6 ms·

It has been clear for a while that certain providers and services need to be regulated as utilities - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard, and soon Opena

It has been clear for a while that certain providers and services need to be regulated as utilities - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard, and soon Openai and Anthropic. It should be illegal for these companies, just like utilities, to deny service to anyone or any entity in good standing for dues. There is little hope for getting this through in the US where most politicians of any stripe hate the public, and the ones that don't have hardly any power. But it might be possible to do this in the EU. Then, we non-EU folks need to apply for Estonian e-residency [1] which may get us EU regulatory coverage. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Residency_of_Estonia

prox 7mo ago
We need a law that a human representative can be spoken to within 24 hours or directly when something critical happens. Also “there is no appeal possible” should be plain illegal.
- gzread 7mo ago
  In the EU, under GDPR, it is legally required to explain automated profiling.
  - emsixteen 7mo ago
    How's that work? Got a link handy to explain to a dummy?
    - buzer 7mo ago
      Article 13(2)(f) "In addition to the information referred to in paragraph 1, the controller shall, at the time when personal data are obtained, provide the data subject with the following further information necessary to ensure fair and transparent processing: the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject." EDPB Guidelines on automated decision making: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/items/612053 https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/items/612053 especially page 25 is relevant C‑634/21 is also somewhat relevant to understand how courts have applied ADM in general context of credit reporting https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62021CJ0634 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... though it didn't specify what information actually needs to provided for 13(2)(f).
  - ceejayoz 7mo ago
    We have a EU dev we tried to have submit a GDPR request for human review on something on Facebook. There’s no apparent mechanism to do so. Support was clueless. The privacy email address responded weeks later with “not out department”.
    - estimator7292 7mo ago
      That's because the correct department is legal. GDPR is a legal mechanism, not a support and privacy thing. "I'm doing it wrong and it doesn't work" means you're doing it wrong, not that it doesn't work.
      - ceejayoz 7mo ago
        Even Facebook calls them "privacy rights". And https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/178402648024363 https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/178402648024363 doesn't work either. Black hole, as far as I can determine. Their chatbot, when asked, sends you to https://help.meta.com/support/privacy/ https://help.meta.com/support/privacy/ and says: > To submit a GDPR objection request on Facebook, you can use the Privacy Rights Request channel. > Select Facebook as the product you want to submit an objection about. > Choose the option "How can I object to the use of my information" and follow the instructions. But that option doesn't exist.
    - gzread 7mo ago
      As expected. However, since it's the law, there's some way to enforce it.
- beng-nl 7mo ago
  I understand the sentiment, but.. do you realize how much more expensive that would make all these services? I don’t know the number. But personally I think using the services and ‘simply’ only use them if the disappearance isn’t catastrophic and have the price be low or free while it works isn’t too bad a trade-off. Admittedly that’s a big ‘if.’
  - _imnothere 7mo ago
    They sure do earn enough money to afford whatever number that is on your mind.
  - rangerelf 7mo ago
    If it's impossible for a service provider to even talk to its customers, why is it in operation at all?
  - thefounder 7mo ago
    I don't think they would be so much more expensive but they would be less profitable for sure and perhaps less "innovative" as a big chunk of the profit will go into regulation stuff.
  - prox 7mo ago
    These are usually multi billion dollar companies, they’ll be fine, stop worrying about them. Start worrying about the erosion of your rights as a consumer.
    - prmoustache 7mo ago
      I agree in that case but be wary with these kind of assessments. There are tons of regulations that are meant for big players but can also affect much smaller negatively. For instance I don't think to this day it is possible to operate a Mastodon server and be compliant with GPDR and the UK online safety Act. There was the famous case of LFGSS forum about to shut down due to the former, the forum was kind of saved by a group of individuals willing to take the risk but the founder stepped down from fear of legal risks. There hasn't been home raided and servers and personal computers seized yet but that doesn't mean it can't happen and technically any EU or UK volunteer hosting some forums or open source based social media that isn't GPDR or online safety act compliant could be at risk. For most I believe it is not that they don't want to be compliant but they aren't aware of that and/or don't have the technical means without further development on the software they are using and despite them not abiding to their own user rights, most of their users would be more sad to see them shutdown than the current status of not obeying the law.
