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Comment by plandis | Hacker News Reader

In my mind the difference is that:

* In the US: Don’t use social media if you don’t want to be tracked, it’s your choice.

* In the EU: We cannot compete against big US companies so we will pass laws that are popular with entitled people to weaken them in the name of social benefits. Win-win for politicians.

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I mean, the former attitude is known to be totally ineffective. The latter is possibly effective, at the cost of being (possibly?) extremely damaging.

I don't use any social media, how is that ineffective?

You're still tracked, analyzed, and targeted both on and off the web by thousands of companies. Not to mention government snooping and surveillance. Even the social media giants which you deliberately never signed up for are still collecting and monetizing data on you.

Oh I see what you mean. Does this change if you don't use any of Google's products ie. web browser, youtube or search engines?

If you never run JavaScript, don't use an IP traceable to you, then you're probably safe from tracking. But GDPR applies offline too, so your insurance company can't increase your bill because you drink too much coffee and have a loyalty card, without you being able to trace that link.

I don't know how wide their web is. I know they have partnerships with some third parties, presumably some involves tracking that data.

Unless every single person you know also strictly avoids social media, you are still getting tracked by social media companies.

Facebook and Google are known to track non-users around the internet as well.

Your mind has a very skewed outlook then.

It's not about weakening companies, it's about keeping them in line, ethically.

One of the criticisms of this directive is that only YouTube et al can afford to comply. If that's true, surely the big US companies will be delighted?

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