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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

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.
- intended 1y ago
  But where would you rather be an average Joe ? Your health outcomes alone are better in the EU. I think we all agree that looking at GDP figures needs to be supplemented with wealth distribution data.
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    >But where would you rather be an average Joe? In the US. By far! And migration data backs it up.
    - intended 1y ago
      Come now - you are setting yourself up for an easy rhetorical response with that assertion. I’m not disagreeing that america gets more migrants. But are you going to say that migrants are “average” when compared to the average Joe ? On average immigrants from a country are the people who are capable enough or desperate enough to make the move to an entirely different culture and life. America used to attract some of the best talent out there. Most people, in most countries, are not that driven. And besides that, the different in net immigration numbers are not so wide, as to suggest that the EU is unattractive.
matthewdgreen 1y ago
I would go farther. Privacy laws seem like an excellent way to tighten the internal European market and develop homegrown competitors, which (one might argue) Europe really needs. If Europe is loosening up those laws, does that help Europe? Or does it help Meta and Google and Microsoft?
- vovavili 1y ago
  This argument in favor of protectionist industrial policy is almost universally opposed by most modern economists, for a good reason.
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    We wouldn't be banning any law abiding company from operating.
  - matthewdgreen 1y ago
    Nations don’t outsource critical national security industries even though economists might say that’s more efficient. The question is whether they should outsource critical tech infrastructure to huge quasi-monopolistic US firms that can turn it off or abuse European data at will. I don’t have the answer to that question, but I have to imagine it’s a worthwhile debate. The data we have cuts both ways: China applied protectionist policies to its own Internet companies, and it’s hard to argue that this has been economically devastating for them.
    - meowface 1y ago
      >China applied protectionist policies to its own Internet companies, and it’s hard to argue that this has been economically devastating for them. China has 1.4 billion people in one country while the combined population of Europe is around half of that, so that's one difference. But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritarianism. To the Chinese state, protecting Chinese citizens from harmful things (like knowing full details about atrocities perpetrated by their government, or organizing to criticize the government) outweighs other concerns.
captainbland 1y ago
It's pure ideology that "cutting red tape" will lead to growth. Unfortunately I don't think there's much to understand, perhaps beyond the US giving the EU some kind of kickback for complying.
Workaccount2 1y ago
The biggest hurdle Europe has to face is the cultural shift away from the post-soviet era of "Don't take work too seriously, enjoy life". There is now a full generation of Europeans who grew up in with this mentality, looking down on Americans for their ridiculous work ethic and comparatively meager benefits. But it's not sustainable, and the strain is already becoming obvious. Young Europeans will have to work longer and harder for less if they want to move Europe away from being totally dependent on American tech, American defense, and Chinese wares.
- kryptoncalm 1y ago
  The data [0] begs to differ: in richer countries workers and fewer hours. The gap not shown here is working hours per capita (instead of worker), but I couldn’t find that data quickly. Also, even if your claim were true, I wonder if joining the rate race of working harder is worth it. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/rich-poor-working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/rich-poor-working-hours
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
    Joining the rat race isn't worth it, in the near-term, which is why the threat is existential. Europe has been sleeping on it's laurels for 30 years now, and the signs are clear; borderline stagnating economies, low working hours, generous benefits, and most importantly still relying on the exact same industries as 30 years ago. Europe totally missed out on the tech boom, and is now also missing out on the AI boom. And Europeans response has largely been "Whats the issue, we can just buy it from the Americans/Chinese?". Russsia invading Ukraine, and the US providing the majority of the weapons and cash to stave off Putin should have been a gut-punch wake up call that Europe is in an extremely vulnerable position, and needs to get to work building their own modern tech, their own defense, and their own industry. Failure to do those things will lead to Europe balkanizing as the economic situation gets worse under the weight of an aging population and shrinking economic output. Young Europeans think they cracked the code of comfortable living, but really they are just in a post-cold war golden period. Very similar to the post-WII era American baby boomers enjoyed (except they had lots of children). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a... Look at the bottom of the list and then go look at their growth.
