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Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this. In the American startup I'm working we're extremely careful with respectful data practices due to ethics and GDPR (we have a lot European customers). Why doesn't Amazon give a shit about GDPR? Do they have a leverage?

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> Why doesn't Amazon give a shit about GDPR?

I would assume perceived toothlessness. A better question is why should they? Or else what? Is that "what" absorbable by them to not eagerly spend a bunch of money and be shown to kowtow to governments making very large internet laws? Can they just pay it some lip service for now like their peers?

amazon doesn't have european headquarters

This is irrelevant as long as they have customers whose rights are protected by GDPR.

i am mistaken. But the idea is , if they were not based in europe , which country's DPA is going to go after them? Where will the money be paid?

But they have european entities (AWS, fulfilment centres, etc).

If they don't choose to put themselves somewhere, everyone may go after them separately.

... and then they can negotiate with the country that gives them the smallest punishment. (under gdpr only one will go after them at a time).

Negotiating with every country in the EU serially is not that much better than in parallel.

Likely Luxembourg, where they are headquartered. Unfortunately (as we found in the DieselGate scandal -- where car companies directly caused thousands of deaths), Luxembourg doesn't have very strong regulatory teeth. Here's hoping they're more strict.

Not really? Any EU customer could report them to their own DPA who would have to investigate the issue and resolve it. There's no reason any DPA in Luxembourg would have to be involved the way I understand it (except for customers in Luxembourg of course).

Of course they do. Their EU HQ is in Luxembourg.

They do, so they can avoid taxes all over the world. Not only do they have an EU incorporated company, if you believe their tax filings their primary business is based in Luxembourg. This is obviously bullshit, and is done to avoid taxes, but they have structured their company in a way that makes them very much an EU company.

If they weren't an EU company they couldn't take advantage of Luxembourg's tax laws. So it follows that they have to follow all EU laws. Because they're incorporated in the EU.

you re right. The idea here is that luxembourg (or any country) would have to weigh any violations against their interests to keep amazon in their territory.

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