Considering right now companies like Facebook are very actively making the world a worse place I would say this would be a strong move towards something better.
There are countless examples of this in other industries. Some of the laws following the 2008 financial crisis are a good example which reduced the market place of hundreds of small banks who couldn’t operate with the new rules and further solidified the positions of the 5 mega banks. So much for ending “too big to fail”.
Idealism of “what should be done” meets reality of always historically ends up happening. If you’re interested in this topic Thomas Sowell included a hundred examples of well intentioned laws having the opposite effect and making problems either worse or stopping the one problem and generating far worse ones (usually after a period of time when every claims the regulation a success and moves on, before the reality of the situation reveals itself).
https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Politics-Gordon-Tulloc...
If companies are too large to be affected by law, then the only recourse is for the government to step in and break their monopoly. A company that is unaffected by laws will also have extreme leverage in the free market and have the strength to smother those smaller small-medium sized companies you claim are competitors to FB. It would seem illogical that a company would have the lawyers and influence to ignore regulations, but not be willing to use that same influence to kill competitors.
Yup, and this is why campaign finance reform is so important.
But do you have an actual example of this happening in tech? And beyond that, a series of examples showing this to be a systemic problem? Because high-tech has long been a Wild West with little regulation, and many many firms have been built upon finding ways to dodge existing regulation and social conventions. They will likely be fine.
But one wouldn't know that from the whining and moaning of oh so many advertising fans around here.
Regulation designed to rein in the heavy hitters will not harm small startups, especially ones whose innovation is built upon careful flouting of law and loophole-seeking, anyway.
Facebook et al are not the source of all evil, they are actually a source of financial relief to most people, they are only a problem to media companies, and those who write books about how bad they are.
It's healthcare and housing costs that are the bane of everyday people, this media fabricated tech backlash is a strategic distraction.
That's literally how muckrakers during the Progressive Era alerted the public to the depredations of big business and forced government regulation of business practices to ensure competition and free enterprise.
And how does any social media company provide "financial relief"?
So you're one of those.
Were the "muckrakers" at the time in the same business as the companies they were raking muck at? Cause that sure is the case nowadays.
> And how does any social media company provide "financial relief"?
Zero dollar cost for communication, broadcasting, entertainment, information retrieval, etc while little else is free.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/09/gdpr-has-cut-ad-trackers-i...
Incumbents, especially in the tech industry, face a greater threat of being unseated by a startup than being unable to handle regulations. The "heavy hitters" have plenty of cash available to pay for the lawyers needed to deal with regulations, and the lobbyists needed to shape regulations to their advantage. Startups need to be careful about their budgets, and the added cost of compliance represents an entry cost that will almost certainly work against small players.
Moreover, when you regulate to the point where the big incumbents suffer economically, you are typically in a state of over-regulation. The evidence is very clear that numerous freight railroads failed in the 1960s because over-regulation prevented them from adapting to new realities; it was too difficult for the railroads to shut down unprofitable routes due to service requirements and they were required to continue paying taxes and maintenance costs on redundant infrastructure. Following deregulation (the Staggers Act) America's freight rail industry was able to reorganize and become profitable once again (and today the North American freight network is one of the most efficient systems on earth and is envied by the world). Passenger railroads are still uneconomical even in regions with high population densities that are absolutely dependent on passenger service (e.g. the northeast corridor, which is the ideal scenario and home to some of the only services that manage an operating surplus) largely because of persistent over-regulation (especially safety -- Acela trainsets are significantly heavier than comparable equipment in Europe and Asia and are more expensive to operate).
Good regulation is certainly possible, but it is the exception rather than the rule. The more typical pattern is either the economic failure of an industry (over-regulation) or regulatory capture.
In the USA. It's highly unclear whether that holds for democratic regimes.
Google though they can afford not to, so they didn't. Now Google is starting to get hit with fines (e.g. France), so they'll probably change their minds.
The startups that never get off the ground because the cost of compliance is prohibitive will mean less competition for Google etc in the long term.
Moreover, startups seeking capital must convince potential investors that the chance of being wiped out by a GDPR complaint is low -- on top of convincing those investors that their business model is viable, that they are entering the market at the right time, etc. Plenty of startups with great ideas never get off the ground because they cannot get the initial capital they need, or they fail to get enough capital to survive a rare negative event.
There is not much doubt that regulations raise the cost of entry to a market. The real question is whether or not it is worth it for society -- if we are willing to sacrifice a few small companies for the sake of the regulatory goal. User privacy is a fine goal, but the EU is losing the leadership it once had in the tech industry to the US and China. Where is the European answer to Google, Facebook, Tencent, or Alibaba? Where is the Europe in the AI race? It is not just GDPR; the right to be forgotten, the draconian copyright rules, and so forth have all contributed to a stifling regulatory environment in Europe and a stagnant tech industry.
You implied it doesn’t matter if Google has less competition, and conveyed an unexamined assumption that the GDPR is the most reasonable and optimal way of assuring user privacy.
People who are committed to logical argumentation – and I've seen this point made often on HN – will say that the reduction in the quantity and formidability of new startups is an acceptable price to pay for improved user privacy.
It still leaves open the question of whether the GDPR is a reasonable and optimal way of achieving improved user privacy, but at least it's a logical argument.
The question of whether GDPR really is reducing startup formation and success is unclear at this stage, and it's possible it will never really be known.
This Bloomberg article [1] from November cites research suggesting that it is, but argues that it's probably not a bad thing.
As I said, that's a fair enough position, but we all need to be clear clear about what our position is.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-14/facebo...
> Wagman and Zhe Jin didn’t break down their data by business model, but if companies in the data extraction business receive less funding, Europe as whole and European consumers in particular probably won’t be any worse off.
> There’s also the question of data quality; Jia, Wagman and Zhe Jin cautioned in their paper that their dataset was not complete. And indeed, according to Pitchbook, a multinational firm that tracks public and private equity investment, while venture activity in Europe dropped somewhat in the third quarter and is likely to be relatively flat for the year as a whole, the share of capital received by software companies is higher than ever before, which would suggest tech innovation isn’t exactly being stifled.
It would seem that we are an impasse until further empirical data is collected. Perhaps an American experiment is in order?
They make a token concession or two, heap on the compliance costs and complications, and then enjoy a cosy relationship with the government group in charge of their would-be competitors too.
While I don't doubt there's been many good things coming out of the release and growth of Facebook, if only for their contribution to the ecosystem, I think you might be hyping it quite a bit there.
Care to elaborate on your thought?
...one can say indeed that their contributions have been overwhelmingly positive.
Certainly only a case of scapegoating and envy comrade.