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Comment by sclarisse | Hacker News Reader

Look, you can have the laws protecting your citizens from the horrors of everyday web-cookies and the privacy nightmares of the surveillance industry all you like. You can make them as heavy handed as you want, threaten massive fines on worldwide revenue, go mad.

You just can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile to deal with you under such laws, such that you’re outraged when they don’t. Or, well, you can, but it’s either quite foolish of you, or it’s imperialistic.

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EU privacy rules are not about the horrors of web-cookies. They require asking for informed consent when you do things that are invading privacies.

All the annoying cookie pop-ups are not mandated by the EU; they are a consequence of website operators choosing to use traffic data in a way that some users might disagree with. You can easily do without. You can, and many do, make them clear and informative.

Those laws would be imperialistic if a majority of citizens around the world, including a vast majority of American citizens, would not gladly demand the same protection when shown what websites do with their information.

This is not just about a frustrating cookie pop-up; this is about having legal options to prevent spammy telemarketers from scamming your elderly relatives. This is about mandating a way to tell ad platforms not to sell you prams after the death of your infant, or show gambling and alcohol ads to addicts.

> Those laws would be imperialistic if a majority of citizens around the world, including a vast majority of American citizens, would not gladly demand the same protection when shown what websites do with their information.

Imperialism for the good of the imperial subjects is as old as time. The barbarian nations need civilizing, and if they only knew what was good for them they'd gladly embrace our regime!

Or, as CS Lewis put it:

> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their conscience.

You are confusing paternalism (deciding what others want without asking them) with informed democracy. I’m not saying to decide for American voters. I’m saying that, if you explain GDPR to American citizens, they overwhelmingly think it’s a good idea. I’m not saying they should think so because I know better: I’m saying that they do.

The US is welcome to use any political system they want. The current system is a government of the people, by the corporations, for the executives.

No, I'm not, I think you missed the context. OP responded to this statement:

> You just can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile to deal with you under such laws, such that you’re outraged when they don’t. Or, well, you can, but it’s either quite foolish of you, or it’s imperialistic.

By saying:

This is false. Whether the other nations being imposed upon would embrace the laws if they simply knew what was good for them is irrelevant to whether a state action is imperialistic. What matters is the degree of consent.

There's been a strong theme in this thread of people arguing that Google should be required to do business in the EU and obey their privacy laws, and that would be imperialistic.

The official website for the European Union... with a cookie banner. https://european-union.europa.eu/

Surely there is a better way for the website operator to manage asking for permission for services that could be considered an invasion of privacy or avoiding using that all together.

And you are more than welcome to design one and submit your proposal to the Council. Note that no one here objects to asking for permission. People resent the intentionally poorly designed version that doesn’t give visitors a meaningful, informed choice. The complaints have targeted either deliberately confusing messages, modals that block access to services that don’t need invasive data processing, or pop-ups that re-appear as soon as you refuse them.

There are compliant and well-designed versions: if a website operator chooses to use a frustrating one, that’s not because the law is wrong; it’s because the operator favors their short-term profit from reselling data over convenience (which is almost always a losing bet).

I'll have "cannot immediately use shiny new thing from faceless soulless tech giant" over "have to live under constant threat of identity theft and personal info leak" any day of the week, thank you.

And that's what you're getting. So why the complaint?

Where were they complaining?

"it's outright malignant"

That sounds like a complaint.

That was a different user.

That is a complaint about the weasel marketing, not the lack of availability.

Edit: AND was a different user as someone else points out!

There's this implicit embedded assumption that because it's the EU we're talking about and not some small developing nation of course you can't just take your ball and decide not to play with them. But of course if you can make the finances work you can do just that.

This is the balance of powers between the EU and the US. The EU is too big and profitable market to ignore, so it can get away with significant degree of autonomy - but not too much, thanks to US having a lot of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and the EU countries approximately zero.

I don't think we care too much about nuclear-powered aircraft carriers too much in the civilized world.

