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Comment by rockemsockem | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that most of the comments here are siding with Europe blindly?

Am I the only one who assumes by default that European regulation will be heavy-handed and ill conceived?

Well Europe haven't enacted policies actually breaking American monopolies until now.

Europeans are still essentially on Google, Meta and Amazon for most of their browsing experiences. So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important national security aspects.

A position which is essentially reasonable if not too polite.

> So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important national security aspects.

When push comes to shove the US company will always prioritize US interest. If you want to stay under the US umbrella by all means. But honestly it looks very short sighted to me.

After seeing this news https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/the-networker..., how can you have any faith that they will play nice?

You have only one option. Grow alternatives. Fund your own companies. China managed to fund the local market without picking winners. If European countries really care, they need to do the same for tech.

If they don't they will forever stay under the influence of another big brother. It is US today, but it could be China tomorrow.

The EU sucks at venture capital.

> Am I the only one who assumes by default

And that's the problem: assuming by default.

How about not assuming by default? How about reading something about this? How about forming your own opinion, and not the opinion of the trillion- dollar supranational corporations?

Are you saying that upon reading a sentence like

"Meta disagrees with European regulation"

That you don't have an immediate guess at which party you are most likely to agree with?

I do and I think most people do.

I'm not about to go around spreading my uninformed opinion though. What my comment said was that I was surprised at people's kneejerk reaction that Europe must be right, especially on HN. Perhaps I should have also chided those people for commenting at all, but that's hindsight for you.

The "kneejerk reaction" is precisely because it's Meta. You know, the poor innocent trillion-dollar supranational corporation whose latest foray into AI was "opt-in all of our users into training our AI and make the opt-out an awkward broken multi-step process designed to discourage the opt-out".

Whereas EU's "heavy-handed and ill-conceived" regulations are "respect copyright, respect user choice, document your models, and use AI responsibly".

This is literally an ad hominem.

Meta is capable of having correct actions and opinions and you are grossly oversimplifying the EU regulation.

What is bad about heavy handed regulation to protect citizens?

He also said “ill conceived”

A good example of how this can end up with negative outcomes is the cookie directive, which is how we ended up with cookie consent popovers on every website that does absolutely nothing to prevent tracking and has only amounted to making lives more frustrating in the EU and abroad.

It was a decade too late and written by people who were incredibly out of touch with the actual problem. The GDPR is a bit better, but it's still a far bigger nuisance for regular European citizens than the companies that still largely unhindered track and profile the same.

So because sometimes a regulation misses the mark, governments should not try to regulate?

I think OP is criticising blindly trusting the regulation hits the mark because Meta is mad about it. Zuckerberg can be a bastard and correctly call out a burdensome law.

Well, pragmatically, I'd say no. We must judge regulations not by the well wishes and intentions behind them but the actual outcomes they have. These regulations affect people, jobs and lives.

The odds of the EU actually hitting a useful mark with these types of regulations, given their technical illiteracy, it's is just astronomically unlikely.

Cookie consent popovers were the deliberate decisions of company to create the worst possible compliance. A much simpler one could have been to stop tracking users especially when it is not their primary business.

Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies" should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the company, not the eu regulation.

I don’t believe that every website has colluded to give themselves a horrible user experience in some kind of mass protest against the GDPR. My guess is that companies are acting in their interests, which is exactly what I expect them to do and if the EU is not capable of figuring out what that will look like then it is a valid criticism of their ability to make regulations

Yet that user interface is against the law and enforcing the GDPR would improve it.

Websites use ready-to be used cookie banners provider by their advertisers. Who have all the incentive to make the process as painful as possible unless you click "accept", and essentially followed the model that Facebook pioneered.

And since most people click on accept, websites don't really care either.

What makes you think the regulators didn't predict the outcome?

Of course the business which depend on harvesting data will do anything they can to continue harvesting data. The regulation just makes that require consent. This is good.

If businesses are intent to keep on harvesting data by using dark patterns to obtain "consent", these businesses should either die or change. This is good.

Perfect example of regulation shaping a market. And succeeding at only ill results.

Bad argument, the solution is not to not regulate, it's to make a new law mandating companies to make cookies opt-in behind a menu that can't be a banner. And if this somehow backfires too, we go again. Giving up is not the solution to the privacy crisis.

That it is very likely not going to work as advertised, and might even backfire.

The EU AI regulation establishes complex rules and requirements for models trained above 10^25 FLOPS. Mistral is currently the only European company operating at that scale, and they are also asking for a pause before these rules go into effect.

The sad reality is that nobody ever cares about the security/ethics of their product unless they are pressured. Model evaluation against some well defined ethics framework or something like HarmBench are not without costs, nobody wants to do that. It is similar to pentesting. It is good that such suggestions are being pushed forward to make sure model owners are responsible here. It also protects authors and reduces the risk of their works being copied verbatim. I think this is what morel owners are afraid of the most.

