have always known that. Facebook being told "advertising is bad, don't do it" so they added an option to pay and get rid of ads, then being told "no that's illegal too" even as many German news companies do the exact same thing is a prototypical example of this. The search engine right to be forgotten that was unexpectedly discovered by judges in law that made no mention of it is another example, that one killed off any ability to compete with Google/Bing in the EU by creating huge compliance costs on day 1 of running any new search engine. In highly competitive and fast moving markets executives in the US face a choice: allocate people to compliance activities to enable launches in the EU and quite possibly face crippling fines anyway, or allocate those same people to core tech R&D that enables you to keep your existing market position and grow faster everywhere else. The EU Commission works on the assumption that it's big enough that companies will tolerate any level of regulatory overhead in order to retain market access, but increasingly what we're seeing now is that this assumption is false, in the same way that it was false for China also in the past.

viraptor 2y ago
The Facebook case is misrepresented. The payment restriction was not about ads, but about data sharing. Here's the announcement https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion_202408_consentorpay_en.pdf https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion... and it literally says: > controllers should consider also offering a further alternative, free of charge, without behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving the processing of less (or no) personal data. GDPR says: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ > When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract. It's not some hidden gotcha that they didn't know about. It's the basic right to use all services, without loss of functionality, without giving away your data which is not strictly required for the functionality. Ads or no ads doesn't matter.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  The quoted section says it's about ads. Data sharing doesn't even get mentioned (sharing with who?). > It's the basic right to use all services, without loss of functionality, without giving away your data which is not strictly required for the functionality. No such "basic right" exists in any treaty that I'm aware of and it's clearly not about that anyway, because Facebook and other domestic services started offering that exact possibility, yet the EU still isn't satisfied. The idea there's some specific principle at play here is just propaganda by the Commission. What they appear to be demanding (today) is that all services are free and funded by ads that are randomly chosen. What moral or legal principle underlies this is quite mysterious, because nobody ever previously claimed it was illegal to show ads for nappies during children's TV programmmes, or ads for video games at the start of action movies. Nor is there any organic demand from voters to be shown worthless random ads for products they have no interest in, especially if the result is that they become commercially unviable to serve (next step by the EU: demand they get services even if companies take a loss on doing so). European countries have real problems and the people know what they are, just check the EU's own opinion polls. Again and again people say their top concerns are things like the economy, jobs, inflation, immigration. In fact ~nobody in the EU cares about this bizarre jeremiad against tech firms by the Commission, which is why it's impossible to comply with whatever the EU thinks it's asking for. Implement the obvious solution to any new regulation and the interpretation of it immediately changes after it turns out the results wasn't mass behavioral change amongst the population. There's no way to satisfy both the Commission and the actual users or customers because the EU's goals are diametrically opposed to everyone else's. HN posters who have projected all sorts of second-order effects onto this fight to do with long term expectations about EU integration aren't representative of the population, who would much rather the EU get them a job than beat up the companies entertaining them whilst they wait.

viraptor 2y ago

The Facebook case is misrepresented. The payment restriction was not about ads, but about data sharing. Here's the announcement https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion_202408_consentorpay_en.pdf https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion... and it literally says: > controllers should consider also offering a further alternative, free of charge, without behavioural advertising, e.g. with a form of advertising involving the processing of less (or no) personal data. GDPR says: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ > When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract. It's not some hidden gotcha that they didn't know about. It's the basic right to use all services, without loss of functionality, without giving away your data which is not strictly required for the functionality. Ads or no ads doesn't matter.

mike_hearn 2y ago
The quoted section says it's about ads. Data sharing doesn't even get mentioned (sharing with who?). > It's the basic right to use all services, without loss of functionality, without giving away your data which is not strictly required for the functionality. No such "basic right" exists in any treaty that I'm aware of and it's clearly not about that anyway, because Facebook and other domestic services started offering that exact possibility, yet the EU still isn't satisfied. The idea there's some specific principle at play here is just propaganda by the Commission. What they appear to be demanding (today) is that all services are free and funded by ads that are randomly chosen. What moral or legal principle underlies this is quite mysterious, because nobody ever previously claimed it was illegal to show ads for nappies during children's TV programmmes, or ads for video games at the start of action movies. Nor is there any organic demand from voters to be shown worthless random ads for products they have no interest in, especially if the result is that they become commercially unviable to serve (next step by the EU: demand they get services even if companies take a loss on doing so). European countries have real problems and the people know what they are, just check the EU's own opinion polls. Again and again people say their top concerns are things like the economy, jobs, inflation, immigration. In fact ~nobody in the EU cares about this bizarre jeremiad against tech firms by the Commission, which is why it's impossible to comply with whatever the EU thinks it's asking for. Implement the obvious solution to any new regulation and the interpretation of it immediately changes after it turns out the results wasn't mass behavioral change amongst the population. There's no way to satisfy both the Commission and the actual users or customers because the EU's goals are diametrically opposed to everyone else's. HN posters who have projected all sorts of second-order effects onto this fight to do with long term expectations about EU integration aren't representative of the population, who would much rather the EU get them a job than beat up the companies entertaining them whilst they wait.