Facebook and Google hit with $8.8B in lawsuits on day one of GDPR | Hacker News Reader

Facebook and Google hit with $8.8B in lawsuits on day one of GDPR

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22 pointsfreedomben21 comments

So for all those comments on how violations would slowly escalate based on complaints, only turning into huge fees when you blatently ignore all the warnings, in practice we learn that those tiers of escalation only apply to companies the EU likes, is that correct?

Because last time I checked, both companies at least made some effort, and as thus should get a last warning calling their bullshit before going full throttle into billion dollar fine territory, especially when the regulation has been in effect for less than one day. Otherwise I don't know why I should trust the bureaucracy not to max out a $20 million fine on my business when its discovered that I'm not in compliance on some edge case in this 80 page bill

Some EU countries are hostile towards entrepreneurs and courts view them as criminals until proven not guilty. Doing business in the EU is getting scarier even if you think you are compliant with everything. There is a saying "give me a company, I'll find you a paragraph"

This isn’t an EU regulator going after violators. This is a private citizen. I believe the fine has to do with state regulators enforcing GDPR.

AFAICT these are private civil suits filed by an individual against the company that reference the now-active rules.

If a national data regulator was pushing ahead with £xxM fines your objection might have some merit.

This seems (based on my complete lack of knowledge of the specific facts the cases are arguing) more like patent-trolling or general settlement-shakedowns than organised governmental abuse of powers.

I don't understand what Schrems is alleging here. "They totally know that it’s going to be a violation", and they're not bothering to do anything about that fact, because... why?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17154175

So it seems like we will find out if GDPR means European users have a 'right' to use your service for free with this case.

If the EU rules against Google and Facebook here I suspect the EU will become a digital wasteland. Companies like Google and Facebook wont leave but you will probably be charged for usage.

???

GDPR doesn’t require that EU users get to use your service for free. If you want to do business in the EU, you have to comply with EU law. If you don’t want to do that, then don’t do business in the EU.

Look at what this case is about, Facebook and Google are saying if you want to use our service you need to enable tracking otherwise don't use our service.

This lawsuit states that Facebook and Google are not legally allowed to deny service.

I am not a lawyer, but it seems that the plaintiff is basically arguing that, according to GDPR, if you want to offer a service in the EU then you can’t just have users waive their rights under the GDPR. You could not offer a service in the EU, but if you do then you can’t just tell your users “if you want to use our service, then you agree that GDPR does not apply to us.”

Which is ridiculous. Ultimately they will have to just not offer products and services in the EU. The EU as others indicated will become a digital waste land.

Even if that was true the void will be filled with local competitors.

If a venture is not profitable for Google why do you think it would be profitable for a bootstrapped EU competitor?

Because not everyone wants to make money by selling out there users. There was advertisement industry before it was even possible to track users.

You actually didn't respond to my question.

Reworded my question is, if Google can't make it work why do you think some random company that isn't Google can?

Your response is very emotional and if you aren't interested inc conversing with me civilly please don't.

Google can't make it work because they need to sell out there users. A random company does not need to do that. Even google doesn't do that if you're an enterprise user. So you see google does make it work if you pay them. The same way you can pay a random company.

It isn't necessarily that it's not profitable for them, it's that it's not profitable enough for anyone else to offer viable competition.

Right now to compete with Google on 'free', their existing search, browser, mobile & advertising operations make it massively difficult for others to compete and extract similar value from users.

But if that's not allowed, and the practical business models involve charging users directly, it might be possible for small businesses to offer enticing services at comparable prices.

I would loooooooove for the choice to pay for usage

Exactly. The EU makes it impossible to do business they will just not support the EU. Already people in the EU wonder why the US tech companies tend to not bring features or products and services to the EU.

Just going to get worse as there is plenty of other places to do business.

Sure, but the EU is not an insignificant market and to be honest, this could have a similar effect to anti trust laws. Have European companies build up competition against the US behemoths.

China is an unfree hell hole that I don't want to live in (social score) but you can't argue that from the position of developing a domestic industry their selective blocking/worsening of services allowed the ecosystem to grow intstead of sharecropping on Google's "platform"

I do not think trying to slow down the competition will help the EU.

Guess we will see. Think instead less product and services will be offered.

If we look at the last 100+ years we can see Europe has fallen and continues to as the other continents rise.

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