EU DSA: Industry and government interests prevail over citizens’ digital rights | Hacker News Reader

EU DSA: Industry and government interests prevail over citizens’ digital rights

patrick-breyer.de

153 pointsdeutschepost66 comments

I recommend this article https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/eu-institution... with additional factual reporting on what the DSA contains.

Patrick Breyer is a member of the Pirate party which holds a minority position and isn't quite happy with the results. While their views are, of course, a valuable part of the discussion, they portray the DSA in a deliberately bad light.

I agree, that the results are not as bad as stated in the article. But it is still way less, than initially drafted. And it would not have come to this, if the affected companies didn't heavily lobbied to water it down.[1]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/22/google-facebook-apple-eu-l...

True and it's very important to have that discussion.

However, whenever a law gets passed at least one side is less than enthusiastic and, at least for me, it's helpful to get a first impression from a (more) neutral source which didn't take part in the drafting process.

After that I take a look at what the involved parties are saying about the new legislation and how it came to be.

Yeah, thats fair.

Yes, but: industry avoided worse. This is a pro-consumer bill in its entirety. The headline here just feeds into mindless cynicism.

I know Breyer's agenda while ascertaining what EURACTIV's agenda is seems like year long endeavor. Plus their About page actually has the phrase EURACTIV content is produced in full impartiality, a phrase whose laugability is a major BS marker. EURACTIV is not impartial and then refuse to clearly state their bias; they're dishonest from the very beginning.

Unsurprisingly, the article simply repeats EU marketing speak and the facts in it are in the vein of bathing in nuclear waste will kill cancer cells.

The article lists everything the law does. It doesn’t list everything they wanted and didn’t get because, as Journalists, they arent suppose to want anything and therefore cannot list their disappointments.

Yes, the article is a bit sterile. Maybe politico.eu will have a better writeup for people interested in the politics more than the law. But to not see that the guy you’re agreeing with is drowning in opinion is almost comically lacking in self-reflection.

FWIW, on the merits, this is 100 % good for the consumer/citizen. There is nothing in it for companies, except that it maybe could have ended worse. It isn’t a compromise where each side got a bit of what they wanted. It started out with ideas of completely fucking over tech companies, now it graciously settled on just mildly tying them down and setting a bit of their clothes on fire.

But I’m sure that will be entirely lost on the „yet-again-these-corrupt-sellout-manufactured-consent-soros-etc-etc-crowd“

> But to not see that the guy you’re agreeing with is drowning in opinion is almost comically lacking in self-reflection.

While I find Breyer's text infinitely more valuable than that of the suggested supposedly impartial Fact Reciter, I'm not in lockstep with his position, and most importantly, I have no trouble separating his opinions from facts. On lack of self-reflection, I don't feel like I'm particularly guilty of it but then again I guess I wouldn't. I did read the EURACTIV About page and it wouldn't surprise me if something rubbed off of there. Whether it did or not, as far as lack of self-reflection goes it's a prime exhibition.

An impartial publication is a work of fiction. Claim you are one? You cosplay one.

> FWIW, on the merits, this is 100 % good for the consumer/citizen. There is nothing in it for companies, except that it maybe could have ended worse. It isn’t a compromise where each side got a bit of what they wanted. It started out with ideas of completely fucking over tech companies, now it graciously settled on just mildly tying them down and setting a bit of their clothes on fire.

It's the EU once again fiddling with the Internet. It doesn't really matter what the marginal benefits are in the short term if you don't trust them with that power to begin with and believe their unending need to make use of it will eventually ruin the Internet. Drop the citizen and I'm with you.

Pirate Party needs to start learning from the alt-right and the the politicians with other totalitarian tendencies. Instead of maksimalist goals that "must be achieved at once or we are doomed", better find something analogous of "think of the children" instrument which is used by the bureaucrats to gain power and aim for gradual steps in a similar way that the alt-right is doing it. Marine Le Pen in France become a credible candidate by distancing herself from maximalist and extreme ambitions(that she probably still holds) and aim for issues that large number of people want addressed(not just elitist niches). Populism is fine, up to a point.

Equating the "Not everything that we wanted was implemented" with "We lost everything, they won" sounds toxic to me. It's also arrogant t believe that you have the perfect solution for everything, you are pure and all knowing when the others are corrupt and stupid.

I like having pirate parties as a voice but the I would never vote for them, they are extremist and maksimalist IMHO.

You are projecting, the update is not so defeatist. It starts with listing achievements, then says that overall the new document does not deserve the name of 'digital constitution' and an opportunity was wasted.

Not the opportunity. More will come and I got an impression that PP will keep fighting. I would vote for PP if I could.

The Czech Pirate Party, now in government, has basically abandoned its focus on digital topics and concentrates on power, lawmaking and who is going to get which seat on what ministry.

