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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

Wait until you find out it was designed that way, and the whole thing is actually just a tariff on service imports to the EU in disguise.

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You are very wrong. The EU is the only big power defending data privacy and fighting to protect the little rights user still have.

It helps, of course, that they don't have domestic internet mammoths putting money in their pockets to get away with whatever they want (USA) or a state sponsored big brother / AI yoke programme that depends on data being collected from all around the world (China _and_ USA).

If anything, the EU is trying to prevent external (and increasingly hostile) powers to use EU citizens data for gain or plain aggression (Cambridge Analytica & Brexit, for example).

> The EU is the only big power defending data privacy

Well that’s the political pitch. But there’s not a shred of actual evidence to support the claim that the EU cares about privacy at all.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/orders-top-eus-timetab...

https://www.ejiltalk.org/a-dangerous-convergence-the-inevita...

The only thing it regulates is industries that the EU has failed to become competitive in.

The shred of evidence is that GDPR applies to EU-based services just the same.

If privacy were important, then protecting citizens from having the government violate it would be important. Protecting citizens from having governments share the findings of their violations with each other would be important.

But instead you have administration that wants to ban encryption and increase surveillance as much as possible. The idea that the EU cares about privacy has no credibility at all.

Governments are big and composed of competing interests, especially in a multi-party system like the EU. Assigning them a single stance is an oversimplification. (Parts of) the EU can be pro-privacy while being against it too.

Well it sure is convenient for the EU to favor pro-privacy stances that are conducive to fining American tech companies.

We only fine those companies who break the law. Most of them don't break it.

Yes. Laws made vague enough so they can arbitrary claim something is a "data breach" or "antitrust", despite not being able to quantify the harm of these violations. Meanwhile, they still have yet to fine European automakers a single cent for Dieselgate, which had estimated to kill over a thousand EU residents.

There's no need to quantify harm for something to be illegal, especially if it's something as difficult to control and evaluate as personal data.

I have a suspicion you're talking from a USA standpoint, where antitrust is enforced based on provable harm. This is not necessarily the set of values that the EU population wants to live by.

The Dieselgate was already deemed illegal, making your remark a case of whataboutism.

If you're talking about the recent fine, that was on the grounds of antitrust and unrelated to lying about emissions. AFAICT, the EU has yet to fine any automaker for the latter.

"Give up your privacy and let Zuckerberg earn even more money!"

Money is the only thing the law is about, not privacy. Even if you disagree with my opinion that it was designed to be this way, there’s not really an argument to be made against the suggestion that all it’s accomplished is periodically fining foreign service providers (plenty of fines to EU businesses too, but there has never been and will never a large one).

If it was designed to protect privacy, it is very clearly failing to achieve that objective.

So if it isn't perfect, it isn't worth doing it at all? Is it better not to have GDPR and just let them not even get fined? I agree that fines are basically the only effect it had - but that does not mean it isn't a step into the right direction.

I agree that it could be more effective and I would welcome more effective policy in regard to data collection/processing and its transparency.

I've seen plenty businesses make policy changes based on it, and you don't get to declare that somehow that isn't an argument that's allowed to be made. (And these businesses avoid getting fined and making headlines, silence in that sense isn't a sign of failure of regulation)

We only fine those companies who break the law. Most of them don't break it.

No.

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