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Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

• AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  > The changes, proposed by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, changes core elements of the GDPR, making it easier for companies to share anonymized and pseudonymized personal datasets. They would allow AI companies to legally use personal data to train AI models, so long as that training complies with other GDPR requirements. Put together and those two basically undo the entire concept of privacy as it’s trivially easy to target someone from a large enough “anonymous” set (there is no anonymous data, there only exists data that’s not labeled with an ID yet)
• josefritzishere 1y ago
  This is criminal.
  • nonethewiser 1y ago
    How so? Like, figuratively, as-in outrageous?
  • ch4s3 1y ago
    To make the popup requirement for non critical cookies in GDPR less onerous? Or the change in data operation recording requirements that will kick in at a company size of 750 employees instead of 250? I assume you mean the AI related stuff?
    • andrewshadura 1y ago
      It was never required to show a pop-up for essential cookies.
    • josefritzishere 1y ago
      I work in data privacy and I really hold the GDPR in high esteem. The "Ai stuff" is worrisome. The UK has left the EU and rolled back privacy rights. The EU is experiencing the slow erosion of privacy rights; and the US is a morass of highly variable state-level rights. I had such high hopes when the CCPA passed.
• schnitzelstoat 1y ago
  > One change that’s likely to please almost everyone is a reduction in Europe’s ubiquitous cookie banners and pop-ups. Under the new proposal, some “non-risk” cookies won’t trigger pop-ups at all, and users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. Finally!
  • aurareturn 1y ago
    So they finally admit that it was a mistake. Even EU government websites had annoying giant cookie banners. Yet, some how the vast majority of HN comments defend the cookie banners saying if you don't do anything "bad" then you don't need the banners.
    • m00dy 1y ago
      worst implementation ever. I bet it is the reason that most people are now taking anti depressants.
    • basisword 1y ago
      It worked to highlight the insane amount of tracking every fucking website does. Unfortunately it didn’t stop it. A browser setting letting me reject everything by default will be a better implementation. But this implementation only failed because almost every website owner wants to track your every move and share those moves with about 50 different other trackers and doesn’t want to be better.
      • GardenLetter27 1y ago
        You can just set your browser not to send whichever cookies you don't want to. Cookies are a client-side technology. Why does the government need to be involved?
        • webstrand 1y ago
          Not all cookies are bad for the user, for instance the one that keeps you logged in or stores the session id. Those kind were never banned in the first place. Blocking cookies locally doesn't allow you to easily discriminate between tracking and functional cookies. And even if the browser had a UI for accepting or rejecting each cookie, they're not named such that a normal user could figure out which are important for not breaking the website, and which are just for tracking purposes. By passing a law that says "website providers must disambiguate" this situation can be improved.
• zoobab 1y ago
  [flagged]
• bpodgursky 1y ago
  > The EU folds under Big Tech’s pressure. This is a very odd framing, because the actual reason from quotes in the article is that the EU is acutely feeling the pain of having no big tech companies, due in part to burdensome privacy regulations. The pressure isn't really from big tech, it's from feeling poor and setting themselves up as irrelevant consumers of an economy permeated by AI.
  • m00dy 1y ago
    europe got stuck in the old world, they will never have tech companies.
    • mortarion 1y ago
      We have plenty of tech companies. The reason you've not heard about them is because most of them cater to their domestic market first. Neighbors second. Rest of the world third or never.
  • yardie 1y ago
    > due in part to burdensome privacy regulations. A large part is due to their approach to startup investing and chronic undercapitalization. GDPR is coming up 10 years now and the worries about it were overblown. What hasn't budged is Europe is very fiscally conservative on technology. Unless it's coming from their big corporations it's very hard to get funding. Everyone wants the same thing, a sure bet.
    • bpodgursky 1y ago
      I think this is a very rosy framing. GDPR showed that once you are a ten-billion dollar company, your compliance team can manage GDPR enough to enter the market. For a startup, starting in the EU or entering the EU early is still extremely difficult because the burdens do not scale linearly with size. This means that yes, US tech giants can sell into the EU, but the EU will never get their own domestic tech giants because they simply cannot get off the ground there.
• m00dy 1y ago
  I used to live and work in EU, get out of EU before it is too late.
  • jonesjohnson 1y ago
    like UK, you mean? boy that did really work out well for them!
    • m00dy 1y ago
      Watch out for French government bonds (10yr), France will be the next before 2030.
    • ljosifov 1y ago
      So far so good - and I say this as one voting remain. The only gripe I have is that our domestic doomers were even more stupid than the EU ones. Ours were the progenitors of many of EU dumb ideas. So even outside EU, we in the UK not only did not repeal the utterly imbecilic laws we inherited. No - we added even more stupid laws. Consequence being people are put in jail for writing stuff on the Internet. I hope someone puts in jail the lawmakers that voted for these laws. To the cheering of and with public support, it must be said. It was not without consent, it was not only bi-party, but omni-party consent.
      • kmeisthax 1y ago
        I think a lot of Brexiteers don't entirely understand why the EU was a problem. The only thing they saw was the EU migrant crisis and the UK not having total control over its own borders. Things I don't care about[0]. The actual problem with the EU is only tangentially related to that concern, and it's the fact that the EU is a democratically unresponsive accountability sink. When a politician wants to do something unpopular, they get the EU to do it, so they can pretend like they're powerless against it. See also: the 10,000 attempts to reintroduce Chat Control. The easiest way to fix this would be a new EU treaty that makes the EU directly elected. But that would also mean federalizing the EU, because all the features that make the EU undemocratic are the same features that protect the EU from doing an end run around member states. The alternative would be for EU member states' voters to deliberately sacrifice their local votes in order to vote in people who promise to appoint specific people at the EU level. That's what happened in America with its Senate, and why it moved to direct election of Senators, because people were being voted in as Governor just to get Senators elected. A lot of times we talk about political issues on a partisanship spectrum - i.e. "partisan" vs "bi-partisan" or "non-partisan" issues. The reality is that, in WEIRD[1] countries, most parties have a common goal of "keep the state thriving". The primary disagreement between them is how to go about doing such a thing and what moral lines[2] shall be crossed to do so. That's where you get shit like America's culture war. The people who live in the country and are subject to its laws are far less hospitable to the kinds of horrifying decisions politicians make on a daily basis, mainly because they'll be at the business end of them. This creates a dynamic of "anti-partisanship" where the people broadly support things that the political class broadly opposes. For example, DMCA 1201. The people did not want this, the EFF successfully fought a prior version of it off in Congress, then Congress went to the WTO and begged them to handcuff America to it anyway. The people would like to see it reformed or repealed; that's where you get the "right-to-repair" movement. But the political class needs DMCA 1201 to be there. They need a thriving cultural industry to engage in cultural hegemony, and a technology sector that can be made to shut off the enemy's tanks. The kinds of artistic and technological megaprojects the state demands require a brutal and extractive intellectual property[3] regime in order to be economically sustainable. So IP is a bi-partisan concern, while Right-to-Repair is an anti-partisan concern. In terms of WEIRD countries, the UK is probably one of the WEIRDest, and thus a progenitor of a lot of stupid bullshit legislation. If they had not left the EU, the Online Safety Act would have been the EU Online Safety Directive. [0] To be clear, my opinion regarding migration is that the only valid reason to refuse entry to a country is for a specific security reason. Otherwise, we should hand out visas like candy, for the sake of freedom. Immigration restrictions are really just emigration restrictions with extra steps. [1] Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic [2] All states are fundamentally "criminals with crowns". Their economies are rapine. When they run out of shit to steal all the gangsters turn on each other and you get a failed state. [3] In the Doctorowian sense: "any law that grants the ability to dictate the conduct of your competitors". This actually extends back far further than copyright, patent, or trademark law does. Those are the modern capitalist versions of a far older feudalist practice of the state handing out monopolies to favored lords.
• m3kw9 1y ago
  the consequences of their laws is pushing their hands
• bitpush 1y ago
  Incredible to see the 180 both from EU and also from the HN sentiment. HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies, especially Meta. Meta is no perfect company, but the amount of 'please stick it to them' was strong (I reckon that is still a bridge too far for a lot of folks here). Even extreme proponents of big tech villanery in the US (Lina Khan's FTC) is also facing losses (They just lost their monumental case against Meta yesterday). What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. People stop using Meta products, and then I want to see it die. But not by forcing the hand - that's bad for everyone, especially the enterpreuer / hacker types on this site
  • surgical_fire 1y ago
    I live in EU. I am totally in support to force Meta down through government's big stick. While they are at it, I hope they do it to the other big techs too. Being a "hacker type" (whatever that means) does not equate to being complacent to these companies abusing their economic power.
    • stavros 1y ago
      Yeah, seconded, and I also live in the EU.
    • jonesjohnson 1y ago
      Then I propose you should support https://noyb.eu/ https://noyb.eu/ Their track record is pretty good.
      • stavros 1y ago
        If you support them (I do, they do great work), please set up a yearly subscription. Predictable revenue is very valuable for organizations.
      • trinsic2 1y ago
        Do we have anything like this in the U.S.?
