Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy? | Hacker News Reader

Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?

nytimes.com

64 pointspseudolus60 comments

When you have zero tech companies it's easier to do things that impede tech companies.

Or when you value privacy.

Are you implying there are zero tech companies in Europe?

Not zero, but compared to US the state is kinda sad. Quite a few EU startups move to US sooner or later too. Meanwhile vice versa ain't happening. It's one way road for both engineers and companies.

We do have tech companies but we don't let them grow beyond reason and extend their tentacular grip on almost all areas of society. Are you implying it's a bad thing?

Regardless of regulations that still doesn't counter the prevalence of American companies in Europe.

Given that the productivity per capita in France or Germany is maybe 10% lower than in the US, and that those are highly developed countries with centuries of industrial knowledge, you might want to adjust your definition of "tech company" a bit, because if those countries had no technology firms, they'd be quite a lot poorer.

The US has incredibly strong advantages in fields like the semi-conductor industry, but in transportation, pharmaceuticals and aerospace Europe is quite strong. And when you look at hidden champions and the integration of technology into small and medium sized firms, the US heartland has a big problem.

Some may argue that to remain competitive in today's environment, some tech companies require a diminished amount of customer privacy, otherwise their foreign rivals will be able to do more and be more successful in the long run.

For the EU, if there is a belief that their tech companies can't out-compete against foreign rivals (Think search engine, social media, cyber sec, etc) and that their data could be used against them in the near future, it may seem intuitive to put privacy checkers to get foreign entities in line with your interests.

You mean tech as in internet based, I assume. Technology (in the actual sense of the word) based companies make Germany an economical powerhouse.

The large european companies with a big "stake" in the internet are non-technology based companies like publishers. These publishers hate the internet and they hate Google and Facebook because they see them as competition.

The result is shenanigans like Article 13. Also, the GDPR, with its anti Google and Facebook overtones, has received nearly nothing but applause from these stakeholders. So friction was light when it was pushed through by people who actually cared for the privacy aspects of it.

The word "Digital" could be eliminated from the headline without loss of accuracy.

The Data Protection Directive and GDPR don't care about whether the privacy violation involves a computer :)

The US is behind Western and Northern Europe in almost every facet of development that I can think of, except for GDP per capita. Education, healthcare, social mobility, political culture, news media seriousness, public infrastructure, etc.

The US is also shockingly institutionally paralyzed and unable to make meaningful reforms in any area, even if they are very popular with the majority of voters. The last one I can think of was ObamaCare, which was not a particularly radical change, but felt like it because of how difficult it was to pass.

It's not particularly interesting to ask "why can't we reform digital privacy laws" -- the more interesting general question is "why can't we reform anything".

I just listened to a Freakonomics episode about the business of the political party duopoly the other day. How federal politicians operate to preserve their institution first and foremost, and that the continued growth of the political industrial complex only serves to profit the parties at the expense of the democracy.

Fundamentally the US needs constitutional amendments to break the duopoly and return elections to being about people instead of parties, but for that to happen you would need a super majority of state legislatures to force an amendment and that is nigh impossible as well given how state governments are modeled off the federal but don't have the safety valve to try to repair the democracy with competitive and diverse elections - a vast majority of states are functionally ruled by one party with supermajority and in perpetuity and would never propose changes that would harm them federally.

The sea between getting a few members of congress or states to support restoring democracy and having the super-majorities required to actually see it done are so vast and the opposition so wealthy, connected, and influential I've never heard anyone propose a legitimate strategy to see it done, because the damage has already in large part been done - even if a super-majority of citizens agree with reform, that has no influence on the behavior of any legislature they elect. You would need to co-opt one of the major parties in ways their charters expressly prohibit and their incumbents will block.

This is amusing because politicians still try to emulate the US in many respects as do a lot of companies.