asveikau 1y ago
> an European European starts with a vowel in spelling, but actually phonerically begins with a consonant, /j/, so it doesn't trigger the "an" thing. Similarly some spellings start with a consonant but have vowels (like acronyms, "an SSRI", the name of the letter S, "ess", begins with a vowel) More to the point I agree with what you're saying. This seems like lazy attribution of cause that is so common in American business and politics. "Of course deregulation will boost growth!" Why? Because of religious beliefs about deregulation boosting growth.
- maleldil 1y ago
  Maybe they say it as an "ew" diphthong instead? As an ESL, that makes sense to me.
- epolanski 1y ago
  > European starts with a vowel in spelling, but actually phonerically begins with a consonant Ah makes sense. In my head it's never "you"ropean, but "ew" uropean as I'm not a native english speaker and phonetically it's a consonant in english only. In greek, slavic languages, german or latin-derived it's always "ew".
  - xeromal 1y ago
    That's pretty cool. I'm from the Southeast US (redneck), and it sounds like "Yur-uh-pee-in"
- heavenlyhash 1y ago
  Really depends on where you're from. OP already mentioned in his area it's phonetically mostly "ew". I'd say a lot of germanic areas also do something I'd describe as "oi". That'd also make one inclined to use an "an" when speaking.
  - asveikau 1y ago
    I speak other languages where it starts with an E sound. But I'm not aware of any native English speaking place where it doesn't have /j/ in English.
pyrale 1y ago
> In fact the actors that most opposed those laws have always been non Europeans. This decision is in response to lobbying from these actors (and their new friend in the white house). It is not supposed to benefit you.
rdm_blackhole 1y ago
I agree with you partially. My hot take is that this is a signal for Trump. We play nice with you, you play nice with us. Big tech is well connected to the current US administration so if the EU were to make theses changes, then they will appease big tech (a little bit) and therefore by extension Trump. I (like you) don't think that these regulations are the reason the EU doesn't have home grown hyper-scalers a la AWS or GCP or Azure. I think the EU just fell asleep at the wheel for too long. It basically outsourced its defense to NATO, its tech needs to the US and its manufacturing to China and for a while it worked perfectly. However the world is changing and the EU is simply in my opinion not up to the task. It's too slow, bureaucratic and messy to be able to adapt rapidly and it lacks the vision necessary to remedy to its weaknesses.
- epolanski 1y ago
  Few things. 1. We really have no realistic threat on our borders. Russia can't even cope with Ukraine alone in conventional warfare. Who do we have to defend from? And there are way bigger militaries than Ukraine in EU alone, let alone as a coalition, such as Poland. 2. Would like to remind you that article 5 has only been invoked by US and we lost many lives on something that wasn't even relevant to us, let alone the other wars in africa or central asia that we joined. So far, it's been Italian and Polish blood falling to comply with our North American ally, it hasn't been the opposite case for decades. 3. I think the European commission is simply corrupted, and when it comes to this data stuff, please notice how many dozens times Thorn and Palantir and many other US security companies have lobbied EU commission members, and those are just the registered meetings, you don't need to record phone calls or out-of-office encounters: https://transparency-register.europa.eu/search-register-or-update/search-register_en?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://transparency-register.europa.eu/search-register-or-u... I'm quite convinced Ursula von Der Leyen is corrupt and is selling out Europe and keeps engaging in anti European policies. 4. EU would be fine, if it was able to pursue a coherent foreign policy. Instead you have 20+ countries where the occasional Hungary can veto anything. It should be given more power on many fronts. We shouldn't have 20+ privacy agencies, 20+ ways to register a company, 20+ different legislations on this and that. 5. There are politicians with the right vision, such as Macron, but most politicians have to live election by election, so it's very hard to pursue long term strategies. To be fair though, US is showing the same symptoms with one executive undoing what the previous has done from a bit.
zeroonetwothree 1y ago