- burnt-resistor 7mo ago
  Technofeudalism is what happens when grossly under-regulated anarcho-capitalism dominates rather than sustainable, more ordinary capitalism where government regulation is the supreme, minimized biased arbiter that keeps things fairer and sensible for the benefit of the many rather than the benefit of the few.
- apple4ever 6mo ago
  > Also “there is no appeal possible” should be plain illegal. This. There should always be an appeal, to a real human you can talk too (not just a form letter or email).
miohtama 7mo ago
If it is regulated as a utility, the government will want to ban these hacking tools.
- JoshTriplett 7mo ago
  Agreed. Be careful what you wish for.
- zelphirkalt 7mo ago
  I think the GP is relating to MS services and accounts as utilities that should not be possible to be taken away easily, not about Wireguard.
x0x0 7mo ago
I've gotten business verification for Microsoft before. The kind you need in order to get certain oauth scopes for their O365 platform. Do not discount complete, total, utter, profound fucking incompetence as the driving reason behind this. Getting the business verification was an astounding shitshow. With a registered C corp and everything, massively unclear instructions, UI nestled in a partner site with tons of dead ends. And then even after all the docs, it took another week because -- in an action that nobody could possibly have ever foreseen -- we had two different microsoft accounts due to a cofounder buying ONE LICENSE of O365 for excel and doing domain verification because it suggested it.
NewsaHackO 7mo ago
It always weird to see how dichotomy of some people saying AI will never be profitable and are doomed to fail and others saying that they are such a essential public service that they are a utility and should be subject to government regulation. Hopefully they are not the same group of people, but I suspect there is a greater overlap that one would expect.
- jonathanstrange 7mo ago
  I'm not one of those people but want to point out that there isn't much of a contradiction there. I don't know if hospitals, universities, train tracks, roads, and libraries technically speaking count as utilities but they overall don't seem to be profitable and at the same time are extremely desirable for a society and an economy to have. AI could turn out to be of the same sort.
zelphirkalt 7mo ago
I have a feeling, that the resolve to do something about it is waning in the EU, because of the plans to soften up the GDPR.
nostrademons 7mo ago
It would not surprise me if these actions are coming at the requests of governments. Strong encryption is one of the few things that challenges their monopoly on information; they have a very strong incentive to apply political pressure to the maintainers of these projects to, well, stop maintaining the projects. We've seen this in overt actions that the EU takes; in more covert actions that the U.S. government is suspected of taking; and in the news headlines about third-world dictatorships that just shut off the Internet. Tech companies are perhaps the most convenient leverage point for these actions. More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party. What would help is full control over the supply chain. Hardware that you own, free and open-source operating systems where no single person is the bottleneck to distribution, and free software that again has no single person who is a failure point and no way to control its distribution.
- aeternum 7mo ago
  >More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party. It's easy to paint the big gov as bad, but this is a case where unfortunately the populace seems to be in agreement with the big bad gov. While most US citizens support encryption, 76% or so, the vast majority 63% also favor government "backdoor" access for national security reasons. I guess either we believe in democracy or we don't. It could be said that if Veracrypt isn't/can't be backdoor'd, perhaps the gov is simply implementing the will of the people :( via Microsoft.
  - koliber 7mo ago
    Tyranny of majority is a thing. It's something mature democracies are aware of and have the ability to defend against. We're in an interesting spot here and the tension is tangible.
  - phatfish 7mo ago
    What does democracy have to do with electronic encryption? Democracy existed before computers. There are legitimate reasons for governments to intercept information, with the correct oversight -- enforced legally in an "checks and balances" manner. The fact that there is a breakdown of trust between government and people won't be solved with more encryption.
BrenBarn 7mo ago
They should probably be regulated as utilities and broken up into smaller companies, so that it's easier for people to migrate to alternatives when one company does something bad.