Pretty much. I am rather dumbfounded by some of the political debates I read in social media by Americans when many of these have been pretty much solved here in Europe, with respect to healthcare, education, abortion rights, gun control, etc. E.g. there is living proof that you can keep a country going with free/subsidized healthcare or education for almost all of its population, as evidenced by literally every Western country that is not the US, yet this empirical evidence is brushed away by American detractors with utterly bizarre arguments about economic freedom that don't have a foothold anywhere else in the world. I don't know if detractors are being 1) ignorant of living conditions abroad, 2) not willing to change a system that benefits them personally, 3) fully aware of how things are elsewhere but reject it for ideological reasons.

It's because politicians can be more easily influenced with cash in the USA than in Europe. The US supreme court hasn't done any favors in this regard either.

Don’t worry, Europe is just as corrupt as any other place in the world...they just do it more elegantly

I think it all comes down to uniquely American cult of individualism, in two distinct streams that separate and then join together. The first is a general anti-regulatory attitude and distrust of government, assuming that those things are harmful to individual freedom even when they're anything but. The second is treating corporations as people. Put those together and you get a belief that the government shouldn't tie companies' hands with privacy laws.

I'm not here to debate whether those attitudes are right or wrong. That's just my theory on how they answer $question.

What if--And I'm just riffing here--what if America doesn't have nearly the cult of individualism that everybody seems to think it has?

What if America has a strong authoritarian inclination, as seen by its extreme focus on patriotism and patriarchal style of Christianity?

What if the "Uniquely American cult of individualism" is (a) Something Americans tell themselves in a "She doth protest too much" attempt to avoid facing an uncomfortable truth, and also...

What if the "Uniquely American cult of individualism" is (b) Propaganda that has been thundered by American Media, Advertising, Political Parties, and especially corporations who use it as a lever for avoiding regulation and oversight.

Such as with health care, where untold sums of money are spent every year explaining that Americans have more choice and want more choice and "control."

Or with guns, where again, untold sums of money are spent every year explaining that Americans want to enforce their own protection from crime.

What if the "Uniquely American cult of individualism" is no more real than the Marlborough Man?

I too am not saying these are the only explanations, but they seem like argument that are worth thinking about rather than taking a knee-jerk position in favour or against.

Interesting thoughts. I think the part that comes closest to my own beliefs is this:

> (b) Propaganda that has been thundered ... as a lever for avoiding regulation and oversight.

I think the belief in individualism is real and sincere. It is also exploited ruthlessly, sometimes - but not always - by those who are moving in the exact opposite direction. Where's the authoritarian message in an ad telling you to be yourself, express yourself, stand out from the crowd, etc.? I don't think one needs to assume mass deception (including self-deception) to explain Americans' behavior. While I wouldn't reject your theory outright, in accord with Occam's Razor I tend to start with the simpler theory until the case for some other is properly made.

The ads deposing you to "be yourself, express yourself, etc" are doing so not out of any sense of benevolence, but rather to tap into the self image Americans hold in order to brand themselves as part of your ingroup, to sell more of their product.

Oh, totally, but that wouldn't work half as well if individualism hadn't become so fetishized already.

...and you are backed up by the World Values Survey! [1]

[1] http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/images/Culture_Map_2017_con...

It is a confluence of many independent factors that cut across culture, economics, history, political structure, and geography. This applies to almost every comparison of Europe and America.

A key difference is in the default definition of what "privacy" is relative to. In America, there is a strong notion of privacy from the government but a much weaker notion of privacy from companies. In Europe, it is the other way around. In the specific case of digital privacy, you are adding economic considerations to the equation which just reinforces the existing status quo on both sides since the America's tech industry is vastly larger than Europe's and therefore has much greater skin in the game.

The political dynamics are different because (1) Americans don't trust governments and especially the Federal government, for complex historical reasons and (2) the majority of legal authority to regulate, tax, etc resides with the individual States, not the Federal government, so relatively few things can be implemented "nationally" in the US. If you model individual States as "countries" conceptually, the political dynamics make a lot more sense.

> If you model individual States as "countries" conceptually, the political dynamics make a lot more sense.

No, not at all. US states being somewhat like countries can't put the USA behind the EU. EU states are countries.