Sure but the laws are probably relevant for the startups you _haven’t_ been a part of. The ones that never got started. It’s funny you mention a lack of entrepreneurial spirit but then dismiss something that’s clearly a factor (not saying it’s the main factor but obviously it has some effect). I have some side projects that I don’t really care about making money from but some people do use and it’s easier for me to just block all European users than worry about complying with all the random laws and regulations.
- soiltype 1y ago
  Of course it's easier to do a bad job of something or to give up and not do it. That has no bearing on whether or not doing it the right way is actually onerous.
- super256 1y ago
  Can you share the projects? In most cases it is very, very easy to comply with the *"random laws" (not that GDPR is much different from California's CPRA. Are you blocking Californian users too?)
  - x0x0 1y ago
    Sorry, that's nonsense. cpra has a carveout for small businesses. gdpr has your one person company obey the same rules as meta.
    - immibis 1y ago
      This brings up the point that for some reason we're all terrified of the government. Maybe because we see the daily abuse from the USA? But if you accidentally violated the GDPR while in good faith trying to follow it, the most likely outcome is being ordered to fix it.
- _w1tm 1y ago
  > I have some side projects that I don’t really care about making money from but some people do use and it’s easier for me to just block all European users than worry about complying with all the random laws and regulations. GDPR fines scale based on annual turnover so blocking EU users on a non-commercial product is utterly pointless and just being mean.
jdasdf 1y ago
>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). Thats kind of the point...
giorgioz 1y ago
I know a friend who was building his first website, he asked in our startup group how to handle the GDPR cookie banner, it likely wasted 1 day on that, when he had invested maybe a whole othery day on the project. At that moment in time the GDPR cookie banner amounted of 50% of the effort. It killed momentum, it killed willpower with beuracracy. It should have asked himself how to get users, not how to comply with GDPR for a website that in that moment had 0 users.
- kassner 1y ago
  The problem was not the cookie banner, but rather that they were doing things that required user consent (most commonly: filling up the website with 3rd-party marketing tools). You can have a website as big as GitHub without a cookie banner yet still be compliant.
wheybags 1y ago
IMO the biggest barrier is internal mobility. The European silicon valley never happened, because people don't want to move around. The biggest single barrier is language. I'm Irish, and young Irish people often emigrate (way more than in other countries). When I look at where my college classmates ended up, it's mostly America or the UK. We also emigrate a lot to Australia and New Zealand. In other words, we only really emigrate to English speaking countries. Almost nobody goes to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. The mainstays of the European economy. Let alone central or eastern Europe. But if you're a young talented engineer in the middle of nowhere usa, you can just easily move to the bay area without any issue. That cultural unity IMO is America's biggest strength, and the lack of it is Europe's biggest weakness. Note: I've lived in Ireland, the Czech Republic, and France, so I know first hand how hard it is to move inside Europe, and I understand why people don't do it.
wave84 1y ago
Here's my take, as a Romanian developer (since 2004ish). One day I got a letter from the national authority regarding personal data where I was asked to reply to 15 questions regarding a personal project of mine, invoking the GDPR. The sanctions for not complying within 5 days was an incremental fine of 600 euros PER DAY, until I complied. This letter was directed to me as a natural person (not even my company). Another story: I had a publishing website with some ads on it. The moment full GDPR went into effect, some years ago, revenue instantly dropped by 30% because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB). Most of the "approved" cookie banners are insanely overengineered nonsense and almost all of them cost a lot of money. And they kill your performance metrics. And when I finally gave in and implemented one of those, revenues dropped even more because I was losing readers who just quit without consenting at all. Third and final anecdote: at one point I was contracted by a Romanian DTH television company who mostly operated with prepaid customers. According to GDPR, they were supposed to anonymize data they no longer needed, but because their clients were seasonal or less predictable, that turned out to be ridiculously hard. Their legal department, together with external contractors such as us ended up spending months to adjust their systems to conform to GDPR, and the result was their losing business and time, while being unable to properly serve older customers because they could no longer identify them. So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. On the contrary, the large companies could afford the legal counseling that they needed, but the smaller ones were hit hardest.
