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> But we, as technologists, should always decry heavy-handed government regulation of the internet, especially as an early step.

This is not an early step. The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

This is pretty much something the tech industry brought upon itself by trying to always trying to outdo itself in terms of how much tracking and privacy violations it could get away with.

IOW, from a techie to another: cry me a river.

>The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

Tools to block tracking have gotten better. Spyware is more difficult to spread, etc. I'm not convinced it's going the wrong direction "at increasing speeds". Do you have any empirical evidence of this or is it just based on perception?

>IOW, from a techie to another: cry me a river.

Don't do this.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. "

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>> The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

> Tools to block tracking have gotten better. Spyware is more difficult to spread, etc. I'm not convinced it's going the wrong direction "at increasing speeds". Do you have any empirical evidence of this or is it just based on perception?

To make an analogy, what you're saying is similar to saying "I'm not convinced violent crime is going in the wrong direction, because people many people are regularly wearing better bullet-proof vests."

Better tools to block tracking is part of a trend going in the wrong direction: an arms race between trackers and anti-tracking blockers. If things were going in the right direction, we wouldn't need better blockers, since the tracking companies would have taken the hint, and either become opt in or respect simple measures like DNT headers.

>To make an analogy, what you're saying is similar to saying "I'm not convinced violent crime is going in the wrong direction, because people many people are regularly wearing better bullet-proof vests."

That analogy only makes sense if the bullet-proof vest prevents violent crime entirely. Someone shooting you when you wear a bullet proof vest is still a violent crime so I'm not sure what point you are getting at.

>Better tools to block tracking is part of a trend going in the wrong direction: an arms race between trackers and anti-tracking blockers. If things were going in the right direction, we wouldn't need better blockers, since the tracking companies would have taken the hint, and either become opt in or respect simple measures like DNT headers.

Solutions that depend on the goodwill of participants don't work on the Internet. The only people they impact are the ones that want to play by the rules.

You know it's illegal to take people's money out of banks, yet for some reason banks still use encryption. Don't you wonder why?

> This is not an early step. The trend has been clear for the past decade, and it has been going in the wrong direction, at increasing speeds.

It's an early step if you count successes. You build on success, not failures, surely that's clear. I agree it has been a trend and has been going the wrong direction at increasing speed, assuming you mean the trend is large, general internet restrictions imposed by governments.

> This is pretty much something the tech industry brought upon itself by trying to always trying to outdo itself in terms of how much tracking and privacy violations it could get away with.

I agree we brought it on ourselves by giving an inch. If it's privacy violations that are the problem, what are they violations of, prosecute under that, move on. If the legislation is working and needs more teeth, add em. Otherwise, its politicians trying to outdo themselves over how much interference they can get away with. And we have said "get away with plenty".

> IOW, from a techie to another: cry me a river.

I say the same as one citizen to another wrt your data.

The problem they were trying to solve was a lack of transparency about what's happening with our data.

Now, I thought I was reasonably engaged on this topic and I thought GDPR was overreach. I also thought I was reasonably careful about giving out my data (sign up to very little, don't use FB etc).

That was until I started to get all the GDPR popups and read about all the places my data was being shipped to. Holy crap I was naive. I've done a 180 on this now and am a buyer. It would have been great in legislation wasn't required but I'm fully onboard with it being needed.

I think we have to separate the ability to control our own information, demand privacy if we want it, and things like the right to be forgotten, which I find far more objectionable than gdpr. I should be able to tell companies they can't use my info and activities any way they want. We have large companies that are effectively general utilities that a modern educated person almost needs to use (email, linked in, to a lesser degree facebook) to be successful, and I even pay google for my email and domain but they still have complex privacy tracking descriptions that always looks like they can basically do anything inside their system with my activities that they track. I don't care that it makes their life harder, they are making plenty of money. I'm actually paying them and I can't really compel them to change their behavior.

I think we all want that, or some form of it. But how do we get there?

> We have large companies that are effectively general utilities that a modern educated person almost needs to use (email, linked in, to a lesser degree facebook) to be successful

I personally don't feel like we're there yet.

> I can't really compel them to change their behavior.

You and I have reached the same epiphany. Let's work around them. Let's even fight it with legislation if we must, but let's make positive strides in that direction, not negative ones. We should foster an open environment for others to build these workarounds, not scare them inadvertently while trying to solve the original problem.

> although (and this may be the American in me speaking) I am perhaps a bit skeptical about just how much most consumers care relative to elites in the media.

The difference in general between EU and USA: in the EU it's seen as a good thing to protect people even when they don't understand why. In the USA, excluding weird outliers like "careful, fresh coffee is hot" it's not.

> in the EU it's seen as a good thing to protect people even when they don't understand why

Use of the word "elite" by the author encapsulates this mentality. What if they do understand why and still don't care? Or at least, to speak from my perspective, what if they do understand why but also understand that the approach used makes things worse? It is so disappointing watching so many praise the intent of the law instead of the practicalities that I wonder where real understanding is lost. Recognition of a problem, and even recognition of what might work in some idealistic situation, is not enough to be construed as understanding the situation.

The US assumes people are capable of understanding things for themselves- my grocery store tracks my purchases in exchange for coupons and discounts, I feel it's worth it. FB holds my family's pictures hostage to show me ads, not worth it. Simple.

The EU also seems to assume that if someone is making money, someone else is being damaged- that every economic exchange is unfair. I don't really think that's true- it's not that Google or FB is taking massive advantage of me, they are taking a teeny-tiny bit of advantage of a massive number of people.

> The EU also seems to assume that if someone is making money, someone else is being damaged

How did you reach that conclusion?

Maybe I should be more specific to making money online- but nobody collects data that I didn't give them. The tone of EU laws is that instead they 'took' that data from me.

This assumes that people understand what data is gathered. Which is the whole informed consent that is required by the GDPR.

You can still say "I want you to take my data and I'm fine with it" as long as the site made a good effort of explaining what and how they are using it.

Just an anecdote, but people always reacted with shock when I tell them what information is gathered.

This information was always public though, just no one cared. 'Information wants to be free' is a universal law, not just for governments, universities and corporations.

I believe it bothers most people once they become aware of what is stored, how it's used and can be used against them. They are not aware of that though and when you tell them about it they have a hard time believing. And I don't think media cares that much, I don't know why it seems to you that it does. Media is often complicit with all that spying too.

"The masses" also don't care about, say, safety precautions their taxi drivers have to take. Until they're in an accident.

> Amen. The way Google and FB are using data just doesn't bother the masses the way it bothers the media [...]

The way elected autocrats rule also doesn't bother the local masses, obviously. The masses are short-sighted, lack understanding of certain abstract or technical concepts, and are easily fooled and misled by strong feelings.

Lol you technologists are payed by advertising money. Inconvenient truth.