    • 1y ago
• ChrisArchitect 1y ago
  Previously: European Commission plans “digital omnibus” package to simplify its tech laws https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878311
• mikece 1y ago
  How about this as a privacy law: if you collect data about people without their EXPLICIT permission[1] you can be charged with digital stalking. Same principle as stalking; escalating penalties for repeat offenses and for doing so in bulk or en masse. EDIT: And you cannot share information gained by permitted collection unless EXPLICIT permission to share is granted. [1] Eg: it's not sufficient to disclose this in equivocal text buried in 25k lines of EULA text.
  • kragen 1y ago
    Your proposed law would mostly be used against people who were publicizing the criminal record of the mayor's nominee for police chief or the ruling party's nominee for mayor.
  • Aloisius 1y ago
    What constitutes data about people? If I save your comment, am I a digital stalker? Is Google a digital stalker because they archived this page? Is HN a digital stalker because they didn't get your explicit permission to show a profile page with your karma on it?
    • imiric 1y ago
      You're being deceptively dense. PII has a very clear definition. Posts on a public forum are not part of it.
      • mpyne 1y ago
        > PII has a very clear definition. It doesn't, actually, as many would-be DoD IT system owners are surprised to find that simply generating a 32-bit random UUID as a user ID is, per the regs, PII, and therefore makes your proposed IT system IL4 with a Privacy Overlay (and a requirement to go into GovCloud with a cloud access point) instead of IL2 and hostable on a public cloud. Oh and now you need to file a System of Records Notice into the Federal Register (which is updated only by DoD, and only infrequently) before you can accept production workloads. There is a separate concept of "sensitive PII" (now Moderate or High Confidentiality impact under NIST 800-122) which replaces what people used to call the "Rolodex Business Exemption" to PII/privacy rules. But PII is very clear: "Personally Identifiable Information". Any information that identifies a specific individual, like for example, your HN username. Unless a collective is posting on your handle's behalf?
• Symbiote 1y ago
  Does anyone have a link to the proposal, preferably on the EU website? I'd like to see for myself, as I don't consider moving the consent method from the webpage to the browser settings "watering down" — it's the opposite.
  • weberer 1y ago
    They seem to be reporting on two drafts that were leaked by Netzpolitik. https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2025/11/EU-Kommission-Digital-Omnibus-B-KI.pdf https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2025/11/EU-Kommission-... https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2025/11/EU-Kommission-Digital-Omnibus-A-Data-Act-und-DSGVO.pdf https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2025/11/EU-Kommission-... The official website mentions these documents, but for some reason doesn't let you view them, saying "It will be possible to request access to this document or download it within 48 hours". https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/documents-register/detail?ref=COM(2025)836&lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/documents-register/detail?... https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/documents-register/detail?ref=COM(2025)837&lang=en https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/documents-register/detail?...
  • layer8 1y ago
    They can be downloaded here: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-omnibus-regulation-proposal https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/digital-omn...
• GardenLetter27 1y ago
  About time. Startups and innovative business simply cannot get investment when there's the constant risk of a new AI Act massively increasing compliance and legal costs. But it's not enough - they need to completely repeal the DSA, AI Act, ePrivacy Directive, and Cybersecurity Act at least. And also focus on unifying the environment throughout the EU - no more exit taxes, no need for notaries and in-person verbal agreements, etc. There's just so much red tape and bureaucracy it's incredible. You can't hire or pay payroll taxes across the EU (without the hire relocating) - that's a huge disadvantage compared to the USA before you even get into the different language requirements.
  • yardie 1y ago
    > no need for notaries and in-person verbal agreements, etc. With the advancement of AI being used to commit fraud through chat, video, and audio calls I think we're at the precipice of needing to in-person verbal agreements again. And I thought the harmonization of markets in the EU would have reduced the red tape but some industries are built on it and will complain quite vocally if their MP makes any move on it.
    • GardenLetter27 1y ago
      The law in Germany comes from when many people couldn't read, so all contracts must be read by a notary to both parties in-person. The bizarre thing is now they advertise how fast they can read! Like it serves no purpose other than giving notaries and lawyers a slice of all transactions. Europe is full of backwards stuff like this - where the establishment interests are so strong, it cannot be adapted for modern times. From blocking CRISPR and gene editing crops (while allowing the less controlled but older technology of radiation treatment), to blocking self-driving cars.
      • oblio 1y ago
        > to blocking self-driving cars. This part seems mis-informed. https://www.arenaev.com/mercedes_gets_level_3_autonomous_driving_approval_up_to_95_km_h-news-4234.php https://www.arenaev.com/mercedes_gets_level_3_autonomous_dri... https://www.arenaev.com/bmw_ix3_gets_handsoff_motorway_assistant_certified_in_europe_for_highway_speeds-news-5320.php https://www.arenaev.com/bmw_ix3_gets_handsoff_motorway_assis... European cars from almost every brand, already have emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, lane switching, etc., which get us 70% of the way there in terms of road safety. I don't want to be experimented on by companies like Tesla: Let them kill US citizens and keep lying and hiding things: https://www.arenaev.com/tesla_robotaxi_troubles_grow_with_seven_reported_crashes_in_austin-news-5325.php https://www.arenaev.com/tesla_robotaxi_troubles_grow_with_se... > Understanding exactly whose fault these crashes are is tricky because of how Tesla fills out its forms. Automakers must send reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Most companies explain the crash in a written section called the narrative. This narrative tells the public whether another driver ran a red light or if the computer made a mistake. > Tesla chooses to block out this information and redacts the narrative section entirely. This prevents the public from knowing the truth, but it is entirely legal, even if it frustrates data analysts. Without the story, nobody knows if the Robotaxi caused the crash or if it was a victim. Fans of the brand often argue that other drivers cause these wrecks. That might be true. But since the company hides the proof, nobody can say for sure. Other autonomous companies like Waymo share these details openly.
• theptip 1y ago
  > users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. Great to see this finally. It’s obviously the way it should have been implemented from the beginning. We still see this technically myopic approach with things like age verification; it’s insane to ask websites to collect Gov ID to age verify kids (or prove adulthood for porn), rather than having an OS feature that can do so in a privacy-preserving way. Now these sites have a copy of your ID! You know they are going to get hacked and leak it! (Parents should opt their kids phones into “kid mode” and this would block age-sensitive content. The law just needs to mandate that this mode is respected by sites/apps.)
  • ElectricalUnion 1y ago
    That was what P3P was supposed to enforce automatically for you, until Google ruined it for everyone.
  • philipallstar 1y ago
    > (Parents should opt their kids phones into “kid mode” and this would block age-sensitive content. The law just needs to mandate that this mode is respected by sites/apps.) Good kid mode[0]. [0] https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/retro-telephone-31174 https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/retro-telephone-31174
    • poly2it 1y ago
      Adding a kids mode to *all* sites seems like a huge investment to most of the tech industry. I predict most would just NGINX-block users with the kid header.
  • GardenLetter27 1y ago
    > We still see this technically myopic approach with things like age verification; it’s insane to ask websites to collect Gov ID to age verify kids (or prove adulthood for porn), rather than having an OS feature that can do so in a privacy-preserving way. Now these sites have a copy of your ID! You know they are going to get hacked and leak it! An OS feature is also a terrible option - remember when South Korean banks forced the country to use ActiveX and Internet Explorer? The government should offer some open digital ID service where you can verify yourself with 2FA online, after registering your device and setting credentials when you get your ID card + residence registration in person.
• ChrisArchitect 1y ago
  Related: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45979527
  • jakub_g 1y ago
    > European Commission wants browsers to manage cookie preferences instead of pop-ups on every website. Better late than never, but it's insane it took them almost a decade to figure this out.
• shevy-java 1y ago
  Poor Europe - lobbyists make sure that Europe stays weak. That statement includes Ursula by the way.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • stronglikedan 1y ago
    Lobbyists make sure that ~~Europe~~ the world stays weak. They need more strict financial regulation than politicians do!
  • rafaelmn 1y ago
    You can't build large ML models without swaths of data, and GDPR is the antitheses of collecting data. Therefore countries/companies that don't have to abide by it are at an obvious advantage. If anything this is coming from political elite being convinced that AI research is a critical topic, EU recognizing it's weak because of the self-imposed handicaps and trying to move past that. I'd be shocked if we manage to do anything concrete on the matter TBH.
    • Manfred 1y ago
      The GDPR is about protecting personal data, what personal data could you possibly need to train an AI model?
      • xvector 1y ago
        Let's turn that around. What personal data wouldn't help train an AI model?
  • tim333 1y ago
    The current situation of having enough rules and regulations that all the AI companies set up in other countries is going great eh?
• nikanj 1y ago
  Companies made cookie banners as obnoxious as possible, because they knew that by making people hate the banners, the population would turn against the GDRP
  • monocularvision 1y ago
    Is that why most of the EU governmental websites have the same cookie pop up banners?
    • hdgvhicv 1y ago
      Lack of product ownership and cargo cult developers. Legislation can’t change culture.
      • monocularvision 1y ago
        Goalposts moved. The original claim was that the compliance was done for malicious reasons to change the law. Another possibility is that lawyers are a cautious bunch and advise their clients to take a less risky option when implementing a legal requirement. From personal experience, I would saw that latter is much more likely and would also explain why government agencies interpret these rules the same way when developing their websites.
• WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
  Yet again, European countries are showing who their leaders are: US Big Tech No wonder we default to Google Chrome on Microsoft/Apple systems, and American social platforms, to debate issues affecting EU citizens
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• nalekberov 1y ago
  EU introduces Chat Control, then scales back GDPR, what's left? Digital ID and digital currency (with no possibility of paying by cash)?
  • sMarsIntruder 1y ago
    Yes. This is their public roadmap. The CBDC, the “Digital Euro”, will be nail in the coffin. In Italy they’re pretty advanced with the Digital ID, for example.
  • nickslaughter02 11mo ago
    Don't forget ProtectEU in 2026 - mandatory backdoors to devices.
• blablabla123 1y ago
  That's a pity, the government fails to capitalize on its own policies because they fail to set up long term investment. First environmental and e-Mobility and now AI. Sure, there's way too much bureaucracy. But I see there things like taxes, regulations about the cucumber radius etc.
  • hdgvhicv 1y ago
    What exactly did you see about cucumbers?
    • blablabla123 1y ago
      They scrapped it actually but this law used to be the main example for overbearing EU bureaucracy https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/nov/12/eu-food-veg-cucumber https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/no...
      • hdgvhicv 1y ago
        He actual regulation said that you had to classify them based on their characteristics. If I wanted a straight cucumber and I ordered one I would get one. If I was happy with a bendy one then I’d simply order an “any shaped” one. I don’t see a problem woth mandating truth in advertising.
• cm2012 1y ago
  This is such an important change for Europe. I've worked with 100+ start-ups as a consultant, and I've talked to EU ones who have been strangled by some of the regulations.
  • hdgvhicv 1y ago
    What were they doing with user data?
    • cm2012 1y ago
      Number one use case is sending anonymized and hashed data back to the ad platform to trigger conversion events. Essentially all modern advertising is done algorithmically. The platform takes conversion events (a typical event is "someone fills out a form"), that signal is sent to the platforms, and the platforms use it to serve your ad to other people who may be interested. GDPR as it is means you need opt-in to do this, so it greatly reduces the effectiveness of online ad targeting. So in practice, say you make a new cool B2B tool for, say, plumbers. It automates your plumbing business and makes plumbers more money. In the US, you can make a Meta ad campaign with broad targeting and Meta will use algorithmic magic and be able to just find plumbers for you to show your ad to. In the EU, this doesn't work as well, so its harder to find plumbers to show your ads to. Less plumbers get to use your product as a result. So its just one reason it's hard to get your EU based Plumbing SaaS off the ground.
      • Neikius 1y ago
        Biggest issue with this is the modern web ads don't even work. You get ads for fridge AFTER you bought one since they now know you browsed them. What works is content based advertising - so advertise a power drill on a woodworking hobbyist site. No tracking required there. Conversion can be obtained when user clicks a link via redirect. Like in the good ol times. But this modern approach that massively invades privacy has been sold to businesses and now they require it even though it is probably ineffectual.
        • 1y ago
• pdimitar 1y ago
  Is EU suffering from FOMO? As an EU citizen, this is shameful and even kind of pathetic to read. Will we start outsourcing all our IT needs to USA again?
  • seydor 1y ago
    Start?
    • pdimitar 1y ago
      I stand corrected. :D You are quite right! They have never stopped. And I am ashamed on their behalf. We have amazing tech talent in the EU but we are beholden to old and ultra-risk-averse rich aristocracy. What a damned shame.
      • tick_tock_tick 1y ago
        > We have amazing tech talent in the EU but we are beholden to old and ultra-risk-averse rich aristocracy. That's an odd way to say EU regulations....
        • pdimitar 11mo ago
          No, it's not that. No regulations prevents them from investing in our own IT infrastructure. It is harder than in the US, sure, but very far from unprofitable. In fact it's a glaring hole in the EU now due to the current geopolitics... and still nobody is even attempting to fill the void. Correction: Russians and Chinese likely are already trying, via proxies. Guess we'll find out soon enough.
      • gulfofamerica 11mo ago
        Bloody peasants!
• Qwertious 1y ago
  Cowards.
• r3knak 1y ago
  Good, GDPR is useless for the consumer as 99% of the people click "Accept everything". It's only a few of us who care about this kind of thing and we shouldn't have policy made for the 1%. I hope the changes they implement will actually benefit small startups instead of relaxing regulations for large data hoarders.
  • harperlee 1y ago
    GDPR is not about the cookie banner, it has massive implications around the whole lifecycle of data. For example you need to be able to gather all data of a particular client for them to access, and they have the right for all their data to be erased.
    • baggy_trough 1y ago
      Far less than 1% of people would care about either.
      • jlokier 1y ago
        But far more than 1% are harmed by it. Sometimes the harm is severe. Vast oceans of poorly handled personal data collected in exquisite and unnecessary detail by dark patterns, copied around to everyone who might be interested with low regard for security, kept forever, analysed by the best algorithms and sold to whomever will buy it, raise the risks and consequences of identity theft and fraud for everyone. Those are the sorts of things GDPR is designed to limit. The GDPR isn't about cookies or websites. It applies to non-web-based businesses too. It's basically just insisting on security best practices in every part of a business that handles personally identifying or sensitive data. Limiting its collection to what is necessary and consented to, deleting or anonymising it when it's no longer required, respecting wishes of the individuals the data, and giving people some confidence that security best practice is taken seriously.
        • baggy_trough 1y ago
          Most people don't care about these things. Who are you to say that the harm is severe to people who don't care?
• merqurio 1y ago
  The news feels bittersweet. With 10+ of experience in healthcare AI, I have seen enough shitty products to genuinely welcome strict regulation for critical sectors; however, this shift threatens to dilute the sense of urgency that was growing in the sector. We recently built a platform specifically to navigate the complex intersection of MDR (Medical Device Regulation) and the AI Act, relying on the pressure of hard deadlines. By introducing flexible timelines linked to technical standards, the EU risks signaling that compliance is a secondary concern, potentially stalling the momentum... and at this point patient safety is my biggest concern, not our platform This introduces chaos rather than relief. Companies do not need lower standards; they need clarity. We can compete effectively against high standards as long as the rules are clear. EU AI Act was clear. This proposal substitutes the certainty of a high bar with the confusion of a sliding scale, which may hinder the industry more than it helps :/
• danishSuri1994 1y ago
  I sympathize with the startup argument: heavy compliance costs can stifle early innovation. But the solution shouldn’t be “weaker rules.” It should be smarter rules, clearer safe harbors for small actors, browser-level consent primitives for users, and stronger enforcement against dark-pattern CMPs. That keeps privacy meaningful without killing small businesses.
  • jdasdf 1y ago
    > clearer safe harbors for small actors Different rules for different people huh? Just because you like the group you're benefiting and dislike the group you're harming doesn't mean that is good policy.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Different rules for different people huh? Compliance has fixed costs. And smaller operations have a smaller blast radius when things go wrong. Reducing requirements for smaller operators makes sense.
    • Swenrekcah 1y ago
      Not different rules for different people. You would be subject to one rule for your small company and another rule as it grows. This is everywhere in society, from expectation difference between babies, kids, teenagers, adults and seniors and to tax bracket structures.
      • rat9988 1y ago
        This is different for different people said differently. Why would small companies have access to things not allowed to big companies?
        • kelseyfrog 1y ago
• superkuh 1y ago
  Does this mean that whois information can come back? The destruction of the whois databases by GDPR really made the internet a more closed, proprietary place. No more could one just contact the people behind any domain and communicate... pretty much impossible after GDPR came into effect. Especially if you don't use twitter/corporate crap.
  • hdgvhicv 1y ago
    That was already the case for the majority of domains.
    • superkuh 1y ago
      We must have lived on different internets. I have much lived experience of finding cool domains, looking up their email, and talking to them all the way up to GDPR coming into effect. "whois privacy" options at registrars were starting to take off but at least those still had the email to contact. Now it's nothing.
  • das_keyboard 1y ago
    I for one like it to be able to post stuff on my website without the risk of someone sending me pizza or swat teams to my home address...
• rvz 1y ago
  The EU is a great example of a spineless paper tiger to Big Tech and is the reason why AI startups run to the US. Promoting degrowth is the best way to lose the race and the EU have finally admitted that they got it completely wrong.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• legitster 1y ago
  Let me steelman the new proposal a little bit: You run a merch store. You want to share with your suppliers order data so that you can get the right number of sizes/colors/etc. Is this PII under GDPR rules? Technically, yes! Not only is there information on gender, but also people's height and weight and maybe even family makeup. Does it make sense to call this data sub-processing? Eh? Maybe? (To my knowledge, I don't know if any examples like this actually caught any enforcement.) Under the new proposal, sharing this data is okay, so long as you use pseudo-anonymous identifiers (customer-1234, customer-1235). You still can't share sensitive identifiers (name, address, email, login, etc). Obviously the elephant in the room is AI and training data. But this also simplifies a lot of the ticky-tacky areas in GDPR where PII rules are opaque and not-consistently enforced anyway.