- immibis 1y ago
  Did you consider running non-tracking ads? Of course not because even after the 30% drop, the spyware still pays more, right? But destroying websites with spyware is literally what the law is for - the people have voted to nuke your website from orbit.
- troupo 1y ago
  > because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB) There's your mistake. It's not approved. The EU literally sued them for coming up the bullshit banner: https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-employed-consent-system-violates-eu-privacy-regulation/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-empl... It's in the name: IAB stands for Interactive Advertising Bureau. They couldn't give two shits about your site. All they care is about testing the limits of the law to get their hands on any and all user data. Their banners originally were explicitly illegal: https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come (this describes mostly OneTrust banners, but IAB's banners were the same) and https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumble https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumb... (IAB's banner turned your "no to tracking" into "yes to tracking") > So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. Translation: shitty businesses made life of everyone harder on the internet and blamed regulations for their own behaviour. From IAB (and OneTrust and Admiral and other scummy greedy leeches') banners to idiots at companies who assume that data on their customers is no longer needed to ... provide services to those same customers. Yes, it exposed a can of worms. Worms decided its their god-given right to stay.
huijzer 1y ago
> 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 I guess you have been part of software startups and you severely underestimate the bureaucracy that is involved in physical companies nowadays. Farmers, fishermen, factory-owners, and other small to medium size companies all have severe difficulties with ever increasing regulations. By itself the regulations are not always bad, but usually it takes way too long to get through the system which makes it hard to compete with, for example, China.
- epolanski 1y ago
  How am I underestimating it when it's literally in the quote you provided?
- hearsathought 1y ago
  > it hard to compete with, for example, China. What exactly is europe competing against china on? Isn't europe's competition the US?
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    Cars
    - hearsathought 1y ago
      Aren't most of the foreign cars in europe american? Or maybe japanese?
      - throwaway2037 1y ago
        I believe "most" is true today. However, my point is about change. Ten years ago, there were probably less than (finger in the air!) 10,000 Chinese cars in all of Europe. Now there are millions. This is the change -- fewer American, Korean, and Japanese cars.
      - 11mo ago
franciscator 1y ago
The Elysium-Cloud needs your data
gonational 1y ago
I know from the inside it feels like nothing is wrong, but if you're looking at the EU as a whole from the outside, the economies there have been coming apart for many years. You could even say the wheels have already fallen off. 100% of the economic woes in the EU are conferred by EU membership, and the web of inefficient, bureaucratic laws therein. Geographically speaking, Europe is positioned, perfectly, to be an economic powerhouse. It is close to the Middle East where much of the energy comes from, close to Africa where energy and other resources come from, close to Asia where certain base materials and manufactured components come from, surrounded by oceans everywhere, the Mediterranean has more than 1/5 of the world's coastline, giving ample opportunity to develop commercial ports, etc. The only reason the economies of Europe are in trouble is because of the EU. That is the only reason. The EU is the singular one only single reason. The EU. That is the single reason. Cookie banners are just one tiny example that illustrates how death from 1000 cuts is a real thing. In the case of cookie banners, you could say it's death from 100 cuts, because, if you live in the EU, you spend probably one percent of your entire life clicking cookie banners. 7.2 minutes a day is all it takes to waste one percent of your productive life (assuming 12 hours of useful time per day). You might scoff at this, "I probably spend 10 seconds", but I spend probably a minute or more dealing with broken cookie banner garbage every day and I am an American. Just from American websites complying with GDPR nonsense, we have to waste some small portion of our lives here as well. Stupid laws written by stupider bureaucrats ruin everything for everyone. This is the description of an idiot by Dostoyevsky, somebody who does things that harm themselves and others.