This distinction isn't nearly a bright line as you think it is, the US is essentially what happens when an EU-like structure has 200+ years to evolve. In the US, States have their own constitutions, legislatures, various legal systems, and almost complete autonomy with narrow exceptions. Around 30% of them operated autonomously as their own countries at various times. Americans have almost no contact with the Federal government, only State governments, and the nature of State governments, laws, and legal systems varies quite widely across the US because they evolved independently.

As a simple illustration, the US has no national ID because the individual States have sole authority for managing the identity of their citizens. Similarly, it is why all contracts denote the State whose legal system has jurisdiction over interpretation of the contract -- there isn't a meaningful Federal jurisdiction over such things. This is also why the US Federal government can't just "pass a law" to do things, what they can actually do is severely limited by what the States feel like allowing them to do. While the States don't flex their autonomy very often these days, almost all power in the US rests with the individual States.

I don't think the line is that bright. AFAIK there are quite a few areas in which the EU is more centralized than the USA. The relationship between US states and the federal government does explain certain differences to the EU, sure. But not if you simplify it to "US states are like souvereign countries" because so are EU members. EU and USA cannot be different because of something they have in common.

> This is also why the US Federal government can't just "pass a law" to do things

In a way, it can do that by changing the constitution. That requires the consent of a majority of states, but this is common in federations. The EU cannot change its "constitution" at all except with the consensus of all members.

Is it because large American cos are lobbying against such rules ?

It's because America invented tech.

No, that is not it.

If that was the explanation, then we would say that America is behind the rest of the world on weights and measures because America invented engineering.

And we would say that America is behind the rest of the world on Health Care because America invented hospitals.

And we would say that America is behind the rest of the world on justice and incarceration because America invented prisons.

A much simpler explanation is that all these things share the same social and political forces, and America is different from the rest of these world on all these things for similar reasons, and those reasons--whatever we may think they are--are not related to whether America "invented tech" or not.

America does have a rather extreme case of “not invented here” syndrome; we rarely consider best practices in other countries as worthy, especially if that other country is not an Anglosphere one.

In fact, that “America invented tech” comment is a perfect example of that.

Wild guess because most of the technology we use is from America (Facebook, Google, Twitter, ...). Edit: Typing this from Africa least people think I am American.

Facebook and Twitter are social media companies. I don't think they count as technology companies the way i.e. a company that creates water purifiers and solar panels and such are a technology company. And those products are made in many countries other than the USA.

Why is Europe so far behind the rest of the world (except China, Russia et al) on digital freedom and freedom of speech?

Europe far behind? Europe is the best place in the world when it comes to freedom of speech, consumer rights and press freedom.

You can get fined for a dog trick.

Europe keeps regulating itself to death and america isn’t.

That’s why most modern innovation (Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Uber, Airbnb, Etc) is coming from the US and not Europe.

If you lived in both continents you would know

You could argue that America is unregulating itself to death.

Very true, although not with tech.

The sad part is that platform economies are mostly owned by US companies, and their internal (inside the platform) markets operate on a global scale. So far we haven't seen much external regulation here.

Clearly not enough, but there are laws (NetzDG) for censoring illegal posts in Germany.

Much more interesting and important, of course, will be regulation on actual platform mechanisms like vendor lock-in, Apple's non-compete app store policies and such.

Based on the very few readings I had, it seems it's been historical cultural difference from day 1. What's the motto "America innovates ? Europe cultivates" ?

Also, both have value.. I wouldn't bear USA medical system, but I also recognize France administration hell.

Odd comment considering Americans are literally dying due to a refusal to regulate in certain areas - employee rights, healthcare, gun laws, obesity etc.

Small price to pay for "freedom" I guess.

How does regulation help with obesity? And if it does, why are Europeans very nearly as fat as Americans?

The US is very lax on regulation concerning unhealthy foods. Sugar's the usual suspect, but things like livestock antibiotic usage and other sins come to mind.

> [...] why are Europeans very nearly as fat as Americans?

They really aren't "very nearly".