  • tavavex 1y ago
    > You run a merch store. You want to share with your suppliers order data so that you can get the right number of sizes/colors/etc. Is this PII under GDPR rules? Technically, yes! Not only is there information on gender, but also people's height and weight and maybe even family makeup. That seems like a very long stretch. First of all, why assume that clothes sizes constitute PII at all? The store never asks me for my height, weight or family relations. It asks me what item variants I'd like to order. Even if the item size happens to match me, there's no telling that I'm ordering it for myself. They're just fulfilling an order that's built to my request, not collecting my biometrics. It would have to be an insane world in which "Supplier, send me 20x unisex medium sizes with XYZ illustration" is considered a breach of privacy. Each time the GDPR comes up, there are so many hypotheticals that never happened (and likely can't happen) in the real world, when the much simpler line of reasoning is that privacy regulation is digging too much into the profit motive of corporations and the US at large, so the sore thumb that is the EU needs to be pushed back in line in their minds. Tracking and ad companies don't need your real name or email to track you across the internet. And even if they did want that, with a large enough corpus of data, a social media company can probably deduce who most people are anyway based on their behavior even if they're technically marked with an "anonymous identifier". Letting business identify you in any way and trade that "anonymized" data back and forth will effectively be a reversal to full tracking.
  • 1y ago
• moss_dog 1y ago
  I wish there was a link to the source of this information in the article! I'd like to read the updated version of these laws (if they're public).
• nonethewiser 1y ago
  >One change that’s likely to please almost everyone is a reduction in Europe’s ubiquitous cookie banners and pop-ups. Under the new proposal, some “non-risk” cookies won’t trigger pop-ups at all, and users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. Wait, what? So they are now mandating browsers implement this? Also, something bothers me about the conflation of regulators changing the regulation (accurate) with regulators changing the thing that resulted from the previous version of the regulation (inaccurate). They arent getting rid of the cookie banners. They are changing the underlying rules that gave rise to them. It remains to be seen what the effects of the new rules will be.
• zrn900 1y ago
  While this is being done to boost corporations, it also must be said that GDPR just did not work. It became impossible due to constant reinterpretations and decisions of the Eu courts over time. Big corps just violate it by counting the eventual fines as a cost of doing business. Small corps and individuals get shafted. It ended up like the 'regulatory moat building' that so frequently happens in the US.
• nonethewiser 1y ago
  If the EU passed GDPR despite knowing it would be offensive to the US and big tech, why would they now care that it's offensive to the US and big tech? The article claims this is because of big tech and Donald Trump. It just states that they have applied pressure. I would love to see more information on how those forces specifically are precipitating the change. Meanwhile the EU commission claims that this is for the benefit the European tech sector. >our companies, especially our start-ups and small businesses, are often held back by layers of rigid rules The latter seems like the more obvious explanation and what critics said about GDPR all along.
• saubeidl 1y ago
  Shameful decision, caving to foreign capital interests. Do better, EU.
  • zoobab 1y ago
    The EU should pass a Foreign Lobbying Ban Act. For example, if you are a french company with american shareholders, you can't lobby the EU.
    • mortarion 1y ago
      They can't pass an act like that. USA would retaliate economically.
      • saubeidl 1y ago
        Why can't we counter-retaliate? Where are our cojones?
        • gulfofamerica 11mo ago
          Sublet for a longer siesta.
• Manfred 1y ago
  In comparison with healthcare information systems the GDPR is really not that hard to follow. You can get guides for business owners which can be read and understood in under an hour. If you design your system according to the guidelines you usually end up with a product where it's easier to service your customer (eg. with full account exports). Deleting inactive accounts is great because it means less migration headaches in the future. This is also why our privacy statement starts with "We […] don’t really want your personal data."
  • bcye 1y ago
    Can you point to any of these guides?
    • Manfred 1y ago
      In our case we were working on a Dutch project so we used this; AVG is the GDPR implementation for the Netherlands: https://ictrecht.shop/en/products/handboek-avg-compliance-in-de-praktijk https://ictrecht.shop/en/products/handboek-avg-compliance-in...
• cess11 1y ago
  It would have been nice if we instead had actually enforced these rules and given the world an alternative digital regime. I suspect it would eventually seem quite attractive to most. "Well, you can say what you like but it doesn't change anything 'Cause the corridors of power, they're an ocean away" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpo2-nVc27I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpo2-nVc27I
• jmclnx 1y ago
  That is too bad, I had hope in this case regular people would win and get privacy we deserve. But as always big money wins, it just takes time.
• ultra_nick 1y ago
  It's crazy how many adults think regulation is free, especially here. All consuming vague regulations like GDPR increase the cost of a startup by 500%. Europe should have just banned startups entirely. It would have the same effect. Imagine being a college student with 240 hours and $1,000 to release an MVP over the summer. How long would it take to read GDPR yourself, 100 hours? How much would it cost to hire a lawyer verify that your startup meets GDPR guidelines, $5,000? It would be almost impossible for any young person to start a business. GDPR was obviously a failure from the start. Anyone who couldn't see that has a child's understanding of business. Grow up.
  • Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    > All consuming vague regulations like GDPR increase the cost of a startup by 500%. Source?
    • omnimus 1y ago
      I would say it's a lot more than 500%. If your business is based on doing things that are illegal under GDPR then the cost of doing that startup is close to infinite. But that's kinda the point of GDPR.
      • Telaneo 1y ago
        This. Sure, it's X% more difficult to do Y in Europe, because Europe doesn't want you to do Y, either at all, or unless you clean up after yourself so the costs aren't just eaten up by the environment or whatever, or unless you do it without causing harm. That's not a problem. That's the system working as intended. Sure, Europe doesn't have it's own Microsoft, probably because of regulations like this, but I don't want Europe to have its own Microsoft, because Microsoft, for the most part, sucks.
        • aerhardt 1y ago
          > That's not a problem. That's the system working as intended. You really think that supra-national legislators regulating the fine-print of unfathomably complex systems manage to have everything working "as intended"? Why do Draghi or the EC want to roll back this mess then, other than the evident loss of competitiveness respective of the blocs who did not do this? Was that intended or foreseen?
• tonyhart7 1y ago
  Europe learn the hard way that you cant have a cake and eat it too
  • 1970-01-01 1y ago
    EU citizens: WE DEMAND XYZ PROTECTIONS EU: WE SHALL BUILD XYZ FOR EVERYONE (years pass) EU citizens: WE HATE XYZ PROTECTIONS
    • pelasaco 1y ago
      Who demanded cookie banners?
      • m000 1y ago
        The companies trying to persuade you to click "Accept All".
      • franciscator 1y ago
        Cookie banners are an AI solved problem ... just train on "minimize eyes spying on me"... a business model?
• zrn900 1y ago
  From Europe, I agree with big tech getting it. But i dont agree with random flower shop somewhere getting fined because they dont know how to deal with a fcking complicated, ever-changing law that is designed for megacorps who have the cash to just keep paying the fine and abusing everyone. I also dont agree with dealing with fcking cookie banners on every other website either. The law got SO convoluted over 9 years of interpretation by the European courts that its now impossible to be 100% compliant. It now requires you to give an easy 'Accept' button to accept the listed cookies at the first pop up, but penalizes you if the user actually uses it to accept cookies because the user has to manually go through all the listed cookies and approve them by hand one by one. So: - If you dont provide the easy 'accept' button, you are in violation. - If you do and the user actually clicks it, you are still in violation because you didnt make the user approve each cookie one by one - If you give a list of cookies to the users and force the user to manually approve what he wants in the first pop up, you are still in violation because its not easy and your easy 'Accept' button is meaningless as a result And this is just one of its contradictions. The more you dive, the more convoluted it gets. Its a sh*tty law that got more complicated over time and only helped megacorps. People need to understand that the early days of the Pirate Party are gone and the current crop of tech-savvy politicians that remain from those days are those who made a career out of it. And like every politician who made a career out of something, the only way for those politicians to keep getting elected is by doing 'more' of what they have been doing. So they just keep bloating tech regulation to keep their career, making it difficult for everyone but the large corporations. It must also be noted that some of them sold out and are basically the tech lobbies' henchmen, pushing for American-style legislation to build regulatory moats for big corporations.
  • gruturo 1y ago
    > The law got SO convoluted over 9 years of interpretation by the European courts that its now impossible to be 100% compliant It absolutely isn't. I set up a blog for a friend where she shows her art and publishes an appearances itinerary/schedule. It doesn't collect ANY info from visitors, therefore requires no cookie banner at all. Simple as that. HTTP logs are retained for 7 days for security analysis and then wiped. No analytics available, although my understanding is that a self-hosted Matomo instance set to anonymize the last 2 IP bytes of every logline it ingests would still be considered exempt from a banner.
• HardCodedBias 1y ago
  @complaintvc on X has been doing amazing work in this area. The EU, especially the EU post 2008, seems to be infatuated with regulation it has likely bitten them with their lackluster GDP growth and their very lackluster AI developments. I suspect that this is too little too late, and more importantly I highly doubt it signals a shift in the biases/incentives of the EU regulators. The second the scrutiny is off of them they will go back to their ways. It is their nature. (I look forward to the loss of karma. I hope that the link to @complaintvc at least makes a few people chuckle).