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.
intended 1y ago
But where would you rather be an average Joe ? Your health outcomes alone are better in the EU. I think we all agree that looking at GDP figures needs to be supplemented with wealth distribution data.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  >But where would you rather be an average Joe? In the US. By far! And migration data backs it up.
  - intended 1y ago
    Come now - you are setting yourself up for an easy rhetorical response with that assertion. I’m not disagreeing that america gets more migrants. But are you going to say that migrants are “average” when compared to the average Joe ? On average immigrants from a country are the people who are capable enough or desperate enough to make the move to an entirely different culture and life. America used to attract some of the best talent out there. Most people, in most countries, are not that driven. And besides that, the different in net immigration numbers are not so wide, as to suggest that the EU is unattractive.

matthewdgreen 1y ago

I would go farther. Privacy laws seem like an excellent way to tighten the internal European market and develop homegrown competitors, which (one might argue) Europe really needs. If Europe is loosening up those laws, does that help Europe? Or does it help Meta and Google and Microsoft?

vovavili 1y ago
This argument in favor of protectionist industrial policy is almost universally opposed by most modern economists, for a good reason.
- LtWorf 1y ago
  We wouldn't be banning any law abiding company from operating.
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  Nations don’t outsource critical national security industries even though economists might say that’s more efficient. The question is whether they should outsource critical tech infrastructure to huge quasi-monopolistic US firms that can turn it off or abuse European data at will. I don’t have the answer to that question, but I have to imagine it’s a worthwhile debate. The data we have cuts both ways: China applied protectionist policies to its own Internet companies, and it’s hard to argue that this has been economically devastating for them.
  - meowface 1y ago
    >China applied protectionist policies to its own Internet companies, and it’s hard to argue that this has been economically devastating for them. China has 1.4 billion people in one country while the combined population of Europe is around half of that, so that's one difference. But, yes, both US and Chinese technology companies would likely be better off than they are now without China's protectionism and authoritarianism. To the Chinese state, protecting Chinese citizens from harmful things (like knowing full details about atrocities perpetrated by their government, or organizing to criticize the government) outweighs other concerns.

captainbland 1y ago

It's pure ideology that "cutting red tape" will lead to growth. Unfortunately I don't think there's much to understand, perhaps beyond the US giving the EU some kind of kickback for complying.

Workaccount2 1y ago

The biggest hurdle Europe has to face is the cultural shift away from the post-soviet era of "Don't take work too seriously, enjoy life". There is now a full generation of Europeans who grew up in with this mentality, looking down on Americans for their ridiculous work ethic and comparatively meager benefits. But it's not sustainable, and the strain is already becoming obvious. Young Europeans will have to work longer and harder for less if they want to move Europe away from being totally dependent on American tech, American defense, and Chinese wares.

kryptoncalm 1y ago
The data [0] begs to differ: in richer countries workers and fewer hours. The gap not shown here is working hours per capita (instead of worker), but I couldn’t find that data quickly. Also, even if your claim were true, I wonder if joining the rate race of working harder is worth it. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/rich-poor-working-hours https://ourworldindata.org/rich-poor-working-hours
- Workaccount2 1y ago
  Joining the rat race isn't worth it, in the near-term, which is why the threat is existential. Europe has been sleeping on it's laurels for 30 years now, and the signs are clear; borderline stagnating economies, low working hours, generous benefits, and most importantly still relying on the exact same industries as 30 years ago. Europe totally missed out on the tech boom, and is now also missing out on the AI boom. And Europeans response has largely been "Whats the issue, we can just buy it from the Americans/Chinese?". Russsia invading Ukraine, and the US providing the majority of the weapons and cash to stave off Putin should have been a gut-punch wake up call that Europe is in an extremely vulnerable position, and needs to get to work building their own modern tech, their own defense, and their own industry. Failure to do those things will lead to Europe balkanizing as the economic situation gets worse under the weight of an aging population and shrinking economic output. Young Europeans think they cracked the code of comfortable living, but really they are just in a post-cold war golden period. Very similar to the post-WII era American baby boomers enjoyed (except they had lots of children). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_annual_labor_hours https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a... Look at the bottom of the list and then go look at their growth.