TBH I would most prefer that models weren't forbidden to answer certain questions.

it does not protect citizens? the EU shoves down a lot of the member state's throats.

"Even the very wise cannot see all ends." And these people aren't what I'd call "very wise."

Meanwhile, nobody in China gives a flying fuck about regulators in the EU. You probably don't care about what the Chinese are doing now, but believe me, you will if the EU hands the next trillion-Euro market over to them without a fight.

Everyone working on AI will care, if ASML stops servicing TSMC's machines. If Europe is serious about responsible AI, I think applying pressure to ASML might be their only real option.

If Europe is serious about responsible AI, I think applying pressure to ASML might be their only real option.

True, but now they get to butt heads with the US, who call the tunes at ASML even though ASML is a European company.

We (the US) have given China every possible incentive to break that dependency short of dropping bombs on them, and it would be foolish to think the TSMC/ASML status quo will still hold in 5-10 years. Say what you will about China, they aren't a nation of morons. Now that it's clear what's at stake, I think they will respond rationally and effectively.

Will they resort to turning off the Internet to protect citizens?

Or maybe just exclude Meta from the EU? :)

Is this AI agreement about "turning off the Internet"?

This is the same entity that has literally ruled that you can be charged with blasphemy for insulting religious figures, so intent to protect citizens is not a motive I ascribe to them.

What entity specifically?

The EU Court of Human Rights upheld a blasphemy conviction for calling Muhammad (who married a 9 year old) a pedophile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_(2018)

Dang that's a crazy outcome.

>Even in a lively discussion it was not compatible with Article 10 of the Convention to pack incriminating statements into the wrapping of an otherwise acceptable expression of opinion and claim that this rendered passable those statements exceeding the permissible limits of freedom of expression.

Although the expression of this opinion is otherwise acceptable, it was packed with "incriminating statements". But the subject of these incriminating statements is 2000 year old mythical figure.

But it IS protecting citizens from blasphemy.

>charged with blasphemy for insulting religious figures

Isn't that the exact definition of "blasphemy"[1]?

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blasphemy

Indeed it is. And when you hear that someone has been charged with blasphemy do you think of a modern society or a medieval hellscape?

You end up with anemic industry and heavy dependability on foreign players.

The EU is pushing for a backdoor in all major messaging/email providers to "protect the children". But it's for our own good you see? The EU knows best and it wants your data without limits and without probable cause. Everyone is a suspect.

1984 wasn't supposed to be a blueprint.

Because it doesn't protect us.

It just creates barriers for internal players, while giving a massive head start for evil outside players.

what's bad about it is when people say "it's to protect citizens" when it's really a political move to control american companies

I don't think good intentions alone are enough to do good.

"blindly"? Only if you assume you are right in your opinion can you arrive at the conclusion that your detractors didn't learn about it.

Since you then admit to "assume by default", are you sure you are not what you complain about?

I was specifically referring to several comments that specifically stated that they did not know what the regulation was, but that they assumed Europe was right and Meta was wrong.

I, prior to reading the details of the regulation myself, was commenting on my surprise at the default inclinations of people.

At no point did I pass judgement on the regulation and even after reading a little bit on it I need to read more to actually decide whether I think it's good or bad.

Being American it impacts me less, so it's lower on my to do list.

Let's see, how many times did I get robo-called in the last decade? Zero :)

Sometimes the regulations are heavy-handed and ill-conceived. Most of the time, they are influenced by one lobby or another. For example, car emissions limits scale with _weight_ of all things, which completely defeats the point and actually makes today's car market worse for the environment than it used to be, _because of_ emissions regulations. However, it is undeniable that that the average European is better off in terms of privacy.

I’d side with Europe blindly over any corporation.

The European government has at least a passing interest in the well being of human beings while that is not valued by the incentives that corporations live by

All corporations that exist everywhere make worse decisions than Europe is a weirdly broad statement to make.

The EU is pushing for a backdoor in all major messaging/email providers to "protect the children". No limits and no probable cause required. Everyone is a suspect.

Are you still sure you want to side blindly with the EU?

It's just foreign interests trying to keep Europe down

I feel like Europe does a plenty good job of that itself

Maybe the others have put in a little more effort to understand the regulation before blindly criticising it? Similar to the GDPR, a lot of it is just common sense—if you don’t think that "the market" as represented by global mega-corps will just sort it out, that is.

Our friends in the EU have a long history of well-intentioned but misguided policy and regulations, which has led to stunted growth in their tech sector.

Maybe some think that is a good thing - and perhaps it may be - but I feel it's more likely any regulation regarding AI at this point in time is premature, doomed for failure and unintended consequences.