• zrn900 1y ago
  While they are at it, the EU should also correct another sh*tty law: The Digital 'Resilience' Act (or whatever it was) that holds the Open Source developers responsible for unlimited fines for security issues in their projects. The Open Source community fought it, and thought that it won a concession, but it really was not a concession: The Eu commission will 'interpret' the law. So it will be interpreted politically - or worse, lobby-driven - with every other Eu commission that takes office. The law does not allow you to make any kind of income from your open source project in ANY way, and basically forces you to be free labor for megacorps. Charging for support? Responsible for fines that can go up to millions of Euros. Charging for 'downloads'. Same. Licenses? Same. It looks like this was another law pushed by Eu big software lobbies: Cripple any small player that may be a competitor by building a moat against small players and those pesky Open Source startups that may challenge your online service, but still keep Open Source developers as the free labor for your company's infrastructure. The tech legislation landscape in the Eu has been co-opted by Eu megacorps. Like I said in another comment, we arent in the early days of the Pirate Party anymore. Now career politicians and sold-out lobbyists make laws to protect megacorps. Therefore Im against any new tech legislation from the Eu, despite having been an early Pirate Party advocate back when even using the word 'pirate' put you in legal trouble.
  • xvector 1y ago
    Big players don't want this either, we rely on open source software and frequently contribute back This is just another dumb EU reg that hurts everyone
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• loloquwowndueo 1y ago
  Does this mean fewer less-annoying cookie pop ups?
• seydor 1y ago
  Too late , and it's not just because of the regulations but the whole mentality. This will probably lead to a series of committees about how to scale back the laws which will create new rules which will be put in place, and then the career eurocrats will move on to their next job, without anyone ever being held accountable for the mistakes of the past. Without such accountability every regulation will be excessive, even the scaling-back regulation. Such a process oriented, and feels-over-reals environment is not attractive to competitive business
  • filoleg 1y ago
    > This will probably lead to a series of committees about how to scale back the laws [...] > [...] which will create new rules which will be put in place [...] > [...] and then the career eurocrats will move on to their next job, without anyone ever being held accountable for the mistakes of the past As intended by design. I don't think there is some grand conspiracy or anything like that in the EU government around this, but it is clear where their priorities are. With those priorities being: 1. Perpetual rule of bureaucracy that exists for the sake of bureaucracy, with the best outcome of it being creation of even more bureaucracy. Anything of actual usefulness being done is just a side effect, not the goal. Bonus: this principle ensures perpetual job security for those career bureaucrats as well (and it helps with creating even more of them), as you can never have one too many committees or processes. 2. Hyperfocus on things that actually need to get done to consolidate power needed to ensure staying power for those bureaucrats and that the previous priority is not encroached upon. Case in point: an HN post[0] from yesterday about the EU pushing forward another new Chat Control proposal, shortly after their previous one failed earlier this year. For the EU governing bodies being stereotyped as ineffectual and too bogged down by their own bureaucracy, they surely are really efficient when it comes to repeatedly pushing publicly unpopular (but seemingly popular among the EU government bureaucrats) measures like Chat Control so quickly after their previous attempt had failed. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45970663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45970663
• rckt 1y ago
  I get that too many regulations is a bad thing. But when we talk privacy and personal data there should be no gray zone. It has to be black and white. When I see a stupid cookie banner I search for "Reject all". There's no some data that companies can collect and process without my consent, they just shouldn't be able to collect anything without me actively opting in. Business never respects anything, but profits. Seeing news about relaxing these laws with the "AI" going after this leaves a bitter taste. And with them also trying to push the Chat Control thing, it gets even worse.
  • betaby 1y ago
    That cookie thing should a browser's default.
    • Fargren 1y ago
      That would be fine, if there was a law that forced every browser to have this setting and every company to respect the setting.
      • bryanrasmussen 1y ago
        arguably if there was a browser setting for this the current GDPR would require you to respect that setting. But that's arguably, it would still need to adjudicated.
        • 1718627440 1y ago
          The browser setting already exists (DNT), so I don't know what you want to conlude.
          • bryanrasmussen 1y ago
            My conclusion would be that under the current GDPR that if someone had the browser setting on, if a company did not respect that setting and kept private data, that they could be reported for GDPR violations and then the issue could be adjudicated, i.e that the courts would then decide if in fact GDPR violations occur by not following that browser setting. Secondary conclusion - it might be more beneficial if one just contacted the EDPB and said since this browser setting exists and nobody is using it please issue a ruling if the browser setting must be followed, set it to go into effect by this date giving people time to implement it, and if they agreed the browser setting would be adequate to represent your GDPR wishes they might also conclude that it would be an onerous process to make you go through a GDPR acceptance if it were turned on, howe ver as this article is saying that they are "scaling back" the GDPR that would seem to be dead in the water, which is why I said under "the current GDPR".
• asdfwaafsfw 1y ago
  But that extra click to read any webpage was keeping me safe
• johndhi 1y ago
  Protecting users in the bargains we strike with big tech is a worthwhile and noble effort, but privacy law has generally woefully failed to do this. Millions upon millions have been spent on cookie banners -- people are still arguing about them in this thread -- but there is almost zero benefit to this expense. The main thing that's good about this, IMO, is that fundamentally training a large language model and privacy law as it's written today cannot coexist. They are incompatible. And allowing someone to break the law forever (as is happening today) is not a good long-term solution.
  • impossiblefork 1y ago
    I don't see how training an LLM has anything to do with privacy laws. It is perfectly possible to not train them on personal information, to remove or rewrite names, to remove IP addresses, etc.
    • johndhi 1y ago
      Names and IP addresses are like 1% of what meets the gdpr definition of personal data.
  • aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
    > Training a large language model and privacy law as it's written today cannot coexist If they aren't compatible, then the conclusion is abundantly obvious; the LLM has to go, not privacy. Small and questionable economic utility in exchange for a pillar of stable democratic society are NOT negotiable tradeoff. There is enough data on the internet to train LLMs without breaking a single privacy law. If the economic value of LLMs are as real as the companies like to claim, there is enough data on the internet to train LLMs while paying for proper royalty for every single word. I don't argue that privacy laws have been perfect. Only a fraction of GDPR seems to actually do much. But bending over backwards because big tech slips a few dollars in the pocket of Brussels is NOT the reason we should revise those laws.
    • johndhi 1y ago
      Good luck getting rid of LLMs
• lenerdenator 1y ago
  I'm sure capitulation will teach the surveillance racket a strong lesson. Hold the line. Don't make the same mistake we did in the US. Your data is your data.
• oezi 1y ago
  Anonymization unfortunately is completely broken under GDPR. In principle it providesa clean path for personal data to become usable outside of the restrictions of GDPR, but in practice it turns out to be impossible based on current definitions. The key issue is that anonymization under GDPR requires that a link to a real person can never be re-established even considering the person doing the anonymization. Consider a clincial study on 100 patients and their some diagnostic parameter such as creatinine or H1bc which was legally collected using consent and everything. Lets assume we would like to share only the 100 values of the diagnostic without any personal data. It would seem quite anonymous, but GDPR would put a simple test if anybody using reasonable efforts could re-establish an identity. And sure the original researcher can because s/he has a master file containing the mapping. So the data isn't anonymous and actually can never be anonymous.
  • buzer 1y ago
    You should probably look into pseudononymization in your case, not actual anonymization. Look into C‑413/23 P in more detail to see if it's applicable in your situation, it's essentially the first case law around it. You probably do need some extra controls (like contract that the data is not shared) just in case to avoid the data coming in hands of someone else who could identify the people depending on how detailed the data is.
• MiddleEndian 1y ago
  The GDPR somehow had the power to make (almost) everyone comply with it, even outside of the EU. If only they had specified that instead of banners, companies had to actually respect the Do Not Track header, even if set by default on a browser, and everything that could be rejected would be rejected if that were sent.
• egorfine 1y ago
  It's gonna take a decade to roll down all those cookie banners.
• l5870uoo9y 1y ago
  The fundamental problem in Europe is the perception that companies are inherently ill-intentioned, requiring micro-management through massive bureaucracy. It is a moralising and irresponsible attitude that older people can afford to adopt, but like so many other things, it hits younger generations mercilessly hard.
  • sMarsIntruder 1y ago
    This is a general approach applied also to the population. In Europe there is a particular concept of freedom.
    • mortarion 1y ago
      Like the old adage goes. In the USA you have freedom for things. In Europe you have freedom from things.
  • m000 1y ago
    Ehmmm... If we learnt something in the past century, it is that companies don't have morals because they are not real persons. And even the real persons running them may be legally liable to the shareholders if they act based on their personal morality. So, yes, the default should be that companies are inherently ill-intentioned to society, because that gets them an unfair advantage and gets more "value to the shareholders".
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • moooo99 1y ago
    > The fundamental problem in Europe is the perception that companies are inherently ill-intentioned, requiring micro-management through massive bureaucracy. History tells us they are. Well technically, they are not ill intentioned. They just don't care if they do harm on their search for profit
• varispeed 1y ago
  GDPR was never about privacy, but to legitimise data trade. It was two step process - first train people to Agree to anything by introducing "harmless" Cookie Law, then once people just click Agree to anything, create legal basis for data trade, where it is no longer a grey area as most users give consent. With Chat Controls coming back, never assume EU is doing anything for the benefit of general public. What is particularly bad, is that they are not honest about it, just keep gaslighting.
  • hexbin010 1y ago
    This is kind of my take. I can't believe the outcome where most people just click "agree" to explicitly opt in to tracking was some kind of unforseen mistake.