prox 7mo ago

We need a law that a human representative can be spoken to within 24 hours or directly when something critical happens. Also “there is no appeal possible” should be plain illegal.

gzread 7mo ago
In the EU, under GDPR, it is legally required to explain automated profiling.
- emsixteen 7mo ago
  How's that work? Got a link handy to explain to a dummy?
  - buzer 7mo ago
    Article 13(2)(f) "In addition to the information referred to in paragraph 1, the controller shall, at the time when personal data are obtained, provide the data subject with the following further information necessary to ensure fair and transparent processing: the existence of automated decision-making, including profiling, referred to in Article 22(1) and (4) and, at least in those cases, meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject." EDPB Guidelines on automated decision making: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/items/612053 https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/items/612053 especially page 25 is relevant C‑634/21 is also somewhat relevant to understand how courts have applied ADM in general context of credit reporting https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62021CJ0634 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... though it didn't specify what information actually needs to provided for 13(2)(f).
- ceejayoz 7mo ago
  We have a EU dev we tried to have submit a GDPR request for human review on something on Facebook. There’s no apparent mechanism to do so. Support was clueless. The privacy email address responded weeks later with “not out department”.
  - estimator7292 7mo ago
    That's because the correct department is legal. GDPR is a legal mechanism, not a support and privacy thing. "I'm doing it wrong and it doesn't work" means you're doing it wrong, not that it doesn't work.
    - ceejayoz 7mo ago
      Even Facebook calls them "privacy rights". And https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/178402648024363 https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/178402648024363 doesn't work either. Black hole, as far as I can determine. Their chatbot, when asked, sends you to https://help.meta.com/support/privacy/ https://help.meta.com/support/privacy/ and says: > To submit a GDPR objection request on Facebook, you can use the Privacy Rights Request channel. > Select Facebook as the product you want to submit an objection about. > Choose the option "How can I object to the use of my information" and follow the instructions. But that option doesn't exist.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    As expected. However, since it's the law, there's some way to enforce it.
beng-nl 7mo ago
I understand the sentiment, but.. do you realize how much more expensive that would make all these services? I don’t know the number. But personally I think using the services and ‘simply’ only use them if the disappearance isn’t catastrophic and have the price be low or free while it works isn’t too bad a trade-off. Admittedly that’s a big ‘if.’
- _imnothere 7mo ago
  They sure do earn enough money to afford whatever number that is on your mind.
- rangerelf 7mo ago
  If it's impossible for a service provider to even talk to its customers, why is it in operation at all?
- thefounder 7mo ago
  I don't think they would be so much more expensive but they would be less profitable for sure and perhaps less "innovative" as a big chunk of the profit will go into regulation stuff.
- prox 7mo ago
  These are usually multi billion dollar companies, they’ll be fine, stop worrying about them. Start worrying about the erosion of your rights as a consumer.
  - prmoustache 7mo ago
    I agree in that case but be wary with these kind of assessments. There are tons of regulations that are meant for big players but can also affect much smaller negatively. For instance I don't think to this day it is possible to operate a Mastodon server and be compliant with GPDR and the UK online safety Act. There was the famous case of LFGSS forum about to shut down due to the former, the forum was kind of saved by a group of individuals willing to take the risk but the founder stepped down from fear of legal risks. There hasn't been home raided and servers and personal computers seized yet but that doesn't mean it can't happen and technically any EU or UK volunteer hosting some forums or open source based social media that isn't GPDR or online safety act compliant could be at risk. For most I believe it is not that they don't want to be compliant but they aren't aware of that and/or don't have the technical means without further development on the software they are using and despite them not abiding to their own user rights, most of their users would be more sad to see them shutdown than the current status of not obeying the law.
burnt-resistor 7mo ago
Technofeudalism is what happens when grossly under-regulated anarcho-capitalism dominates rather than sustainable, more ordinary capitalism where government regulation is the supreme, minimized biased arbiter that keeps things fairer and sensible for the benefit of the many rather than the benefit of the few.
apple4ever 6mo ago
> Also “there is no appeal possible” should be plain illegal. This. There should always be an appeal, to a real human you can talk too (not just a form letter or email).

