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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

> lack of a predictable regulatory landscape in Europe

It is predictable though, and has been clear for ten years. They are on the side of users privacy and clearly against invasive tracking and particularly profiling.

Nothing has changed, these companies have been given ample warning, they didn't change or tried to skirt the issue and now they are facing fines.

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You're implying the EU is this privacy guardian fighting these evil American tech companies. Except it was the EU who mandated data retention laws, the EU who banned prepaid cards over 150 euros, the EU who mandated countries release a public registry of who owns everything, and a substantial number of member states have mandatory key disclosure and SIM card registration laws. I don't really get the impression the EU cares about privacy all that much -- this ruling doesn't even ban targeted advertising, it just requires another popup that most of users will say yes to. To me this looks like a shakedown, especially when you consider that most of the tech regulations they pass have language that makes them almost exclusively apply to American companies (some only apply to companies with more than 50 million users etc).

EU-based governments are at least honest about their intent of spying on their citizens, where the collection & processing of said data is at least subject to due process and can potentially be challenged in court.

The US would rather outsource it to the private sector so while the end-result is the same (the government can buy the data off the open market or request it via an NSL) they don't even have to pay for building/maintaining the surveillance systems as the adtech/analytics/marketing industry is happy to do it for them for free.

So yeah, EU's government spying efforts are a major problem but let's not pretend the US is any better in that regard.

> this ruling doesn't even ban targeted advertising, it just requires another popup that most of users will say yes to.

90% of the cookie popups you see out there are in breach of the regulation and only remain because enforcement has been severely lacking. A properly implemented popup, how Apple has done with their App Tracking Transparency (like the one that the GDPR would force Facebook to implement) has an acceptance rate of just 4%.

>EU-based governments are at least honest about their intent of spying on their citizens, where the collection & processing of said data is at least subject to due process and can potentially be challenged in court.

Not really. It can be challenged in court in that anything can be challenged in court. There's no real due process.

>You're implying the EU is this privacy guardian fighting these evil American tech companies. Except it was the EU who mandated data retention laws, the EU who banned prepaid cards over 150 euros, the EU who mandated countries release a public registry of who owns everything, and a substantial number of member states have mandatory key disclosure and SIM card registration laws.

Thinking this black and white can't apply consistently to an organization as big as the EU. The problems you listed are indeed bad and need solving. But they can do good every once in a while too.

And I'm mainly an Eurosceptic outside of tech issues mind you.

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