  • oblio 1y ago
    GDPR doesn't really work as you describe. Under GDPR data is a liability.
    • varispeed 1y ago
      One man's liability, another man's profit.
      • oblio 1y ago
        Versus every man's profit?
• Telaneo 1y ago
  Of all the things to yield on, the GDPR really isn't it. The cookie banner problem is one caused by site owners consistently preferring using dark patterns over just not doing the stuff that makes you need a banner. If anything, the EU should have put the hammer down and enforced its regulations on those cookie banners consistently having 'accept all' being the default option and the alternative be more difficult to access. The central browser controls they mention will hopefully be a more sucessful version of the 'do-not-track' header. An equivalent of that will be fine (although an opt-in version would be better), but it still needs to have legal enforcement behind it to work, which the old one didn't, and the cookie banners aren't feeling.
  • peterspath 1y ago
    They should do it on OS level instead of browser level, apps also do tracking, and collecting data. One question when you first boot up your device. One switch in settings.
  • ngruhn 1y ago
    What's the point of the choice in the first place. People either don't want cookies or they don't care. Nobody wants them. If both options are accessible enough, people always press decline. The EU should just make non essential use illegale.
    • Telaneo 1y ago
      I'd love for them to be made illegal, but I imagine certain groups of people wouldn't take kindly to that, so we need to do the dance and have people be tracked under nominal consent.
• imiric 1y ago
  Well, that's a bummer. Despite the sentiment on this forum that EU regulations are hindering tech progress, Europe is one of the few places in the world that actually tries to keep tech companies on a leash. We need much more of that, not less. The GDPR and the AI Act are far too weak, IMO. We've seen that fines when companies step out of line are simply the cost of doing business for them. Tech oligarchs should be getting jail time for every infraction instead. I'm not too concerned for myself, since I don't trust any of these companies with my data anyway. But this is bad news for the majority of people who aren't tech savvy, or simply have "nothing to hide". We know what happens when we let CEOs run a country. The last thing Europe needs is to follow USA's lead.
• constantcrying 1y ago
  The changes to the GDPR are completely irrelevant compared to what the EU is planning with chat control. The Commission is completely out of control, pushing through (or at least trying to) vast amounts of awful legislation, while the democratic processes are totally failing. What this bloc desperately needs is leadership, which represents collective economic interests on a global stage, not some more pieces of legislation trying to control the Internet or putting the entirety of EU citizens under suspicion of raping children.
• palata 1y ago
  I don't get why people conclude from the cookie hell that "regulations are bad". If those goddamn websites got actual fines for those dark patterns, they wouldn't do it. The EU should just be stricter with the regulations.
  • IMTDb 1y ago
    I m not sure I follow your logic; are you saying that the regulation is not that bad because you are not fined enough if you don't follow it ? Some of us just follow regulations because it's the law - regardless of the fine. I feel like we should be allowed to express our opinion about their merits or shortcomings without considering the penalty aspect which is an entirely separate conversation.
    • strken 1y ago
      I believe the point was the exact opposite: the regulation isn't enforced, which creates these absurd opt-out dialogue trees. If it were to be enforced fully, then anyone without a "reject all" button would be slapped with fines. Maybe even anyone who doesn't abide by the do not track/global privacy control headers.
      • palata 1y ago
        Yes, that's what I meant. Also businesses are not people. People may not do illegal things "just because they are illegal" or because they want to be "good" (e.g. I agree that we should not litter, I wouldn't even need a regulation for that). Businesses are profit-maximising machines. If it it profitable to litter, a business will do it. The framework in which businesses maximise is set by regulations, which represent what society wants. That's how capitalism works. The limit of capitalism is when businesses are more powerful than the entities in charge of enforcing the regulations. If "enforcing a regulation" means having lawyers work on it, but the businesses themselves have orders of magnitudes more lawyers trying to prevent those entities from doing their jobs, then we have a problem. That's a limit of capitalism, IMO.
        • 11mo ago
• omnimus 1y ago
  People here act as if GDPR was some kind of big reason why all the digital tech is from US. But come on it's not like the game hasn't been rigged forever. To be more specific it's been part of the deal with europe being close US ally. None of the european digital tech is ever supposed to be relevant. And in case some european digital tech is relevant it has to be absorbed by US or at least made to look irrelevant so nobody sees or cares about it. If anything this recent lobby and political pressure to remove GDPR/AI laws is there to help US in time when it needs it. To allow some US big tech software to sweep in exploit what they can and help to keep the line up as much as possible. But if you really look at digital tech in europe... it's doing fine. Why? Because making software and compute is cheaper every year to a point of nothing. It's hard keep insane growth in that environment. Sure if you make some unique breakthrough (like AGI) then tech keep going again. But what if not? Then you just have to squeeze everyone more including your allies, especially your allies.
• azalemeth 1y ago
  It's perhaps worth linking to the official EC page on this proposal: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/digital-package https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/digital-packag...
• djoldman 1y ago
  > The proposal now heads to the European Parliament and the EU’s 27 member states — where it will need a qualified majority — for approval... Not a done deal.
• HardwareLust 1y ago
  I see the tech bros finally figured out who they needed to bribe.
• alexnewman 1y ago
  The issue isn’t too much regulation. It’s that an organization such as eu cannot adapt
• zhengiszen 1y ago
  EU's citizens are ripe for the taking. GAFAM, Palantir & co are going for the kill (we hope not like in Gaza)
• rdudek 1y ago
  Is this related to the upcoming EU-Inc initiatives next year?
• varenc 1y ago
  > Under the new proposal, some “non-risk” cookies won’t trigger pop-ups at all, and users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. For 'central browser control', what is technically mechanism behind this? Is it something like an entirely new request header sent by the browser? Or re-using some existing RFC? Also curious if the regulation will compel browsers to implement this or something. Managing cookie permissions at the browser level always made the most sense, but implementing it with regulation is what seems hard.
• Brajeshwar 1y ago
  Is this one of the initiatives to start syncing with the new 28th regime? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_regime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_regime
• internet2000 1y ago
  I wonder if Apple holding back features helped the EU realize that hey, maybe the regulations are getting too onerous. I like to think so.
• rubenvanwyk 1y ago
  So no more cookie banners taking up half the screen of every website I load?! Great!
• dash2 1y ago
  There are lots of principled arguments about privacy versus growth versus monopoly here. But the reality is: for 95% of people in the EU (or the UK), their only direct experience of GDPR is the cookie banner. They aren't going to understand your subtle arguments about whose fault it is; they know that GDPR came along and they had to click on cookie banners. And they (and I) absolutely hate it.
• burnt-resistor 1y ago
  The cookie banner is the superficial part. The meat of it is how user data is collected or not and stored or not. Rolling this back would be a catastrophic defeat. Perhaps if there were an automatic cookie preference browser API that could automate the user experience it would be better for users.
• rcpt 1y ago
  What data are cookies providing that browser fingerprinting can't? From what I can tell, we have to click all these pop ups for no reason at all.
  • savolai 1y ago
    The llm answer to this was clarifying. Thanks for bringing up the q.
• NewsGotHacked 1y ago
  I have mixed feelings about this one. While I was never too excited about some of the unintended consequences of GDPR. That said, I do see benefit of the EU being the world's regulator on these types of things. I don't have confidence that anyone else would do it if the EU didn't. Even for those of us that don't live in the EU (I am in the US myself), I do feel like the EU plays the role of keeping things in check for the rest of us even if we are directly impacted by their regulations.
• roschdal 1y ago
  Big mistake
• apples_oranges 1y ago
  Imagine the useful, user friendly, well designed features when business had a big incentive to push privacy
• kaon_2 1y ago
  Here's a story about how the mere perception of "regulations exist and are strict" is dragging down my european AI start-up: Our product makes it easy to capture and share knowledge on the factory floor, which is very important when many of your workers about to retire. Interest is enormous. It is a simple SaaS. You'd think selling would be easy. And it is: In the USA. In Europe the mere existence of the regulations (not what's in them) delays us by 6 months at least per deal. No european executive really understands what is in the GDPR, and eventhough we are 100% compliant, there is nothing we can do to take away this fear. This means that when we talk to European companies, IT and Legal departments always have to be closely involved, leading to all sorts of political games; each department conjures up non-existing risk by talking vaguely about data privacy, just so they appear important. Half a year later when the dust has settled, the executive buys the product, or their mind has moved to other things. My point is this: What is in the laws is not important to me. What is important is that current perception of laws turn companies into slugs. I want us to mentally move back to 2018 where we could "just buy SaaS" without worrying endlessly about data privacy. I understand hesitency when it comes to cyber security, but that is not what is slowing us down. One of our workarounds currently is simply never to mention we use AI.
• bluSCALE4 1y ago
  ...the companies will be very pleased.
• arkh 1y ago
  Remember that at its core GDPR was to harmonize privacy laws around the EU to ease the transfer of data between those countries.
• wg0 1y ago
  Europe should make business registration a single one page one step operation first. There are dozens of stories how registering a business alone can take several months and tons of paperwork.
