4 ms·

We are fortunate to have lived through a brief period where the internet was truly a global network. A person in the Netherlands or Nigeria [1] could access the

by wyager 2y ago

We are fortunate to have lived through a brief period where the internet was truly a global network. A person in the Netherlands or Nigeria [1] could access the best technology services the world had to offer. People could more or less interact freely across borders. Obviously this is coming to an end. Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say, to the point where the internet being a global network is obviously becoming inviable. It was fun while it lasted. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nigerias-consumer-watchdog-fines-meta-220-million-violating-local-consumer-data-2024-07-19/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/nigerias-consumer-watchdo...

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Well, I'm not sure that I'd equate "freedom" with companies exploiting people's personal identifying information and selling it for their own profit. Personally, I don't want my information that's protected by GDPR in my own country to be smuggled into another country where there's almost no legal protection for someone's data/privacy.
- imachine1980_ 2y ago
  Free as in corporate freedom to extract and abuse your personal information
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    Quite - it reminds me of the "freedom" to own slaves, but obviously not nearly as abusive.
jeltz 2y ago
And this freedom was ended by companies like Google and Facebook who abused this freedom forcing governments to act. Internet was at its worst right before GDPR. I don't think we will ever get back to the old free Internet and instead we will have this power balance between big corps and governments.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  Like with any new frontier. There's age of exploration, then the age of exploitation, and in the latter. Even if the former is usually funded by commercial interests, it's in the latter that they finally suck out everything that's nice and fair and fun about the venture. We're at this stage now with the Internet.
zoobab 2y ago
The US still does not have legislation to protect Personal Data like the GDPR. That did not prevent the corrupt European Commission to issue a third variant of the Shield to still allow american corporation to send data of EU citizens to the US, despite the Schrems2 ruling.
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
It was fun for companies to freely steal people's data and sell it to the highest bidder. I'm glad this is slowly coming to an end. I'm not sure I like Meta's and the influence of other foreign companies on European culture too. We were more free before them.
teekert 2y ago
Uber’s right to do what ever the f they want stops at my right to control information pertaining to me. What’s freedom? GPL? BSD? Swinging a fist? Not getting hit on the nose?
- michaelteter 2y ago
  Freedom to some means creating a startup that willfully ignores regulations in virtually every market while playing a funding ponzi game until finally handing the consequences off to the foolish public (IPO).
  - Attrecomet 2y ago
    We don't say "Ponzi scheme" here, we say "disrupting traditional markets" and "investment opportunity"
    - michaelteter 2y ago
      Or just “funding rounds”
- wyager 2y ago
  You've missed the point of my comment. It has no normative claims, unlike your angry invective about rights. I'm just pointing out that the inevitable consequence of these new regulatory regimes is a nationally siloed internet. You can feel however you want about it; maybe that's a good thing from your perspective. But it's happening
sjamaan 2y ago
These laws have been created for good reasons, and US tech companies have had free reign to trample on people's privacy rights for a very long time. If a company acts in a honorable way, there's nothing to fear and they can easily do business world wide. It's when companies do things that are shady and should've been outlawed from the start that they run into trouble. The main issue here is that the US has the least restrictive laws and allows its citizens' privacy to be grossly invaded, which means these companies now feel like they're being unnecessarily restricted. If the US had stricter laws, this would be a non-issue and you wouldn't hear anyone about it. It's all very myopic and US-centered to focus on the company's freedom to do as it pleases. What about the users' freedom to live without being spied upon? Free market rules don't apply - the network effects are too big to really say "you can take your business elsewhere if you don't like it". Also it's a transparency issue - it's too hard to tell from the outside how your data will be handled to make an informed decision about what companies to deal with. Especially because all of them treat your data like they own it, as a cash cow.
- pembrook 2y ago
  > It's all very myopic and US-centered to focus on the company's freedom to do as it pleases. The Dutch DPA is not accusing Uber of doing anything nefarious. They are mad that Uber, as an American company, can be compelled by the US government to hand over data. Ultimately, their beef is not with US companies, it’s with the US government. This is all wildly ironic because the EU is constantly trying to spy on their own citizens and undermine encryption. The EU is just upset that the US is able to do it instead of them. This is just companies being caught in a geopolitical spat between competing powers. The EU keeps moving the goalposts on what constitutes “safe” transfers (we’re on the 5th round of this). So there’s no way for companies to be compliant unless the US government changes its laws. So right now it’s just a lever to extract money from US corporations via never ending fines. The US government and the EU need to sort this out. Blaming the companies shows a total lack of understanding of the real situation. I get that we all hate big tech now, but there’s literally no way to comply in good faith with these competing EU cash grabs over the shifting specifics of how you can transfer data to US servers.