Yet at the same time, they also have a long history of very successful policy, such as the USB-C issue, but also the GDPR, which has raised the issue of our right to privacy all over the world.

How long can we let AI go without regulation? Just yesterday, there was a report here on Delta using AI to squeeze higher ticket prices from customers. Next up is insurance companies. How long do you want to watch? Until all accountability is gone for good?

I mean, getting USB-C to be usable on everything is like a nice-to-have, I wouldn't call it "very successful policy".

It’s just an example. The EU has often, and often successfully, pushed for standardisation to the benefit of end users.

Which... has the consequences of stifling innovation. Regulations/policy is two-way street.

Who's to say USB-C is the end-all-be-all connector? We're happy with it today, but Apple's Lightning connector had merit. What if two new, competing connectors come out in a few year's time?

The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new technically superior connector to enter the market. Fast forward a decade when USB-C is dead, EU will keep it limping along - stifling more innovation along the way.

Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via consensus - but via policy/regulation? These are the same governing bodies that hardly understand technology/internet. Normally standardization is achieved via two (or more) competing standards where one eventually "wins" via adoption.

Well intentioned, but with negative side-effects.

If the industry comes out with a new, better connector, they can use it, as long as they also provide USB-C ports. If enough of them collectively decide the new one is superior, then they can start using that port in favor of USB-C altogether.

The EU says nothing about USB-C being the bestest and greatest, they only say that companies have to come to a consensus and have to have 1 port that is shared between all devices for the sake of consumers.

I personally much prefer USB-C over the horrid clusterfuck of proprietary cables that weren't compatible with one another, that's for sure.

"the industry"

If one company does though they're basically screwed as I understand it.....

> The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new technically superior connector to enter the market.

As in: the EU regulation literally addresses this. You'd know it if you didn't blindly repeat uneducated talking points by others who are as clueless as you are.

> Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via consensus - but via policy/regulation?

In the ancient times of 15 or so years ago every manufacturer had their own connector incompatible with each other. There would often be connectors incompatible with each other within a single manufacturer's product range.

The EU said: settle on a single connector voluntarily, or else. At the time the industry settled on micro-USB and started working on USB-C. Hell, even Power Delivery wasn't standardized until USB-C.

Consensus doesn't always work. Often you do need government intervention.

Hard disagree on both GDPR and USBC.

If I had to pick a connector that the world was forced to use forever due to some European technocrat, I would not have picked usb-c.

Hell, the ports on my MacBook are nearly shot just a few years in.

Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and consultants than it has for EU citizens.

The USB-C charging ports on my phones have always collected lint to the point they totally stop working and have to be cleaned out vigorously.

I don't know how this problem is so much worse with USB-C or the physics behind it, but it's a very common issue.

This port could be improved for sure.

As someone with both a usb-c and micro-usb phone, I can assure you that other connectors are not free of that problem. The micro-usb one definitely feels worse. Not sure about the old proprietary crap that used to be forced down our throats so we buy Apple AND Nokia chargers, and a new one for each model, too.

I don't know, it might be the case that my switch to USB-C phones somehow coincided with an increase in pocket lint but I've had two USB-C phones where the charging ports literally stopped working due to lint, and no micro USB ones have done that.

I don't know if this is a fair comparison, just an anecdote.

> Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and consultants than it has for EU citizens.

Monetary value, certainly, but that’s considering money as the only desirable value to measure against.

Who said money. Time and human effort are the most valuable commodities.

That time and effort wasted on consultants and lawyers could have been spent on more important problems or used to more efficiently solve the current one.

> GDPR

You mean that thing (or is that another law?) that forces me to find that "I really don't care in the slightest" button about cookies on every single page?

No, the laws that ensures that private individuals have the power to know what is stored about them, change incorrect data, and have it deleted unless legally necessary to hold it - all in a timely manner and financially penalize companies that do not.

> and have it deleted unless legally necessary to hold it

Tell that to X which disables your ability to delete your account if it gets suspended.

That's not the GDPR.

That is malicious compliance with the law, and more or less indicative of a failure of enforcement against offenders.

But the law still caused that, of course regulation is going to be adversarial and they should anticipate that.

No, GDPR is the law that allowed me to successfully request the deletion of everything companies like Meta have ever harvested on me without my consent and for them to permanently delete it.

Fun fact, GitHub doesn't have cookie banners. It's almost like it's possible to run a huge site without being a parasite and harvesting every iota of data of your site's visitors!

I'm specifically referring to several comments that say they have not read the regulation at all, but think it must be good if Meta opposes it.

So you're surprised that people are siding with Europe blindly, but you're "assuming by default" that you should side with Meta blindly.

Perhaps it's easier to actually look at the points in contention to form your opinion.