asveikau 1y ago

> an European European starts with a vowel in spelling, but actually phonerically begins with a consonant, /j/, so it doesn't trigger the "an" thing. Similarly some spellings start with a consonant but have vowels (like acronyms, "an SSRI", the name of the letter S, "ess", begins with a vowel) More to the point I agree with what you're saying. This seems like lazy attribution of cause that is so common in American business and politics. "Of course deregulation will boost growth!" Why? Because of religious beliefs about deregulation boosting growth.

maleldil 1y ago
Maybe they say it as an "ew" diphthong instead? As an ESL, that makes sense to me.
epolanski 1y ago
> European starts with a vowel in spelling, but actually phonerically begins with a consonant Ah makes sense. In my head it's never "you"ropean, but "ew" uropean as I'm not a native english speaker and phonetically it's a consonant in english only. In greek, slavic languages, german or latin-derived it's always "ew".
- xeromal 1y ago
  That's pretty cool. I'm from the Southeast US (redneck), and it sounds like "Yur-uh-pee-in"
heavenlyhash 1y ago
Really depends on where you're from. OP already mentioned in his area it's phonetically mostly "ew". I'd say a lot of germanic areas also do something I'd describe as "oi". That'd also make one inclined to use an "an" when speaking.
- asveikau 1y ago
  I speak other languages where it starts with an E sound. But I'm not aware of any native English speaking place where it doesn't have /j/ in English.

pyrale 1y ago

> In fact the actors that most opposed those laws have always been non Europeans. This decision is in response to lobbying from these actors (and their new friend in the white house). It is not supposed to benefit you.

rdm_blackhole 1y ago

I agree with you partially. My hot take is that this is a signal for Trump. We play nice with you, you play nice with us. Big tech is well connected to the current US administration so if the EU were to make theses changes, then they will appease big tech (a little bit) and therefore by extension Trump. I (like you) don't think that these regulations are the reason the EU doesn't have home grown hyper-scalers a la AWS or GCP or Azure. I think the EU just fell asleep at the wheel for too long. It basically outsourced its defense to NATO, its tech needs to the US and its manufacturing to China and for a while it worked perfectly. However the world is changing and the EU is simply in my opinion not up to the task. It's too slow, bureaucratic and messy to be able to adapt rapidly and it lacks the vision necessary to remedy to its weaknesses.

epolanski 1y ago
Few things. 1. We really have no realistic threat on our borders. Russia can't even cope with Ukraine alone in conventional warfare. Who do we have to defend from? And there are way bigger militaries than Ukraine in EU alone, let alone as a coalition, such as Poland. 2. Would like to remind you that article 5 has only been invoked by US and we lost many lives on something that wasn't even relevant to us, let alone the other wars in africa or central asia that we joined. So far, it's been Italian and Polish blood falling to comply with our North American ally, it hasn't been the opposite case for decades. 3. I think the European commission is simply corrupted, and when it comes to this data stuff, please notice how many dozens times Thorn and Palantir and many other US security companies have lobbied EU commission members, and those are just the registered meetings, you don't need to record phone calls or out-of-office encounters: https://transparency-register.europa.eu/search-register-or-update/search-register_en?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://transparency-register.europa.eu/search-register-or-u... I'm quite convinced Ursula von Der Leyen is corrupt and is selling out Europe and keeps engaging in anti European policies. 4. EU would be fine, if it was able to pursue a coherent foreign policy. Instead you have 20+ countries where the occasional Hungary can veto anything. It should be given more power on many fronts. We shouldn't have 20+ privacy agencies, 20+ ways to register a company, 20+ different legislations on this and that. 5. There are politicians with the right vision, such as Macron, but most politicians have to live election by election, so it's very hard to pursue long term strategies. To be fair though, US is showing the same symptoms with one executive undoing what the previous has done from a bit.

