zerostar07

> If I need to lure users into using my platform by pretending to be "free" so I can get a monopoly going

You just described every startup in SV, but in any case facebook did not have ads platform in its growth phase.

Well the mastermind of GDPR is a Green Leftist so...

I agree that there have to be limits , but it's not an 0/1 question. Facebook should even be treated as a special case because it's a monopoly, but again it's not 0/1. I doubt they can offer the same service without targetting - facebook makes $100+ from each user in US or western europe. If they made 10% of that they couldn't offer to e.g. store all your photos and vids for free.

And lets not kid ourselves, very few people would pay $100+ for facebook, even though it would be interesting to see them offer that option.

In europe ISPs dont have monopolies. Thats legitimate - the government should interfere to make sure there are options. This doesnt make the law right though because then

> they are in such position because majority of consumers do not care

is like stating that users are idiots that need a nanny state.

Sure, put a sign "We are tracking you" on the page header in bold red. I'm all for transparency. Now you know that when you enter the space you 're tracked. Why are you able to demand that it's turned off?

> There is no excuse for not being able to come up with a viable business model without productizing users and making them subject to social and political manipulation.

How so? TV and media have been doing it since forever - not as efficient but still. It's a valid model if you want open, pluralistic services.

> The bill also requires companies to offer people the same communications services whether or not they agree to have their data collected

Again with this madness. Please convince me how this does not violate the right of people to come into contracts with each other? The internet is not a private space as the EU's lawmakers seem to want it to be, but a public space like the real world. If you want privacy, you buy a house, and similarly you get a subscription service online. I appreciate that everyone is sensitive with their privacy these months, but please try to be rational. FWIW, as an EU citizen i am sometimes offended by the stupidity of our lawmakers.

Right to remove results

Gdpr hysteria has not even started - wont be until the first rulings start coming.

China , Russia have strategic interest to protect. The EU , i'm not so sure what it is protecting, and reading this law it's really hard to tell if we are supposed to have some kind of advantage now. It seems more like an extreme, wrist-slapping attempt of its leftist lawmakers.

Add to that, that an EU website is already more likely to be dependent on ad funding, as VC money to burn is scarce.

> zero problems with GDPR

Do they comply with right to be forgotten etc?

And then take one step forward and make them actually untraceable by requiring anonymization/obfuscation at the ISP level? Seriously the reason why GDPR considers them PII is because the ECJ has judged that if you have access to the ISP you can look them up.

https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/court-confirms-...

that would imply you can e.g. memorize a list of emails and then verbally tell them to another business for a price.

best i ve read so far: https://writershq.co.uk/privacy-policy/

I 'm actually of the opposite idea - let the two fields evolve by their own darwinian process as this will yield more interesting results. DL itself has created its own scientific questions and puzzles that may lead to important discoveries (which may transfer to neuroscience). E.g. "why does batch normalization / dropout work."

Neuroscience has been in constant winter, mainly because the methods are too crude and small scale, and that by observing 100 neurons out of billions makes it impossible to tell the whole story. The deep mind papers are interesting, but they are just a start imho. It may be that they are focusing on a mere coincidence. Nevertheless it is exciting to see progress in that direction, thats why i don't think DL research is going to lose steam soon. It would require a major show-stopper discovery (like the minsky-papert paper). Tesla crashes are no such thing.

It seems CS people are sick and tired of the hype, but i feel neuroscientists are now warming up to it.

I think the scientific pessimism preceded the funding cuts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

An AI "winter" is a long period in which [edit: funding is cut because...] researchers are in disbelief about having a path to real intelligence. I think that is not the case at this time, because we have (or approaching) adequate tools to rationally dismiss that disbelief. The current AI "spring" has brought back the belief that connectionism may by the ultimate tool to explain the human brain. I mean you can't deny that DL models of vision look eerily like the early stages in visual processing in the brain (which is a very large part of it). Even if DL researchers lose their path in search for "true AI", the neuroscientists can keep probing the blueprint to find new clues to its intelligence. Even AI companies are starting to create plausible models that link to biology. So at this time, it's unlikely that progress will be abandoned any time soon.

E.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.00161 https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04698 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28095195

i dont believe facebook allows targetting by company and in general this shouldnt be allowed to targeted advertising.

considering that a simple IP+timestamp can be PII, if you have ever seen anything from facebook's cdns , then maybe yes.

> to a specific person to exist

Advertising was always trying to find the right target. Technology allowed this to become a lot more efficient. As long as targeting is anonymous and certain limitations are set, i m fine with it, we don't need to kill the patient here.

I 'm not sure how well it will reflect in the court of public opinion if the EU's first ruling is that basically every website is not allowed to use ads to pay itself. There seem to be certain groups here in Europe who relish on this kind of "activism" . I m not sure how representative they are of public opinion, they are certainly very vocal.

Do we know how strict the Austrian DPA is ?

There are no experts on the law, even lawyers arent. The only one who can authoritatively produce interpretations of the law is the european Court of Justice. For that to happen a country's Supreme court must refer a case to them for consultation which is then binding throughout the EU. In the meanwhile, 28 different privacy regulatots can independently try to interpret it. Most of the regulators are not staffed yet and not up to the task.

At the monent the law is unenforceable

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

Most games contain calculated random rewards or else the game would be boring and predictable. However to call this gambling it's quite a stretch as you can't cash out. Whoever decided to make those "boxes" look like slot machines spinning brought it upon themselves.

> it pigeonholes your internet experience.

it seems like your issue is more with the inefficiency of the various algorithms rather than the use of data per se. And you re right, e.g. right now my supposedly AI youtube is full of the same type of videos.

> seems unfair they don't get a cut

This may ring true on the surface, but people always make money out of other people, by definition. Compensation would not work, it would be like buying a pair of shoes and then expecting to get a partial refund. One issue however is that users in this case do not have a mechanism to affect the price personalized ads so in total it seems unfair.

> and Nazi Germany,

I think you mean cold war germany. in any case it is interesting how the latest EU law completely ignores that aspect of privacy.

> a federal agent followed you a

Good point, being tracked does feel like you re being followed by an annoying salesperson. This IMHO is more annoying than the gathering of private data takes place on the internet. Privacy is not the default mode of life, in fact there are few places where one goes to when he wants to be private. Most of life involves interaction with other people and nonprivacy. One could even claim that this kind of privacy is not violated with things like ad tracking, as it happens behind screens, in safety and with relative control from the user. Of course there need to be limits to when and where this information can be gathered.

if you 're likely to receive requests, you re most likely to receive them now that gdpr is in the news.

the part where you are not allowed to profile the user based on a piece of information for which it is impossible to obtain consent (IP address).

The law does not mention privacy, correct, but its entire rationale is based on the idea of privacy rights.

> Oh, that does happen.

That's based on international law, while there is no such thing about privacy