A huge disappointment. Their once-core positions are now good for lip service only. Even the Pirate Party Forum (an open discussion forum) is now basically concentrated on power politics and discussions about such important agendas have atrophied.

Do you have a recommendation of where I could read more about how the Czech Pirate Party has done in government, either national or local (eg mayor of Prague)? I don't see anything skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Pirate_Party and very little reading the Czech version autotranslated.

I'm under the impression that at least one of their MEPs (Marcel Kolaja; edit: indeed, quoted in the article which I hadn't read before commenting, shame on me!) does substantial work on digital issues, but I guess the incentives faced by MEPs are very different from those in national or local office. Is that right?

Kolaja is pretty much the last one standing that is still interested in digital rights. Unfortunately the MEPs aren't that important in the party (any party): spending a lot of time in Brussels means being far away from the local headquarters, where the real decisions are being made.

For an impression of how the party is ticking now, just register in their phpBB run forum: forum.pirati.cz and run the discussions through the automatic translator.

I cannot recommend any truly neutral sources about people like mayor of Prague. There is an election coming soon, he will likely lose his seat. One of the reasons is that cost of living has gone through the roof. Many people move to Prague, but almost no new housing is being built. The prices are 2,5x as high as ten years ago. People draw unfavorable comparisons to Warsaw, which is very dynamic and at the time still affordable to the middle class.

Well yeah, that's how politics works. When you are elected, you are a power broker.

Most single-issue parties fail precisely because they don't want to broker power, they just want to get the one thing they're angry about out of the way. Most people are expecting the party they vote for to have an answer on every issue imaginable, and merely shrugging your shoulders and saying "I was elected to legalize copyright infringement, not to decide what our external immigration policy should be" is not an option. If you don't play power broker, you do not get your agenda done.

You're right, but up to a point. If you concentrate on power for power's sake and stop upholding your original political ideas, you will lose support.

There is a fine balance between Realpolitik and idealism. Ideally, you do not want to go full tilt in either direction.

I think you have mixed up the real idea behind "think of the children." It can be used as a fig leaf for things the politically powerful wish to do but are specifically unpopular. It can be used to do things that certain politicians want to do that the politically powerful are, as a class, indifferent to.

Where it doesn't work is to do things that are popular among the electorate but that the politically powerful are opposed to. No catchphrase will help you with that, unfortunately.

No I did not mixed it up, I'm suggesting that proponents of something unpopular need to obtain a tool that works to defend their positions. Not an awful lot of people are into the stuff that Pirate Party advocates, maybe they should find something to push for that an awful lot of people are interested in. "Save the kids" so far has been a very effective tool, the only time it failed as far as I remember is the Apple's auto-policing for CSAM proposal. The internet privacy and freedom advocates need to have something like that.

I used to argue against this line of thinking, but as time progressed, I have become progressively more jaded and cynical. I wonder if I am effectively becoming what I previously fought against ('think of the children' line of argumentation), but as time have shown time and time again, it simply works and I am kinda done letting technical illiterates dictate my life.

Maybe we don't have to lower ourselves to exactly that argument, but surely there are other popular takes.

IMHO, intellectual debates and making people go vote for you are different things.

You don’t need a position of power to discuss stuff and come to conclusions.

So, something like "Europe and America will turn into China-style mass surveillance states if we don't demand a change in direction immediately"?

Has the benefit of being relatively true as well. Google leadership was all too eager to get in on the Chinese censorship machine (Dragonfly) as I recall:

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/google-dragonfly-china-cen...

You've convinced me. Here's a sensible compromise I can imagine:

1. Make a panel of concerned parents to review abuses by recommendation engines and to stop tracking abuses. Think of the children!

2. Give law enforcement the tools they need to deanonymize the abusers and criminals who are trafficking our kids. We don't want them to go dark-- think of the children!

What do you think? I sure hope you're the type of person who really cares about the children, and not the kind of opportunist who would reflexively argue against #2.

And, scene.

If you've got legitimate concerns about the children with well-documented evidence, let's hear it. Otherwise you're going to be out of your league.

I'm confused. Did I give you the impression that I believe that "save the children" is a legitimate concern for controlling the internet?

This whole bill is things that are popular with citizen and that companies opposed. They didn’t have to start writing a digital services act, and it’s building on privacy protections that were already better than anywhere else on earth. The assumption that big business has all the power and always gets everything it wants is prima facie disproven here.

"Think of the children" is used to pre-emptively attack any opposition to what is being proposed, i.e. "you are against this? you don't care about children?". It is despised by privacy advocates and I wouldn't support any group who used a tactic like that.

Kids' privacy seem like a very valid use-case for that. Because kids and adults are not necessarily easy to distinguish, bingo bango bongo, privacy for everyone by default.

any powerful persuasion, even if disingenuous, is worth the outcomes?

Nope, just that people who want to gain power in a democracy and change something need to realize that they need to have tools to make large number of people vote for them.