zeroonetwothree 1y ago

Sure but the laws are probably relevant for the startups you _haven’t_ been a part of. The ones that never got started. It’s funny you mention a lack of entrepreneurial spirit but then dismiss something that’s clearly a factor (not saying it’s the main factor but obviously it has some effect). I have some side projects that I don’t really care about making money from but some people do use and it’s easier for me to just block all European users than worry about complying with all the random laws and regulations.

soiltype 1y ago
Of course it's easier to do a bad job of something or to give up and not do it. That has no bearing on whether or not doing it the right way is actually onerous.
super256 1y ago
Can you share the projects? In most cases it is very, very easy to comply with the *"random laws" (not that GDPR is much different from California's CPRA. Are you blocking Californian users too?)
- x0x0 1y ago
  Sorry, that's nonsense. cpra has a carveout for small businesses. gdpr has your one person company obey the same rules as meta.
  - immibis 1y ago
    This brings up the point that for some reason we're all terrified of the government. Maybe because we see the daily abuse from the USA? But if you accidentally violated the GDPR while in good faith trying to follow it, the most likely outcome is being ordered to fix it.
_w1tm 1y ago
> I have some side projects that I don’t really care about making money from but some people do use and it’s easier for me to just block all European users than worry about complying with all the random laws and regulations. GDPR fines scale based on annual turnover so blocking EU users on a non-commercial product is utterly pointless and just being mean.

jdasdf 1y ago

>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). Thats kind of the point...

giorgioz 1y ago

I know a friend who was building his first website, he asked in our startup group how to handle the GDPR cookie banner, it likely wasted 1 day on that, when he had invested maybe a whole othery day on the project. At that moment in time the GDPR cookie banner amounted of 50% of the effort. It killed momentum, it killed willpower with beuracracy. It should have asked himself how to get users, not how to comply with GDPR for a website that in that moment had 0 users.

kassner 1y ago
The problem was not the cookie banner, but rather that they were doing things that required user consent (most commonly: filling up the website with 3rd-party marketing tools). You can have a website as big as GitHub without a cookie banner yet still be compliant.

wheybags 1y ago

IMO the biggest barrier is internal mobility. The European silicon valley never happened, because people don't want to move around. The biggest single barrier is language. I'm Irish, and young Irish people often emigrate (way more than in other countries). When I look at where my college classmates ended up, it's mostly America or the UK. We also emigrate a lot to Australia and New Zealand. In other words, we only really emigrate to English speaking countries. Almost nobody goes to France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. The mainstays of the European economy. Let alone central or eastern Europe. But if you're a young talented engineer in the middle of nowhere usa, you can just easily move to the bay area without any issue. That cultural unity IMO is America's biggest strength, and the lack of it is Europe's biggest weakness. Note: I've lived in Ireland, the Czech Republic, and France, so I know first hand how hard it is to move inside Europe, and I understand why people don't do it.

wave84 1y ago

Here's my take, as a Romanian developer (since 2004ish). One day I got a letter from the national authority regarding personal data where I was asked to reply to 15 questions regarding a personal project of mine, invoking the GDPR. The sanctions for not complying within 5 days was an incremental fine of 600 euros PER DAY, until I complied. This letter was directed to me as a natural person (not even my company). Another story: I had a publishing website with some ads on it. The moment full GDPR went into effect, some years ago, revenue instantly dropped by 30% because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB). Most of the "approved" cookie banners are insanely overengineered nonsense and almost all of them cost a lot of money. And they kill your performance metrics. And when I finally gave in and implemented one of those, revenues dropped even more because I was losing readers who just quit without consenting at all. Third and final anecdote: at one point I was contracted by a Romanian DTH television company who mostly operated with prepaid customers. According to GDPR, they were supposed to anonymize data they no longer needed, but because their clients were seasonal or less predictable, that turned out to be ridiculously hard. Their legal department, together with external contractors such as us ended up spending months to adjust their systems to conform to GDPR, and the result was their losing business and time, while being unable to properly serve older customers because they could no longer identify them. So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. On the contrary, the large companies could afford the legal counseling that they needed, but the smaller ones were hit hardest.