According to [0], US' obesity rate is 36.2%(highest of OECD) while the EU country with the highest obesity rate is UK with 27.8%.

Every other EU country's rate lies below that, e.g. Germany is at 22.3%

[0] https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0060...

As with everything, it seems, it depends on who you ask. The WHO shows some overlap. Some US states have high obesity, some low. Some European countries are above some states, even if the US is incrementally higher overall. Oregon, for example, is just a small amount higher than UK. Greece should be higher than UK IIRC, but I did not memorize the table.

Nobody with a 1 in 4 obesity rate is in much of a position to point fingers, it's pretty clearly a global problem. I see no reason to suggest that regulation is helping anyone. Food culture is probably the biggest single factor.

>Europe keeps regulating itself to death and america isn’t.

Given that the life expectancy in the US is falling which is unprecedented in an industrialised society, and on average below some second world countries that post has an involuntary morbid spin.

Leading cause of death for under 45 in the US is traffic fatalities.

How about child mortality?

Unprecedented might be too strong a term. It isn't too difficult to find ups and downs of life expectancy in Western European countries.

That is correct, such decreases have been seen before.

e.g: "If we're not careful, we could end up with declining life expectancy for three years in a row, which we haven't seen since the Spanish flu, 100 years ago."

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-life-expectancy...

The innovation you speak of is either completely superfluous or actively harmful to society. No one needs a Tesla or SpaceX, and society would be much better off without Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Apple or Facebook. That you consider these companies, all with a notorious track record of badly treating their employees and mishandling their user's data, as good things, speaks volumes about the mindset of some Americans.

If what you’re saying was right, these companies wouldn’t have any customers. Clearly society values these companies above zero.

That's a non sequitur. Demand is orthogonal to value. Heroin isn't valuable to society yet it exists.

There is no demand for things that have no value.

The customers of the companies mentioned above obviously see some value in using their services, otherwise they wouldn’t do so.

You seem to be using “is valuable” to mean “is good for”. I’m using it in the economic sense.

I'm not using it in the economic sense because that's not what the conversation is about.

I've lived on both continents (and one extra for good measure) and I'm afraid I can't agree.

What I see is that there's plenty of innovation in Europe but it's rarer for companies to become the monstrous beasts that are so well known in America, which might make it harder to see.

Also some of the companies you've listed are genuinely innovative (Google produced the best search engine, SpaceX made reusable rockets work, Tesla made electric cars work, Apple made PDAs work) but others are large because they have limited competition due to being in an expensive industry (it's hard to build a fab and start producing CPUs like Intel or to buy as many distribution centers or datacenters as Amazon) or because they blatantly flaunt the law to the point where they likely couldn't have started in Europe, where regulators have teeth and use them (Uber, Airbnb).

Another difference might be that in America you get one enormous company that does many things while in Europe you get small companies that do one thing each. Google does email, photos, search, YouTube etc., Amazon does retail and cloud and Facebook owns most major social networks. In Europe there are smaller companies that do all of these things, they're just not unified in one enormous organization. That doesn't mean there's no innovation, it just means you have to look in more than one place to find it.

To give some examples of smaller, successful, mission-focused European companies: Spotify does nothing but music, Skype did nothing but voice and video calling (before being acquired), there are a few email providers like Protonmail and Mailbox.org, a few major cloud providers like Leaseweb, Hetzner and OVH, Criteo, a huge AdTech company, Mikrotik which produces networking equipment, uBlox which produces GPS modules. Those are just a few off the top of my head.

I think it's a relevant and legitimate thesis that this is in part caused by the origin of the major data capitalists (please explain why they are voted down).

I think it is fairly widely believed that the USA government favors US-american companies. The EU might do this less, but would have a clear economic interest in doing so, so I find this very plausible as well. I don't know how many smaller personal data companies there are in the EU compared to the US, but the major ones you hear about (Google, Facebook) are definitely in the USA.

The GDPR is an attack on memory. Article 13 is an attack on speech. It's interesting to see the urgency of the push to implement them in the US; before it's too obvious what they are really for.

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