Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Regarding EU, you said that forcing websites to put UI dialogs asking for accepting cookies is a good consumer protection?

You take one issue and try to nullify all consumer laws with it. First, cookie banners are not legal anymore. They should be a dialog where 'No' is the first and foremost option and 'Yes' (opt in to tracking) requires permission per type of tracking. IMO this is a large improvement over: don't even ask, just track users based on PII everywhere, which is the case pretty much everywhere outside the EU.

The fact that you see banners everywhere is data hungriness of those websites. They could simply not track you by default and no banner would be needed. Though I wouldn't be surprised if a future iteration of the GDPR will forbid such banners and require no tracking to be the default.

But leaving this specific points. There are many great consumer laws in the EU:

* Your data bundle is valid in all EU countries. Before the EU intervened, providers would charge you through the nose for data outside your country.

* A web shop in any EU country is required to deliver to any other EU country. You live in Germany, but see a phone at a Dutch web shop that is much cheaper? The Dutch web shop cannot refuse you service because you are in Germany.

* You can return any online purchase within 14 days without justification (14 days after receiving the product).

* There is a single Euro payment system (SEPA). How big this is, is hard to grasp if you are in a large country. But it was hard to transfer money between countries, let alone without incurring fees. Now you can transfer money to any account in the EU without fees using in a uniform way (IBAN account number).

* Strong warranty laws. E.g. if a company does not solve an issue within a reasonable time, they are required to give you a full refund.

I could go on and on, there are so many good examples where EU regulations improve day-to-day life.

> First, cookie banners are not legal anymore. They should be a dialog where 'No' is the first and foremost option and 'Yes' (opt in to tracking) requires permission per type of tracking.

Got a reliable source for that? Because I actually need to have one to send out to a bunch of non-complying companies.

You can start here: https://noyb.eu/en/where-did-all-reject-buttons-come

And then proceed on to the text of GDPR, Article 7 Conditions for consent: https://gdpr.eu/article-7-how-to-get-consent-to-collect-pers...

Emphasis mine:

---

3. The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.

---

I know Europe. Thank you. Never said that EU doesn't have consumer protection laws.

I will illustrate my central point using the SEPA system you mentioned and forgetting the USA prehistoric finance platforms.

SEPA was introduced in iterations in 2008, 2009, 2014, etc. The EU has the resource means to achieve this in a way that other countries (e.g. development or underdevelopment ones) couldn't do.

Argentina, a super corrupt, infinite loop bureaucracy , and relatively weak country has implemented direct bank to bank transfer without fees (only taxes!) in 2001. This shows my point clearly. This was implemented in less than two years. Indeed around 1 year because they took one to work in the law.

Comparing Argentina to the EU (in political terms) is, in general, completely unfair. I don't know you but I would be concerned as a taxpayer if I were living in the EU zone.

It is indeed completely unfair as Argentina is a single country of 45M people while Europe has ~10x the population and consists of 27countries - the fact that international bank transfers took longer to implement than intranational ones in a single country is kind of irrelevant? Or are you saying that argentina implemented international bank transfers (... With whom?) In only one year?

Argentina implemented local bank to bank transfer without fees in less than one year. Not only saying that, I was a witness.

I don't know how population size is relevant in this context. Instagram has 2.4b users.

Please think that I am comparing a country light years from EU resources. I know SEPA includes many countries but even so the comparison is relevant.

Argentina is a single country. SEPA covers 27. How long do bank transfers from Argentina to, say... Colombia take? I honestly don't know, but I'm going to assume longer than they do between EU countries.

We can benchmark both and continue the discussion since we can engage in a apples vs organges discussion. This is where qualitative metrics are important. We are talking about 7 years of difference and Argentina is a complete stalled political system. One more thing, this was in the middle of the highest crisis since 2000. At least it shows that when politicians need to move forward it happens.

BTW, Argentina also had many local banks in different regions. The EU region is just ~1.5x larger than Argentina.

So.

Argentina: 1 country. 1 currency. 1 law applicable to the entire country.

SEPA: EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: 31 countries. 12 currencies (7 currencies in the EU alone [1]). 31 different laws (while EU countries must adhere to the overall EU laws, they are free to implement their own laws as they see fit within the general framework).

wslh: yes, yes, they are entirely comparable, after all Argentina also has regions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currencies_of_the_European_Uni... Turkish Lyra is used in Northern Cyprus which, while de jure part of Cyprus, is not in the EU.

Again, do you know Argentina? If Argentina could implement this in one year in 2001 I assume that EU could implement it faster almost a decade after.

Again, two people gave you clear reasons why. And yet you keep saying that apple and orange is the same fruit

The issue was getting all of the different banking systems into synchronization and forcing the banks to get there.

SEPA effectively got everyone to the level of some of the smaller EU countries that implemented similar systems by early 1990s. It wasn't easy, because some of those countries had population that still thought cheques are a good idea.

That's the point: it is slow politics, no technological challenges.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com