miohtama 7mo ago

If it is regulated as a utility, the government will want to ban these hacking tools.

JoshTriplett 7mo ago
Agreed. Be careful what you wish for.
zelphirkalt 7mo ago
I think the GP is relating to MS services and accounts as utilities that should not be possible to be taken away easily, not about Wireguard.

x0x0 7mo ago

I've gotten business verification for Microsoft before. The kind you need in order to get certain oauth scopes for their O365 platform. Do not discount complete, total, utter, profound fucking incompetence as the driving reason behind this. Getting the business verification was an astounding shitshow. With a registered C corp and everything, massively unclear instructions, UI nestled in a partner site with tons of dead ends. And then even after all the docs, it took another week because -- in an action that nobody could possibly have ever foreseen -- we had two different microsoft accounts due to a cofounder buying ONE LICENSE of O365 for excel and doing domain verification because it suggested it.

NewsaHackO 7mo ago

It always weird to see how dichotomy of some people saying AI will never be profitable and are doomed to fail and others saying that they are such a essential public service that they are a utility and should be subject to government regulation. Hopefully they are not the same group of people, but I suspect there is a greater overlap that one would expect.

jonathanstrange 7mo ago
I'm not one of those people but want to point out that there isn't much of a contradiction there. I don't know if hospitals, universities, train tracks, roads, and libraries technically speaking count as utilities but they overall don't seem to be profitable and at the same time are extremely desirable for a society and an economy to have. AI could turn out to be of the same sort.

zelphirkalt 7mo ago

I have a feeling, that the resolve to do something about it is waning in the EU, because of the plans to soften up the GDPR.

nostrademons 7mo ago

It would not surprise me if these actions are coming at the requests of governments. Strong encryption is one of the few things that challenges their monopoly on information; they have a very strong incentive to apply political pressure to the maintainers of these projects to, well, stop maintaining the projects. We've seen this in overt actions that the EU takes; in more covert actions that the U.S. government is suspected of taking; and in the news headlines about third-world dictatorships that just shut off the Internet. Tech companies are perhaps the most convenient leverage point for these actions. More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party. What would help is full control over the supply chain. Hardware that you own, free and open-source operating systems where no single person is the bottleneck to distribution, and free software that again has no single person who is a failure point and no way to control its distribution.

aeternum 7mo ago
>More regulation won't help here, because the regulation-maker is itself the hostile party. It's easy to paint the big gov as bad, but this is a case where unfortunately the populace seems to be in agreement with the big bad gov. While most US citizens support encryption, 76% or so, the vast majority 63% also favor government "backdoor" access for national security reasons. I guess either we believe in democracy or we don't. It could be said that if Veracrypt isn't/can't be backdoor'd, perhaps the gov is simply implementing the will of the people :( via Microsoft.
- koliber 7mo ago
  Tyranny of majority is a thing. It's something mature democracies are aware of and have the ability to defend against. We're in an interesting spot here and the tension is tangible.
- phatfish 7mo ago
  What does democracy have to do with electronic encryption? Democracy existed before computers. There are legitimate reasons for governments to intercept information, with the correct oversight -- enforced legally in an "checks and balances" manner. The fact that there is a breakdown of trust between government and people won't be solved with more encryption.

BrenBarn 7mo ago

They should probably be regulated as utilities and broken up into smaller companies, so that it's easier for people to migrate to alternatives when one company does something bad.