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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 o

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 quoted section says it's about ads The document makes it clear it's about behavioral advertising. It's not the ads that are the problem here, but the targeting which comes from the user data that they have to consent to. > What they appear to be demanding (today) is that all services are free and funded by ads that are randomly chosen. That's not even close. You can charge money for services, or you can serve ads at random, or based on the content. You can't base them on the user without consent. I.e. as you mention in the examples, you can advertise games before an action movie, but you can't advertise games to kids and nappies to moms, unless they consent to profiling. I agree there are weird edge cases, but this isn't it. Just read the actual document. You're there one adding interpretation which isn't there in the act/ruling.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  This type of response is what I meant by a chorus of people claiming they should always have known. You don't actually know what they can or can't do, because the EU change their mind constantly and don't interpret anything in obvious ways. Example: ads based on "content" that are not behaviorally targeted are OK, you say. And what if the content itself is selected based on behavior? Behavior such as, for example, clicking the like button on certain things? Is that behaviorally targeted ads? It's a rhetorical question, so don't bother answering it. Point is that you have no idea what the correct interpretation is and nor does anyone else, including the EU institutions who are clearly making this up as they go along. What we can be certain of is that whatever tech firms do will be automatically asserted to be the wrong thing, because that way the EU can top up its budget from the pockets of these companies whilst simultaneously claiming to be virtuous. This path leads to eventual ruin for the EU. The law must be just, it must be clear, and it must be predictable. EU law doesn't come close to meeting this bar and the result will be that the US increasingly just nopes out of there. People in Europe don't want to be excluded so the result will be a wave of petty lawbreaking with VPNs, casual smuggling and so on as people find ways to get access to US tech regardless of local laws.

viraptor 2y ago

> The quoted section says it's about ads The document makes it clear it's about behavioral advertising. It's not the ads that are the problem here, but the targeting which comes from the user data that they have to consent to. > What they appear to be demanding (today) is that all services are free and funded by ads that are randomly chosen. That's not even close. You can charge money for services, or you can serve ads at random, or based on the content. You can't base them on the user without consent. I.e. as you mention in the examples, you can advertise games before an action movie, but you can't advertise games to kids and nappies to moms, unless they consent to profiling. I agree there are weird edge cases, but this isn't it. Just read the actual document. You're there one adding interpretation which isn't there in the act/ruling.

mike_hearn 2y ago
This type of response is what I meant by a chorus of people claiming they should always have known. You don't actually know what they can or can't do, because the EU change their mind constantly and don't interpret anything in obvious ways. Example: ads based on "content" that are not behaviorally targeted are OK, you say. And what if the content itself is selected based on behavior? Behavior such as, for example, clicking the like button on certain things? Is that behaviorally targeted ads? It's a rhetorical question, so don't bother answering it. Point is that you have no idea what the correct interpretation is and nor does anyone else, including the EU institutions who are clearly making this up as they go along. What we can be certain of is that whatever tech firms do will be automatically asserted to be the wrong thing, because that way the EU can top up its budget from the pockets of these companies whilst simultaneously claiming to be virtuous. This path leads to eventual ruin for the EU. The law must be just, it must be clear, and it must be predictable. EU law doesn't come close to meeting this bar and the result will be that the US increasingly just nopes out of there. People in Europe don't want to be excluded so the result will be a wave of petty lawbreaking with VPNs, casual smuggling and so on as people find ways to get access to US tech regardless of local laws.