You can't write JavaScript in a C compiler and complain that nothing compiles.

So the result here is going to be even more content/account bans without possibility of complaint on all digital platforms? And inability for Google competitors to enter the market because they can't afford a massive AI autibanning system to comply with requirement.

Our EU seriously seems to try to regulate competition out of existence :/

The phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" comes to mind.

Whilst they are focused upon the larger outlets and targeting that, the lesser, future platforms will be burdened with an entry cost far higher than before; Pushing that opertunity of inivation further from the reaches of those on the otherside of wealth.

Just ironic that the intentions of the EU upon this only fuel anticomepative divides via that entry cost barrier to compete.

> lesser, future platforms will be burdened with an entry cost far higher than before; Pushing that opertunity of inivation further from the reaches of those on the otherside of wealth

Yet again, HN doesn't even bother to read before commenting.

The law applies to platforms with more than 45 million users. By the time you have that many, you're not a "lesser platform that's hurting".

pewdiepie, a youtuber, has 111 million subscribers. europe is underestimating the web.

pewdiepie isn't a platform. It's also a major business with plenty of turnover and the ability to obey the laws of the juristiction the company operates in.

> The law applies to platforms with more than 45 million users. By the time you have that many, you're not a "lesser platform that's hurting".

There are only some parts on regulation that affects those with more than 45 million active users. https://ec.europa.eu/info/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe...

[edit] Reading the actual regulation text a bit closer, it looks like there are additional categories than those presented in EC's overview page. Some of the elements do not apply certain small companies defined "a small enterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million" (+some additional restrictions on things like ownership. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...)

Oh it's far worse than that. The next fundamentalist quasi-dictatorship in Romania, Poland or Hungary gets to decide what's illegal and immoral and therefore censored in Belgium and Sweden.

I agree with regulation, but some of this is very concerning. By the Polish government's actions, pointing out the very real Polish pogroms and Polish informants who turned in Jews could be considered misinformation. This will be abused by some the increasingly illiberal and nationalist states in the EU.

Just like the Brits...there can always be a Belgone and a Swedone.

Oh....here we go, then: Germano Italeave sPain Portugallivant The Neverlands

Cont. on p94.

I'm a small business owner with an online digital platform.

I'm going through the DSA now and it looks like they exempted most of the hard to implement requirements for micro/small businesses.

You can find the full regulation here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?qid=16081171...

So long as you don't have millions of users, you are exempt from "Section 3" requirements. If you got millions of users, I'm sure such companies can afford implementing the mentioned regulations.

Honestly, it currently doesn't look extremely bad for small/micro businesses but we will see.

> Cross-border removal orders issued by illiberal member states without a court order can take down media reports and information that is perfectly legal in the country of publication.

It is bad, but what's worse is that this is not even all that consequential. Remember the case with Leica advert featuring the famous Tiananmen shot taken with one of their cameras? After CCP's outrage, Leica took it down at its own initiative (and nearly apologized to boot).

Well, this behaviour is now the law. Not just a choice of corporations, but they're now compelled by EU to continue taking down content.

Which means, people in liberal member states will no longer be indifferent towards the actions of the illiberal ones. Maybe if the illiberal states don't share the values of the liberal ones, they shouldn't be in the same union? The thoughts an prayers being with the democrats of Hungary is not enough, Hungarians might better choose if they want to be a part of the society that tolerates stuff or go live in a system where Putin-like governance is the way to go.

I'm kind of hoping for a similar thing happening globally. The actions of states like Saudi Arabia are well tolerated only because their actions don't have any real impact in EU or USA.

I think this is going to expose the core problem in Europe, that the political classes of the "liberal" member states are just giving lip service to the "fraternity equality liberty" crap and care no more for free speech or free association than their "authoritarian" neighbours.

Sounds good to me. If they are proven to fail to deliver on "fraternity equality liberty", a political movement that demands it can catch fire.

Reading the posts here I have to take a radically different point of view. Maybe even an unpopular one.

These topics, as with most politically discussed topics just aren't important. At least to most constituents. If I look around and talk to people they don't care about digital privacy. On the contrary. They don't want these cookie banners. They blame the GDPR for those. They are pissed because online and offline they need to click banners or fill out paper forms to get even basic services.

If I think about the GDPR related things I had to fill out at doctors, veterinarians and such when I (or my animals) needed help I can relate. You just want help not read page after page of legalese.

People were trained to correlate data privacy with stuff that annoys them.

So no. It doesn't matter. Not to the majority of people I believe. Especially not when it is at the EU level.

The consumer protection aspects of this law are simply cover for its real purpose: installing tighter controls on what people are allowed to say and read on the internet, in the convenient guise of clamping down on "disinformation" and "hate speech". The ruling elite are furiously scrambling to censor, stamp out and criminalize any mass communication that they perceive as a threat to their entrenched power.

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