  • moooo99 1y ago
    How is Europe, much less the EU, supposed to do that? Registering a business in Estonia is famously relatively straightforward, while it is an absolute pain here in Germany. But business registration is the responsibility of the countries themselves and it should remain that way
    • pentacent_hq 1y ago
      There's the idea of creating a so-called 28th regime under which a streamlined registration process would allow the creation of business entities in all EU countries. See: https://www.eu-inc.org/ https://www.eu-inc.org/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_regime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28th_regime
      • lifty 1y ago
        how realistic is it that it will be implemented? Sounds more like wishful thinking at the moment.
  • rullelito 1y ago
    > There are dozens of stories how registering a business alone can take several months and tons of paperwork. What does this even mean? You have examples from ALL of Europe? Each country has its own process, and at least in "my" country it is very easy.
  • VadimPR 1y ago
    In Sweden and Netherlands it is quite easy and straightforward to register a business, speaking from personal experience. Tax filing is quite straightforward as well, especially for personal income tax.
• dev1ycan 1y ago
  The AI bubble is so big at this point that this just feels like coercion/bribery induced.
• qwertox 1y ago
  They had enough time to push browser vendors to implement an API which allows the user to specify the preferences, so that the page queries the API, instead of the user. This is a step back. All these years of clicking those banners is now for nothing.
  • hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
    As someone who had to implement GDPR, it would be really frustrating if all people thought it was was the banners (which I’m not even sure was GDPR). While our company was very good at handling customer data already, it forced us to up even our game. Other companies, however, were absolutely miserable at it. GDPR has improved user privacy for the billion+ Internet users across the board, whether they are EU citizens or not, and most won’t even know about it.
    • hobofan 1y ago
      Maybe that's just media consumption and reporting bias, but I feel like data leaks have been a lot rarer and less impactful in Europe in recent years compared to the US and based on that the scam/identity theft activity also less intense.
• tete 1y ago
  Given that they were largely ignored anyways, who cares? Laws have become almost meaningless, in a world where power lies within companies and not governments or the public, which anyways has been trained to either act against their own interest or disillusioned enough to largely don't care. The only space where there's still laws from people is in the social media world, where the outcome are laws that don't change the life of anything but make you feel good. Eg. minorities, women, etc. still have low income, bad life outlook, etc., but hey now you need to clearly state that the programmer job is also for women and trans people. Assholes can be assholes as long as they use the right pronoun, whole industries thriving on lowering the baseline (delivery, etc.) of what humane treatment at a workplace is celebrate and pinkwashing. Everyone is "happy". Also on the ecological side. Laws that that would change something fail, but everything that can be exploited in terms of taxation passes - seriously look at summaries on voting on directives. It's completely split at this line, and all the "liberals" celebrate how great they are for driving essentially tax funded electric cars. It's no surprise that companies reacted by making the most obnoxious cookie banners instead of removing the need to having those in first place (fun fact: you do NOT need those for cookies at all). Whenever you read a "We care about your privacy" that is an outright lie. If they even remotely did there would be no need to have such banners. Even for much of the more shady stuff you don't need to. And still most companies don't even adhere to the GDPR. They just have a meeting do pick some pieces and forget about it. Democracies sadly have become a real farce. I think the world has over-optimized for it, companies have "min-maxed" for the current set of laws and now well intended laws are effectively meaningless, cause smart people came up with nice hacks to not really have to care about it. It's just like a video game, where people realize that your skill set is nice, but you can just max out DPS and bring along a tank, where you realize and realize that the debuff on your armor doesn't matter if it doesn't hit you and where the penalty on item costs is meaningless because you don't know where to put your money anyways. And honestly, finding such strategies to optimize for "just not breaking the law" or getting around it entirely is extremely fun, compared to all the boring work at a job. What people used to call "honest work" just doesn't work outside of very localized and small scale setting, and even there it's hard. To compare with video games again, it's like all the "soloing is possible" and yeah sure, sometimes it works, but if the big guys decide to crush you they will. So best to join up with them which is exactly what is happening. We also see that in other laws. Monopolies are forbidden? Well either keep at least one competitor alive (iOS vs Android, AMD and Intel, etc.) or make a cartel, even a completely passive one where you just do "market analysis" to have a similar price. If your competitor raises prices, it is your job to adapt your prices to increase profits. If your competitors use cheaper materials, etc. it's the same. You never ever need to interact with your competitors. Working together in one way or another is what made humans really productive, it works well for companies, yet somehow there is that believe that magically this won't happen and instead it's all fierce competition, which is ridiculous when the biggest threat to large successful companies is literally the market changing. So they just take safe bets and buy all the smaller largely already working products and call it innovation on their side. It's a good, smart, reasonable strategy. But it's also very obviously not as intended. The thing is that big surprise, it's the same for privacy protection laws. Companies don't care about your privacy at all and most people are in fact ordered to store data just to have it. They make sure it's annoying so both to make you accept them and to complain about the law. It's a real farce to think that somehow people, governments, etc. think that companies (at large) are nice and just want you, the world and everyone to be good and happy. It is baffling that people really believe that and somehow always think their favorite brand is magically different, because they met a nice lad working there in marketing.
• p0w3n3d 1y ago
  Europe is also introducing Chat Control so that might be why they are moving back.
  • zwnow 1y ago
    Wasn't that put on hold?
    • nickslaughter02 11mo ago
      No. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-chat-control-proposal-still-poses-high-risks-despite-removal-of-mandatory-scanning-experts-warn/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-chat-control-proposal-st...
• zombot 1y ago
  > if the development of the GDPR and AI Act are anything to go by, a political and lobbying firestorm is on its way. No doubt that now the flood gates are open, powerful interests will do everything they can to water down the protections even more. This is already bad enough as it is.
• Hoasi 1y ago
  So they've missed the innovation train due to regulation, and now they are likely to axe the side-effect benefit of said regulation.
• graemep 1y ago
  I know the HN rules say the title should not be changed, so its the article's fault, but the EU is NOT Europe.
• pelasaco 1y ago
  Are cookie banners going away anytime soon? There is no law more ‘European’ than this one.
• hnbad 1y ago
  This sounds interesting and all but I'd like a more technically informed source than The Verge to judge whether the headline is accurate: > One change that’s likely to please almost everyone is a reduction in Europe’s ubiquitous cookie banners and pop-ups. Under the new proposal, some “non-risk” cookies won’t trigger pop-ups at all, and users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. That's nonsensical. The GDPR doesn't require "cookie banners and pop-ups". Obtaining consent for things you can't do without consent does - if you insist on handling it that way. And "'non-risk' cookies", i.e. technical cookies required to fulfil the functionality requested by the user (e.g. maintain a login session) definitionally don't require consent and thus no "pop-up" or "banner". So what is the actual change here?
• thomastraum 1y ago
  I love how you can think about any of these ideas in a really basic way like a 5 year old and you'll know intuitively that it'll all fail, particularly if you invert it: for example: - bureaucracy creates less bureaucracy - price controls create more supply - adding more rules creates more freedom - government is good at understanding technology - the more people you have the better your decisions will be - the further someone is from a problem, the better they can solve it etc
  • earthnail 1y ago
    Generally agree, except for point three. - adding more rules creates more freedom. Imagine the US without a constitution. It’d be madness. In a lawless country, people would be less free to do things they actually want to do because they’re so occupied with just surviving.
    • lunias 1y ago
      Rules are necessary, but ideally you'd strive for the minimum set that produces the desired outcome w/ the least side-effects.
      • earthnail 1y ago
        Totally agree. But parent‘s point was formulated as such that rules are generally bad, and I wanted to point out that some rules are necessary, and sometimes you may even need to add some (and obv sometimes also remove some).
  • thrance 1y ago
    Let me introduce you to the concept of "Negative Liberty": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty I quite like not having my personal data stolen by foreign megacorps for nefarious purposes. In that, I am freer than Americans thanks to Europeans regulations.
• lupire 1y ago
  What about GDPR is "scaling back"?
