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I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time
by spwa4 9mo ago
I wouldn't worry about that. You're ignoring politics, and what this actually is. If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. They do not intend, not even remotely, to sabotage the profit machines that those companies are, they just want political weapons against the companies. The intention here is not to cure addiction, destroy profits, the intention is to use economic power to achieve political ends. The EU is built on this, it just didn't use to involve that many private companies.
Like most famous EU laws, this is not a law for people. Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies and certainly not against EU states, who have repeatedly shown willingness to use AI against individuals, including face recognition (which gets a lot of negative attention and strict rules in the AI act, and EU member states get to ignore both directly, and they get to allow companies to ignore the rules), violate GPDR against their own citizens (e.g. use medical data in divorce cases, or even tax debt collection, and they let private companies ignore the rules for government purposes (e.g. hospitals can be forced report if you paid for treatment rather than pay alimony, rather than pay your back taxes)). The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.
These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. Here's how the process works: someone "files a complaint", which is an email to the EU commission (not a complaint in the legal sense, no involvement of prosecutors, or judges, or any part of the justice system of any member state at all). Then an EU commissioner starts a negotiation process and rules on the case, usually imposing billions of euros in fines or providing publicly-backed loans (in the case of banks). The vast, vast, vast majority of these complaints are ignored or "settled in love" (French legal term: the idea is that some commission bureaucrat contacts the company and "arranges things", never involving any kind of enforcement mechanism). Then they become chairman of Goldman Sachs (oops, that just happened once, giving Goldman Sachs it's first communist chairman, yes really. In case you're wondering: Barrosso), or join Uber's and Salesforce's executive teams, paid through Panama paper companies.
In other words: these laws are not at all about addictive design, and saving you from it, they're about going after specific companies for political means. Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, ...
Ironically the EU is doing exactly what Trump did with tariffs. It's just that Trump is using a sawed-off shotgun where the EU commission is using a scalpel.
- Aarchive 9mo ago> Like the Banking regulations, the DMA, the GPDR, the AI act, this law cannot be used by individuals to achieve their rights against companies Of course the GDPR gives individuals rights, counter example: > The first application of the GPDR was to remove links about Barrosso's personal history from Google.
- drnick1 9mo agoThe GDPR is a joke. Such a law should have prevented companies from collecting data in the first place. All we got are annoying pop-ups that do nothing for our privacy.
- wasabi991011 9mo ago> If the EU had a real problem with addictive designs and social media the time to move against it was of course 10+ years ago. Addictive designs and social media have changed a lot in the last 10 years, for one. But more importantly, there's no statute of limitation on making laws.
- jimnotgym 9mo agoAlso, 10 years ago the US government used its almost unlimited soft power over Europe to stop them regulating tech firms. The US doesn't have any soft power any more.
- foldr 9mo ago> These laws can only be used by the EU commission against specific companies. In the UK at least, the GDPR was incorporated into UK law (where it remains, essentially unmodified, even after Brexit). So it is certainly not necessary to get the EU commission involved to enforce the law. In the UK, the ICO is the relevant regulator. There are other national regulators that enforce the GDPR, such as the French CNIL.
- jamestest2e4p6x 9mo agoOne of the best replies on hackernews in years. Hear. Hear. The EU realized they can extort the US big tech. The EU will now just focus on laws and taxing (the war in Ukraine isn't their problem). And frankly, we should just ignore EU laws in the US.