  - 2y ago
Ragnarork 2y ago
> Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say, to the point where the internet being a global network is obviously becoming inviable Why exactly would physical products have to comply with local laws when exported to other countries and not online services? Do you also call it "fiefdom wanting their cut and their say"? Do you disagree with the concept of laws altogether?
- wyager 2y ago
  The thing that made a global internet possible is that it was understood that sending bits over a wire is different from shipping physical goods. The customs regime for physical goods is prohibitively expensive for bits. I'm not interested in arguing if eliminating free transit of data is a good idea or not; I'm just pointing out the inevitable consequence of the current trends.
stavros 2y ago
EU citizens: We don't want our data in the US, where it can be siphoned off to other companies. US company: siphons data EU: You can't do that. HN commenter: Damn these fiefdoms wanting their cut, what has the internet become? I pine for a simpler time, when I could do anything I wanted with data against people's will and nobody could stop me, that truly was the golden age.
- renlo 2y ago
  He was saying that Uber will no longer operate in NL/EU, the pining was for "equal access to US services", not your data. FWIW, I am annoyed myself about having to accept GDPR popups on every website I visit, so I too pine for a day where US companies have nothing to do with "EU citizens".
  - stavros 2y ago
    Right, but the reason EU citizens don't have equal access to US services is because EU citizens decided that the services they use need to be careful with the EU citizens' data. US services said "nah, that sounds too hard, I'm outta here" instead.
    - jeltz 2y ago
      What US services left? Only ones I know of are a couple of US centric newspapers. Virtually everyone stay in the EU market.
  - jeltz 2y ago
    Hahaha, that will not happen. And if Uber against all odds actually leaves some other company will swoop in and take their market. Personally I prefer Bolt over Uber for rides here in Sweden.
  - ForHackernews 2y ago
    Imagine how much poorer the world will be when one fewer jitney cab company operates in the Netherlands.
_Algernon_ 2y ago
>We are fortunate to have lived through a brief period where the world was truly a global trade network. A person in England could access the best tea the world had to offer. People could more or less interact freely across borders. >Obviously this is coming to an end. Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say, to the point where the world being a global network is obviously becoming inviable. It was fun while it lasted. - Some ignorant bloke at the end of the British empire, probably
- ben_w 2y ago
  Point, but IIRC the end of the British Empire was met with a mix of "We didn't want it anyway it was so expensive"* and "We lost an empire but gained a continent". (The latter followed by lots of pikachu surprise face because they weren't in charge of said continent). * Not only an Aesop reference, but also an actual claim I've repeatedly encountered
mtkd 2y ago
Access to tech is different from handling of personal data though -- the EU GDPR laws around that are clear and fair People have a right to know where their personal data is going, what is being stored, what it is being used for and should have a mechanism to correct it and delete The wider challenge is how that is handled in a compliant way with LLMs and generative tools which vendors do not seem to be taking particularly seriously yet
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  > The wider challenge is how that is handled in a compliant way with LLMs and generative tools which vendors do not seem to be taking particularly seriously yet I'm curious as to why people would want to train LLMs on personal identifying information. What's the benefit of an LLM that has a large collection of names, addresses, dates of birth etc.?
  - tpxl 2y ago
    Free-form text like Reddit posts contains a whole load of PII. Since there is absolutely no regard for what goes into a LLM, naturally, they also contain this PII.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      That's not something that I've encountered on Reddit - I've mostly seen people deliberately not using their real names. If there is indeed a lot of personal identifying information from Europeans on Reddit, then they'd better get ready for a GDPR investigation.
meiraleal 2y ago
Local & capable internet is the future. I don't want my country influenced by US/EU politics all the time.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pyrale 2y ago
> Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say You mean, the epicenter of that global network transformed it into a tool of influence and surveilance? [1] Or maybe that the companies participating in that global network saw interest in walling that global network ? [2] [3] Or maybe that global network is being reshaped by a few dominant actors so much that outside regulation becomes necessary? [4] [5] No, of course not; it must be local barons trying to scrap a bit of power, not at all a reaction to massive abuses from the industry. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM [2]: https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-ope... [3]: https://blockthrough.com/blog/the-walled-gardens-of-the-ad-tech-industry-explained/ https://blockthrough.com/blog/the-walled-gardens-of-the-ad-t... [4]: https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algori... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

by wyager 2y ago

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

Well, I'm not sure that I'd equate "freedom" with companies exploiting people's personal identifying information and selling it for their own profit. Personally, I don't want my information that's protected by GDPR in my own country to be smuggled into another country where there's almost no legal protection for someone's data/privacy.

