3 ms·

> I imagine many of these old ads do not comply with the new rules so Google removed everything just to eliminate the risk of a fine or enforcement action. The

by isodev 1y ago

> I imagine many of these old ads do not comply with the new rules so Google removed everything just to eliminate the risk of a fine or enforcement action. The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. Google deleting them is almost suspicious because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. You're right about expectations from an Ad company though. Imagine people using their browser or phones thinking "privacy".

Aurornis 1y ago
> The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. My experience dealing with GDPR and other EU regulations across several companies is that the laws are very vague in their wording. We encountered a lot of scenarios where the law was just vague enough that our lawyers advised us to avoid anything that could be interpreted as infringing. The penalties assigned in some of these laws are indicated as a percentage of global profits, so we would play it safe to avoid any possibility of some EU politician trying to score political points by getting headlines about a big fine they extracted from a tech company. I don’t know about their political advertising laws specifically, but I would not be the least bit surprised if they deleted these ads to be 100% safe in dodging potential fines under vague laws. > because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. Note that they didn’t remove the archive for non-EU countries. They only did this in the EU. By this logic, they spent extra effort exclusively doing this for the EU while keeping it for other countries. That suggests to me that some EU specific reason is in play.
- isodev 1y ago
  I’m not sure what you’re saying exactly: you had a bad lawyer or you operate in a place where the spirit of the law is not known? > That suggests to me that some EU specific reason That was my point as well - Google is being shady for no apparent reason. I guess we’ll never know, or they’ll release some clickbaity statement like Apple’s recent “commentary” on the DMA. Baddies gonna do bad things.

by isodev 1y ago

Aurornis 1y ago

> The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. My experience dealing with GDPR and other EU regulations across several companies is that the laws are very vague in their wording. We encountered a lot of scenarios where the law was just vague enough that our lawyers advised us to avoid anything that could be interpreted as infringing. The penalties assigned in some of these laws are indicated as a percentage of global profits, so we would play it safe to avoid any possibility of some EU politician trying to score political points by getting headlines about a big fine they extracted from a tech company. I don’t know about their political advertising laws specifically, but I would not be the least bit surprised if they deleted these ads to be 100% safe in dodging potential fines under vague laws. > because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. Note that they didn’t remove the archive for non-EU countries. They only did this in the EU. By this logic, they spent extra effort exclusively doing this for the EU while keeping it for other countries. That suggests to me that some EU specific reason is in play.

isodev 1y ago
I’m not sure what you’re saying exactly: you had a bad lawyer or you operate in a place where the spirit of the law is not known? > That suggests to me that some EU specific reason That was my point as well - Google is being shady for no apparent reason. I guess we’ll never know, or they’ll release some clickbaity statement like Apple’s recent “commentary” on the DMA. Baddies gonna do bad things.