Europe's not going to stop until the internet is totally burned to the ground, are they?
I'm fortunate I got to know the true internet. Truly one of the great wonders of this world.
This very site's terms of service infringes my rights by requiring arbitration. Can I do anything about it by legal means? Who knows? Could I even sue them to begin with? Could they even sue me? Do the terms even matter at all?
Now, a country can then hold anything they control as collateral for any other demand they make: France could block a site from the country, they could seize any assets that site has in the country, or arrest personnel in that country. France has a vested interest in not overplaying their hand, such that companies won't operate there at all, but effectively a country has complete power to demand anything in exchange for access to their country.
In that way, the Internet is not subject to any country's law in only that country, but every country's law in every country, insofar as those countries are places they want to do business.
Nothing here is new and the US is traditionally the largest user of this sort of power.
That's exactly what will turn the international network into regional ones with tightly controlled borders. Large groups of people simply won't be reachable from the outside. My country blocked WhatsApp for several days when it couldn't decrypt messages for the benefit of an investigation.
> they could seize any assets that site has in the country, or arrest personnel in that country
And then countries will start requiring that all data concerning their citizens be stored on computers located on their soil and therefore under their jurisduction. That almost made it into law here. How many sites are just gonna block the entire country in response to that? How many are going to be blocked for not complying?
I think that is a very charitable interpretation of what they're imposing, though it may not have been your intent. Rather than "guarantee rights", I think it is just an attempt to assert their powers as governments. Hence the push to collect taxes on internet services, break encryption, and so forth.
But yes, we're heading toward an increasingly-balkanized Internet.
Google has never been caught doing anything of the sort but even sophisticated and savvy commentators like those you find on hn have a hard time distinguishing between the two companies, for reasons that escape my understanding.
Out of $160b in revenue in 2019, $134b of Google’s revenue came from ads. Most of the ad revenue is in the form of targeted ads, so if they stopped selling people’s information, they’d immediately go under.
Similar numbers apply to Facebook.
I honestly don’t understand where this argument that those companies don’t sell people’s information comes from. I hear it often enough to wonder if people are intentionally being disingenuous, astroturfing, etc...
That's why people say Google or FB sell data.
You seem to have a much more expansive idea of what selling information means as compared to other commenters. Google collects information so that when a customer buys ads, they can serve those ads to the desired demographics. They don't sell info on which users belong to which demographics or other otherwise sell user information. While it's true that they monetize information in optimizing their ad placement, this is not what most people think of when they hear "selling user information.
Say I have a nail salon and I want to advertise. So I give out coupons to bakeries, coffee shops, etc. and tell storekeepers to hand out the coupons the customer's demographics (women, mostly, and maybe women with fancy nails in particular). When these storekeepers kept an eye out for women with fancy nails and gave them my coupon, did the sell their customer's information?
Don't want Google to benefit off your browsing-data? you can stop using their services.
Now, the question becomes, is that actually possible? If I stop using Google Search, Gmail, Youtube, etc. would they stop collecting my "user data"?
I can replace Google with Facebook/Amazon/Criteo/... or anyone involved in the ad-retargeting business.
Also these decisions are done on the national level - France can rule whatever they want, it has no impact on the other EU member states.
The latter are the ones burning the internet down with their walled gardens.
I do enjoy the irony of some Americans blaming big data companies when the president of their choice does not get elected, all the while advocating for less power to French news agencies (e.g. death by asphyxiation from Google news, without any recourse).
If I wanted to use only directories and webrings I could do so today. I'm fine with that. If I want to use Google I have to use Google terms. That's okay. If I don't, I can easily just not.
I don't think it'll last, though. The guys who blame tech companies for elections are the same guys saying they need to be regulated. And so eventually we'll have all these highly-regulated services instead of the thing I've enjoyed. But that's the tyranny of the majority, I suppose. I can find a way to work with it.
This decision would have necessarily been different if the case were about a diffuse Internet-native p2p app, but after this precedent has been set the legal system is now primed to see both the same way.
Twitter is pretty open, meaning you can write pretty much anything you want and it helped topple some power structures in middle east.
what do you think would happen in the USA if there were only open source software on the Internet?
Twitter is an extension of the US power structure. Destabilizing the Middle East is in line with US policy. But for example, where are the official Twitter accounts of ISIS et al?
We did literally base the US system of government on this concept.