imachine1980_ 2y ago
Free as in corporate freedom to extract and abuse your personal information
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  Quite - it reminds me of the "freedom" to own slaves, but obviously not nearly as abusive.

jeltz 2y ago

And this freedom was ended by companies like Google and Facebook who abused this freedom forcing governments to act. Internet was at its worst right before GDPR. I don't think we will ever get back to the old free Internet and instead we will have this power balance between big corps and governments.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
Like with any new frontier. There's age of exploration, then the age of exploitation, and in the latter. Even if the former is usually funded by commercial interests, it's in the latter that they finally suck out everything that's nice and fair and fun about the venture. We're at this stage now with the Internet.

zoobab 2y ago

The US still does not have legislation to protect Personal Data like the GDPR. That did not prevent the corrupt European Commission to issue a third variant of the Shield to still allow american corporation to send data of EU citizens to the US, despite the Schrems2 ruling.

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

It was fun for companies to freely steal people's data and sell it to the highest bidder. I'm glad this is slowly coming to an end. I'm not sure I like Meta's and the influence of other foreign companies on European culture too. We were more free before them.

teekert 2y ago

Uber’s right to do what ever the f they want stops at my right to control information pertaining to me. What’s freedom? GPL? BSD? Swinging a fist? Not getting hit on the nose?

michaelteter 2y ago
Freedom to some means creating a startup that willfully ignores regulations in virtually every market while playing a funding ponzi game until finally handing the consequences off to the foolish public (IPO).
- Attrecomet 2y ago
  We don't say "Ponzi scheme" here, we say "disrupting traditional markets" and "investment opportunity"
  - michaelteter 2y ago
    Or just “funding rounds”
wyager 2y ago
You've missed the point of my comment. It has no normative claims, unlike your angry invective about rights. I'm just pointing out that the inevitable consequence of these new regulatory regimes is a nationally siloed internet. You can feel however you want about it; maybe that's a good thing from your perspective. But it's happening

sjamaan 2y ago

These laws have been created for good reasons, and US tech companies have had free reign to trample on people's privacy rights for a very long time. If a company acts in a honorable way, there's nothing to fear and they can easily do business world wide. It's when companies do things that are shady and should've been outlawed from the start that they run into trouble. The main issue here is that the US has the least restrictive laws and allows its citizens' privacy to be grossly invaded, which means these companies now feel like they're being unnecessarily restricted. If the US had stricter laws, this would be a non-issue and you wouldn't hear anyone about it. It's all very myopic and US-centered to focus on the company's freedom to do as it pleases. What about the users' freedom to live without being spied upon? Free market rules don't apply - the network effects are too big to really say "you can take your business elsewhere if you don't like it". Also it's a transparency issue - it's too hard to tell from the outside how your data will be handled to make an informed decision about what companies to deal with. Especially because all of them treat your data like they own it, as a cash cow.

pembrook 2y ago
> It's all very myopic and US-centered to focus on the company's freedom to do as it pleases. The Dutch DPA is not accusing Uber of doing anything nefarious. They are mad that Uber, as an American company, can be compelled by the US government to hand over data. Ultimately, their beef is not with US companies, it’s with the US government. This is all wildly ironic because the EU is constantly trying to spy on their own citizens and undermine encryption. The EU is just upset that the US is able to do it instead of them. This is just companies being caught in a geopolitical spat between competing powers. The EU keeps moving the goalposts on what constitutes “safe” transfers (we’re on the 5th round of this). So there’s no way for companies to be compliant unless the US government changes its laws. So right now it’s just a lever to extract money from US corporations via never ending fines. The US government and the EU need to sort this out. Blaming the companies shows a total lack of understanding of the real situation. I get that we all hate big tech now, but there’s literally no way to comply in good faith with these competing EU cash grabs over the shifting specifics of how you can transfer data to US servers.
- 2y ago

