> Passing a federal privacy law would end surveillance advertising at the stroke of a pen
Unlikely—breaking the laws would likely just become a business cost, and make everything even more expensive for everyone.
Unlikely—breaking the laws would likely just become a business cost, and make everything even more expensive for everyone.
A good example here is cheating standards. It's in the interests of pretty much every car company to cheat on mileage standards, safety standards, emissions standards, etc. But very few cheat and then pay the fines. Why? Because the regulators know how to size a fine to make them pay attention. Volkswagen got hit with a $2.8 billion fine for the emissions scandal, and total costs to them were estimated as over $30 billion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
The answer is by adopting different behavior on our end. Add blockers avoiding services litterer in ads (its why i no longer use Instagram, google search, etc)
This tactic has not succeeded even once since written records began. Did snake oil salesmen disappear because we ran out of gullible people?
Give me one example when this approach succeeded, without any corresponding legislation
I think he's describing when the market dethrones an entrenched player without legislation. This happens quite often. Cable companies come to mind. Kodak, Novell, Sun Microsystems, etc.
Like he said, regulation today serves the wealthiest companies, because startups, the ones that do the dethroning, have extra costs that are more difficult to afford. I believe it fits in the Barrier to Entry category.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/barrierstoentry.asp
If you want real regulation, you need to look to the anti-trust laws, but our current politicians don't have the stomach for that. Today's regulation really tends to serve the already entrenched, because the entrenched usually write the regulation.
When a business gets replaced by a conpetitor, that's a diffetent mechanism
Email spam filtering?
Web notification spam is much reduced since browsers made it a modal?
The solution is to make the fine a percentage of global turnover, not a static fee. That way the "cost of business" will be big enough to put the fear of law even to the largest corporation.