immibis 1y ago
Did you consider running non-tracking ads? Of course not because even after the 30% drop, the spyware still pays more, right? But destroying websites with spyware is literally what the law is for - the people have voted to nuke your website from orbit.
troupo 1y ago
> because the cookie banner I was using wasn't part of the approved european framework for cookie banners (they created an entire organization for this, called IAB) There's your mistake. It's not approved. The EU literally sued them for coming up the bullshit banner: https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-employed-consent-system-violates-eu-privacy-regulation/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/top-eu-court-finds-widely-empl... It's in the name: IAB stands for Interactive Advertising Bureau. They couldn't give two shits about your site. All they care is about testing the limits of the law to get their hands on any and all user data. Their banners originally were explicitly illegal: https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come (this describes mostly OneTrust banners, but IAB's banners were the same) and https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumble https://noyb.eu/en/say-no-cookies-yet-see-your-privacy-crumb... (IAB's banner turned your "no to tracking" into "yes to tracking") > So in my opinion, despite originally being well intended, GDPR opened a huge can of worms, created a lot of issues and made everyone's life harder on the internet, for no real benefit. Translation: shitty businesses made life of everyone harder on the internet and blamed regulations for their own behaviour. From IAB (and OneTrust and Admiral and other scummy greedy leeches') banners to idiots at companies who assume that data on their customers is no longer needed to ... provide services to those same customers. Yes, it exposed a can of worms. Worms decided its their god-given right to stay.

huijzer 1y ago

> 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 I guess you have been part of software startups and you severely underestimate the bureaucracy that is involved in physical companies nowadays. Farmers, fishermen, factory-owners, and other small to medium size companies all have severe difficulties with ever increasing regulations. By itself the regulations are not always bad, but usually it takes way too long to get through the system which makes it hard to compete with, for example, China.

epolanski 1y ago
How am I underestimating it when it's literally in the quote you provided?
hearsathought 1y ago
> it hard to compete with, for example, China. What exactly is europe competing against china on? Isn't europe's competition the US?
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  Cars
  - hearsathought 1y ago
    Aren't most of the foreign cars in europe american? Or maybe japanese?
    - throwaway2037 1y ago
      I believe "most" is true today. However, my point is about change. Ten years ago, there were probably less than (finger in the air!) 10,000 Chinese cars in all of Europe. Now there are millions. This is the change -- fewer American, Korean, and Japanese cars.
    - 11mo ago

franciscator 1y ago

The Elysium-Cloud needs your data

gonational 1y ago

I know from the inside it feels like nothing is wrong, but if you're looking at the EU as a whole from the outside, the economies there have been coming apart for many years. You could even say the wheels have already fallen off. 100% of the economic woes in the EU are conferred by EU membership, and the web of inefficient, bureaucratic laws therein. Geographically speaking, Europe is positioned, perfectly, to be an economic powerhouse. It is close to the Middle East where much of the energy comes from, close to Africa where energy and other resources come from, close to Asia where certain base materials and manufactured components come from, surrounded by oceans everywhere, the Mediterranean has more than 1/5 of the world's coastline, giving ample opportunity to develop commercial ports, etc. The only reason the economies of Europe are in trouble is because of the EU. That is the only reason. The EU is the singular one only single reason. The EU. That is the single reason. Cookie banners are just one tiny example that illustrates how death from 1000 cuts is a real thing. In the case of cookie banners, you could say it's death from 100 cuts, because, if you live in the EU, you spend probably one percent of your entire life clicking cookie banners. 7.2 minutes a day is all it takes to waste one percent of your productive life (assuming 12 hours of useful time per day). You might scoff at this, "I probably spend 10 seconds", but I spend probably a minute or more dealing with broken cookie banner garbage every day and I am an American. Just from American websites complying with GDPR nonsense, we have to waste some small portion of our lives here as well. Stupid laws written by stupider bureaucrats ruin everything for everyone. This is the description of an idiot by Dostoyevsky, somebody who does things that harm themselves and others.