Ragnarork 2y ago

> Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say, to the point where the internet being a global network is obviously becoming inviable Why exactly would physical products have to comply with local laws when exported to other countries and not online services? Do you also call it "fiefdom wanting their cut and their say"? Do you disagree with the concept of laws altogether?

wyager 2y ago
The thing that made a global internet possible is that it was understood that sending bits over a wire is different from shipping physical goods. The customs regime for physical goods is prohibitively expensive for bits. I'm not interested in arguing if eliminating free transit of data is a good idea or not; I'm just pointing out the inevitable consequence of the current trends.

stavros 2y ago

EU citizens: We don't want our data in the US, where it can be siphoned off to other companies. US company: siphons data EU: You can't do that. HN commenter: Damn these fiefdoms wanting their cut, what has the internet become? I pine for a simpler time, when I could do anything I wanted with data against people's will and nobody could stop me, that truly was the golden age.

renlo 2y ago
He was saying that Uber will no longer operate in NL/EU, the pining was for "equal access to US services", not your data. FWIW, I am annoyed myself about having to accept GDPR popups on every website I visit, so I too pine for a day where US companies have nothing to do with "EU citizens".
- stavros 2y ago
  Right, but the reason EU citizens don't have equal access to US services is because EU citizens decided that the services they use need to be careful with the EU citizens' data. US services said "nah, that sounds too hard, I'm outta here" instead.
  - jeltz 2y ago
    What US services left? Only ones I know of are a couple of US centric newspapers. Virtually everyone stay in the EU market.
- jeltz 2y ago
  Hahaha, that will not happen. And if Uber against all odds actually leaves some other company will swoop in and take their market. Personally I prefer Bolt over Uber for rides here in Sweden.
- ForHackernews 2y ago
  Imagine how much poorer the world will be when one fewer jitney cab company operates in the Netherlands.

_Algernon_ 2y ago

>We are fortunate to have lived through a brief period where the world was truly a global trade network. A person in England could access the best tea the world had to offer. People could more or less interact freely across borders. >Obviously this is coming to an end. Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say, to the point where the world being a global network is obviously becoming inviable. It was fun while it lasted. - Some ignorant bloke at the end of the British empire, probably

ben_w 2y ago
Point, but IIRC the end of the British Empire was met with a mix of "We didn't want it anyway it was so expensive"* and "We lost an empire but gained a continent". (The latter followed by lots of pikachu surprise face because they weren't in charge of said continent). * Not only an Aesop reference, but also an actual claim I've repeatedly encountered

mtkd 2y ago

Access to tech is different from handling of personal data though -- the EU GDPR laws around that are clear and fair People have a right to know where their personal data is going, what is being stored, what it is being used for and should have a mechanism to correct it and delete The wider challenge is how that is handled in a compliant way with LLMs and generative tools which vendors do not seem to be taking particularly seriously yet

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
> The wider challenge is how that is handled in a compliant way with LLMs and generative tools which vendors do not seem to be taking particularly seriously yet I'm curious as to why people would want to train LLMs on personal identifying information. What's the benefit of an LLM that has a large collection of names, addresses, dates of birth etc.?
- tpxl 2y ago
  Free-form text like Reddit posts contains a whole load of PII. Since there is absolutely no regard for what goes into a LLM, naturally, they also contain this PII.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    That's not something that I've encountered on Reddit - I've mostly seen people deliberately not using their real names. If there is indeed a lot of personal identifying information from Europeans on Reddit, then they'd better get ready for a GDPR investigation.

meiraleal 2y ago

Local & capable internet is the future. I don't want my country influenced by US/EU politics all the time.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pyrale 2y ago

> Every fiefdom wants their cut and their say You mean, the epicenter of that global network transformed it into a tool of influence and surveilance? [1] Or maybe that the companies participating in that global network saw interest in walling that global network ? [2] [3] Or maybe that global network is being reshaped by a few dominant actors so much that outside regulation becomes necessary? [4] [5] No, of course not; it must be local barons trying to scrap a bit of power, not at all a reaction to massive abuses from the industry. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM [2]: https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-ope... [3]: https://blockthrough.com/blog/the-walled-gardens-of-the-ad-tech-industry-explained/ https://blockthrough.com/blog/the-walled-gardens-of-the-ad-t... [4]: https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algori... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...