The European Union and other nations obviously cares about us military power it's use it as a critical part of their defense strategy. This is such a strange comment to read during a hot war in Ukraine when many countries are trying to join NATO

Everybody's gangsta like they don't live near Russia until Trump is threatening to withdraw the US from NATO, then suddenly it's "how dare the United States not freely pledge its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and the rest of its military to protect us in Europe on its own dime even though we refuse to spend even a base amount on our own defense, we literally can't even!"

If it wasn't for Russia, the whole of EU would probably have dissolved NATO and dismantled its armies.

Imagine fucking up Afghanistan (and Iraq and Vietnam etc etc) so amazingly hard yet still saying this lol.

However badly the US fucked up the three invasions you mentioned, it was way worse for the people in those countries - so sorry, but it's an irrelevant objection. I'm not implying that US politics are rational, just that it projects a credible threat. It's geopolitics 101.

I don't like us interventionist foreign policy, but the fact remains that Europe and the EU benefit greatly from the US Military and it's Global power projection

OpenAI finds it worthwhile. So I guess they are working out pretty well.

This seems to be an inferiority on Google’s part and they couldn’t work out support at launch. I expect they will eventually add support, they’re just lagging a bit. It’s not some value judgement.

There’s a value judgment in the business-value sense. Once there’s meaningful revenue from it, or similar, it’s far more likely to be made available there. Until then it’s a business risk and a compliance-auditing expense for nothing.

Also a value judgment: the Europeans in this discussion who are confident it’s a sign Google is treacherous.

> OpenAI finds it worthwhile. So I guess they are working out pretty well.

The trade-off is pretty different for OpenAI because the maximum penalty for violating the GDPR is 4% of worldwide annual revenue. Google has a lot of revenue, from unrelated projects, and it makes sense to me that they would be reluctant to risk that on Bard. OpenAI doesn't, so the threat is effectively far smaller for them.

OpenAI also hasn't been fined repeatedly yet.

once they have a few billion on the bank it will happen.

GDPR fines are based on revenue, not assets. But to an extent this is correct; big companies are much more scared of the GDPR than small companies just because the amounts involved get so huge.

Listen, I agree with you that the web cookie stuff is a pain in the ass, but I'm all on board requiring user's informed consent about what you do with their data. It's Google that's being a little bit evil here.

So now not even going to the party is evil?

If Google is going so far as to avoid the European market, then I assume that they are not doing informed consent here, and I would consider that a little bit evil.

Yes, why have any nuance in our speech. Should just go all the way though and say Google is Hitler. No reason to stop at evil if we are being hyperbolic.

> can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile

wait do people think Google is going to forfeit the 20 trillion European market instead of just making some angry noises, adjustments and going live in Europe a month later?

I mean, the fact that some European commentators are so outraged over a few years’, maybe even just months’ delay because of efforts invested complying with the law… that’s part of the silliness here as well. “How dare our laws have costs that we bear! The rest of the world that should put us first and bear them for us!!”

There won’t even be angry noises.

(Although calling it a “$20T market” isn’t that informative when we’re just talking about a new unproven product without any obvious revenue itself that distracts from your main revenue product.)

Interestingly, if you use Bard, there are buttons that direct people to use the Google search engine to find out more information about subjects. Google has a problem that their search results absolutely suck nowadays, though. One of the worst search features on any website is on YouTube which is owned by Google. They seem to value revenue generation techniques more than functionality, but it is going to eventually bite them. We are seeing that now with many people finding better results using Bing or by simply asking ChatGPT.

Well, Google clearly want to be in Europe. Lot of money to make. What is happening here is that they don’t find it worthwhile to wait until complying with all EU’s regulations when rolling out their latest innovation. The opportunity cost may be too high. It may happen more in the future as well.

Why European people here feel so upset about it? You should celebrate the fact that Google or big tech can’t ignore your laws, and because of that decide not to launch —- or delay to launch —- their products despite the financial potential. That’s the trade off that I thought you’d been happy to make.

"You just can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile to deal with you under such laws"

Actually, we totally can. I can guarantee you that Bard will become available in the EU at one point.

Even in the US, we should all be scared that Google is attempting to strong arm the EU. It means less privacy for all of us.

Fine. Keep GPT, Twitter, Meta or any other toxic social media inside US borders. Zero problem here.

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