• n00bscure 1y ago
  A mostly philosophical comment: I would say something like "the issue is that 'people' are underestimating how many ugly characters there are, in the private as well in the corporate spheres" but that doesn't mean much anymore because people adapt against their interest just to display competence. "Ugly business practices" have become the norm. It even trickled down into culture via funny little behavioral nudges like "nett is das neue Scheisse" (German for something like “Being ‘nice’ is the new way to be awful.” or "Nice is the new toxic." but mostly meant to say "Politeness is the new bullshit."). I'm quite certain it was a clever mid-term Machiavellian marketing play which paved the high speed Autobahn for the Right Wing and faux-cause refugee aid and further downstream also the acceptance of misinformation about the escalated and long ignored civil conflict in Ukraine. But that's a long stretch and beside the point. Regulations serve to keep the balance. Rules can be broken. Linguistics and just being a horny fucking human create more loopholes and blind spots than anyone can count and this dynamic evolves and becomes more complex. When it seems like you have to choose between a police state and a state which allows "AI companies to legally use personal data to train AI models", meaning unrestricted, unhinged economical practices that will have it even easier to get into teen heads and all the minds who just don't have the time and energy to evolve after a 9-5 day to raise their kids with abilities to defend against all the ugly bullshit that ugly business practices use to advance their proprietary propaganda(s) while the civil weight that is supposed to balance and positively offset the resulting negatives--the counter-movement, the counter force--is reduced to a motherfucking s k e l e t o n that our current civil society is, which can barely hold it's own few pounds, because too many people are busy being more productive and efficient or are numbing their brains with some drugs or meds and doom-scrolling or something with the content-creator economy or something else "with media", meaning when they are literally working for the other side against their own interest because it's cooler, then we all will get both, a police state with a subscription model for tickets out of jail, court as well as an economy that doesn't have to nudge and prime and co-evolve with customers, workers, employees, citizens, people anymore, because the law permits reverse lobotomies, marketing campaigns that create new needs and new desires via straight injection into your brains, including all the good PR that turns the bad PR into nothing but showmastership. Our intelligence agencies, police and judicial representatives of the people are constantly looking away because citizens don't point the spear at what the tip already knows. Our law and the maintainers of justice should have evolved to investigate way more than they have done and they continue to disappoint. The people have been misinformed, deceived, nudged, primed, exhausted for decades and with inter-generational effects, where the old don't defend and protect the minds of the young and the young then hijack the minds of the old or tire them out additionally and vice versa. Everybody just thinks or feels and perceives that "this the world", "this is the way" when it's the opposite, the absence of critical thought in your own interest. "They" (whatever that means to you), are selfish against all your interests while selling you their interests and how they want you to be. Dramatic emphasis: THERE MUST BE BALANCE. And shoving the people back on the right side, not by moving them directly, which would be "fiddling with them" as much as ugly corporate and smaller business people do, but by offsetting and countering, HACKING corporate "dark patterns", ugly business practices (and I don't mean shiny buttons and countdowns), for HACKINGS sake. If I hadn't been fucking poisoned and spiked god fucking how many times and had my brain been capable of recovering from that shit a bit fucking quicker, I'd be on the fucking frontlines of all that obvious, ridiculous fucking shit. I don't believe so many of you just roll with this shit because you are ok with it. How is all that not exactly the hacking challenge, the systems design challenge you are looking for? So many are doing so much on small scales and with tiny projects. Where is the hell is the weight. It has nothing to do with behavioral locks. You can remain in that lock, the world has chosen. BUT THAT IS NOT IT. There are a lot of you who know and see and who were not poisoned and whose feet were not fucking poured into concrete bullshit and walled in by a jealous wannabe-fathist-coping-with-inferiority-instead-of-actively-evolving-others-to-evolve-their-offspring pthycho-thothial environment ... "I don't care, I'm just doing my thing, you know ..." (which is not his thing but it got him that marshmallow and there's this thing previous generations, who believe that "history repeats" while the people writing it advance their interests, can't teach you because it's covered in new language, memetics, symbols, which are hidden behind misinformation enough other, slightly younger people are perfectly aware of but keep lying to themselves want their abilities enable them to do, but they are just doing their thing, which is not their thing but it gets them that marshmallow ...) only leads to the propagation of proprietary agendas, the results of which, if not offset properly, will be disliked adequately, way way way too late. I don't know what means exactly, but I know that enough of you have those conversations all the time and a lot of it was spelled out in various books; in fiction, science-fiction and more than enough of it in historical and current non-fiction. I'm just wondering. I could have said something about constraints, self-organizing systems and organic emergence of cultural phenomena via the non-linear propagation of imperative regulations between co-evolving colonies that are reaching for a state that maximizes the architectural potential of all areas of civilization for the sake of the minimum amount of conflict necessary to ensure survival and thriving in a changing world, which requires just enough friction and oil to keep the temperature down, but you all know that. Someone smart, published, internationally recognized, and with humble origins in a current or former war zone, I believe, once noted that the middle class/ middle working class needs be heard so that their perspective can be accounted for when dealing with and for a world--and future, full of uncertainty, colorful swans, emerging and re-emerging constraints, calculated probabilities of instability in the various areas affected by climate change (the fact, not the debate), and so on ... well, above are some bits to start with. The sentences "What the fuck are you serious? Give my kind time and the peace of mind to raise my children in a way that offsets some of the bullshit systematically taught in schools off-curriculum and they will help you. You need help. This is wrong, pathetic, only funny if you are drunk or drugged and in a particularly sassy mood that makes even the help- and hopeless feel cool and powerful. If we did our jobs like you do yours, everything would burn." kind of sum up some more bits ...
• game_the0ry 1y ago
  AI seems like the real deal. I have never seen a technology so quickly and aggressively adopted in corporate america -- every ceo is horny to adopt ai, thinking it will cut costs (read that to mean: "replace you"). They did not have the same fervor for SaaS or cloud, if you recall. You needed sales people for that tech and they were compensated well bc its hard closing a multi year, potentially multi million dollar deal. But AI needs no sales people to sell its value prop. CEOs have fully bought in. And now, even European bureaucrats, the most bureaucratic of bureaucrats, are loosing regulations. And these are the same group of people who thought cookie banners would help with privacy. Strange times.
  • thrance 1y ago
    Wait for the bubble to burst, shouldn't be long now. Bureaucrats are like C-suites, they're very susceptible to hype and trends.
    • game_the0ry 1y ago
      I have been waiting for a bubble to burst since the dow hit 20,000.
• epolanski 1y ago
  I'm not understanding, as an European who's been part of multiple startups how's that supposed to boost growth. There's literally 0 startups I've been part of where data protection laws or even the infamous cookie banners have been anywhere near relevant (unless your business was literally profiling). In fact the actors that most opposed those laws have always been non Europeans. Sure, there is an attached cost in having your terms reviewed by a proper lawyer and documenting the entire list of cookie providers, but that's basically where it ends. It's really minimal effort and cost, we talking in the low single digits for the review, and few hours of engineering time. The biggest issues in European growth are others: - focus on being an export economy while neglecting the internal market. - bureaucracy to fight at European level so we still don't have a real unified market, neither in physical goods (our economy's backbone) nor services which doesn't allow national startups to scale at European level - very conservative and risk-adverse mentality. Young people in college can't wait to graduate and find the best paying lowest effort stable job. That's not a problem if it involves a majority of graduates, I imagine all world is like that, but you do have an immense problem if you have 1% or 3% or 10% of wannabe entrepreneurs.
  • mosburger 1y ago
    I think (I'm an American so take with a grain of salt) even the "proper lawyer reviewing terms" part can be deferred quite a while by being conservative with PII (which you should be doing anyway) and using a service like iubenda to deal with terms and cookie warnings when you first start out.
  • moralestapia 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • epolanski 1y ago
      [flagged]
    • LtWorf 1y ago
      > Btw, this is why the US alone has a larger economy than your entire geographic region combined. And all of it is due to massively overvalued companies in california.
• fithisux 1y ago
  Come on, AI needs data, relaxing GDPR brings more data. The question is what AI will do with these data and whether giving away privacy is good. There is no transparency or trust and for this reason I want to keep my privacy. But now, I am robbed out of this based on majority votes and not common sense.
• dbg31415 1y ago
  I work right at the junction of marketing tech -- eCommerce, marketing sites, account management systems. Theoretically I should be living in compliance hell, but here's the dirty secret: To "follow" every rule, all you really need is another layer of UX friction. Another modal. Another "consent wizard." A few toggles buried under Manage Settings → Advanced → Optional → Something You'll Never Click → Opt Me Out. If you want to be sneaky, add a dark pattern. Make "yes" mean "no." Delay the buttons loading behind some animation, while showing other buttons from the start. (Users will always mash the first one that looks vaguely like "close" without reading anything.) Or just bribe them, "Get 200 extra points for opting in! Only 45,000 more to redeem a free small drink!" Congratulations -- you're now "compliant. In practice, GDPR mostly results in one more click. That's the whole impact. A seemingly smart privacy law reduced to just an annoyance tax. (This is a big reason I run Firefox with uBlock Origin, and NextDNS on my router and phone, with Steven Black's block list. Ha. I do value my privacy, and the more ads and trackers you can block the better shot you'll have at keeping some of it. At least until you go and do something stupid like join a social network or messenger app, or start clicking accept to get 200 extra points.) * StevenBlack/hosts: Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. // https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts * NextDNS - The new firewall for the modern Internet // https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/ * uBlock Origin – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US) // https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...
• emsign 1y ago
  Now we are fucked too as EU citizens. I hate AI more and more! MY DATA IS MINE. I hate the future. I just hope this gets sacked by the parliament or the judges. If not I need to find ways to keep as much personal data to myself as possible. The internet has become a very hostile environment for real humans and we need to learn to tread very carefully and avoid giving anything to the data poachers. My life is not a resource like crude oil ffs!
  • buzzert 1y ago
    You don’t need politicians to help you keep your personal data to yourself.
• franciscator 1y ago
  We're in post-growth-times, please understand that we need to get all your names and data, so that the Elysium-Cloud can reach, and help you all, the full 8-Billion surrogates ...
• nextpaco 1y ago
  Europe has no chance to compete with the USA and China. I'm European and I can only see ineptitude and corruption everywhere.
• Havoc 11mo ago
  > users would be able to control others from central browser controls that apply to websites broadly. I wonder if websites will play along. Best as i can tell most opt for intentionally choosing the most user hostile interpretation of the law
• jonesjohnson 11mo ago
  Here's a good summary and legal analysis by noyb: https://noyb.eu/en/digital-omnibus-first-legal-analysis https://noyb.eu/en/digital-omnibus-first-legal-analysis
• AA34567 11mo ago
  good