I don't remember saying anything about blindly deciding things being a good thing.

If I've got to side blindly with any entity it is definitely not going to be Meta. That's all there is.

I mean, ideally no one would side blindly at all :D

That's the issue with people's from a certain side of politics, they don't vote for something they always side / vote against something or someone ... Blindly. It's like pure hate going over reason. But it's ok they are the 'good' ones so they are always right and don't really need to think

Sometimes people are just too lazy to read an article. If you just gave one argument in favor of Meta, then perhaps that could have started a useful conversation.

Perhaps… if a sane person could find anything in favor of one of the most Evil corporations in the history of mankind…

>if a sane person could find anything in favor of one of the most Evil corporations in the history of mankind.

You need some perspective - Meta wouldn't even crack the top 100 in terms of evil:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abir_Congo_Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Controversies_and_crime...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita

all of the combined pales in comparison to what meta did and is doing to society at the scale of which they are doing it

this alone is worse than all of what you listed combined

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/meta-all...

No... making teenagers feel depressed sometimes is not in fact worse than facilitating the Holocaust, using human limbs as currency, enslaving half the world and dousing the earth with poisons combined.

it is when you consider number of people affected

No, it isn't.

I'm not saying Meta isn't evil - they're a corporation, and all corporations are evil - but you must live in an incredibly narrow-minded and privileged bubble to believe that Meta is categorically more evil than all other evils in the span of human history combined.

Go take a tour of Dachau and look at the ovens and realize what you're claiming. That that pales in comparison to targeted ads.

Just... no.

Dachau was enabled by the Metas of that time. It needed advertising aka. propaganda to get to this political regime and it needed surveillance to keep people in check and target the people who get a sponsorship for that lifelong vacation.

Depends on the visibility of the weapon used and the time scale it starts to show the debilitating effects.

I feel the same but about the EU. After all, I have a choice whether to use Meta or not. There is no escaping the EU sort of leaving my current life.

Meta famously tracks people extensively even if they don't have an account there, through a technique called shadow profiles.

That's fair, but you don't need to blindly side with anyone.

My original post was about all the comments saying they knew nothing about the regulation, but that they sided with Europe.

I think that gleeful ignorance caught me off guard.

Or you know, some actually read it and agree?

I'm specifically talking about comments that say they haven't read it, but that they side with Europe. Look through the thread, there's a ton like that

Everything in this thread even remotely anti-EU-regulation is being extreme downvoted

Yeah it's kinda weird.

Feels like I need to go find a tech site full of people who actually like tech instead of hating it.

I like tech

I don't like meta or anything it has done, or stands for

See that's crazy though.

You don't like open source ML (including or not including LLMs, depending on how you feel about them)

You don't like React?

You don't like PyTorch?

Like a lot of really smart and really dedicated people work on pretty cool stuff at Meta. You don't have to like Facebook, Instagram, etc to see that.

To be fair, anyone who genuinely likes React is probably insane?

Plenty of great projects are developed by people working at Meta. Doesn't change the fact that the company as a whole should be split in at least 6 parts, and at least two thirds of these parts should be regulated to death. And when it comes to activities that do not improve anyone's life such as advertisement and data collection, I do mean literally regulated into bankruptcy.

Lol, I try to do as little frontend as possible anyway, seems like React is better than many alternatives though?

The comment I responded to said Meta didn't do anything good, which is obviously affecting their opinion on whether Meta opposing European AI regulation can possibly be good. Certainly there's a lot of not great stuff Meta does.

I like tech, but I despise cults

Don't know if I'm biased but it seems there has been a slow but consistent and accelerating redditification of hacker news.

It's the AI hype and the people who think they are hackers because they can ask a LLM to write code.

Idk I feel like there are a lot of non-technical people who work in tech here now.

Yeah I think that's part of it.

Probably partly because reddit somehow seems to have become even worse over the last several years. So there are probably more people fleeing

Tech and techies don't like to be monopolized

No we like tech that works for the people/public, not against them. I know its a crazy idea.

Your opinions aren't the problem, and tech isn't the problem. It's entirely your bad-faith strawman arguments and trolling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44609135

That feeling is correct: this site is better without you. Please put your money where your mouth is and leave.

I think your command of the English language might be your issue

If you don't hate big tech you haven't paying attention. Enshittification became a popular word for a reason.

As others have pointed out, we like tech.

We don't like what trillion-dollar supranational corporations and infinite VC money are doing with tech.

Hating things like "We're saving your precise movements and location for 10+ years" and "we're using AI to predict how much you can be charged for stuff" is not hating technology

It is fascinating. I assume that the tech world is further to the left, and that interpretation of "left" is very pro-AI regulation.

The regulations are pretty reasonable though.

Are you suggesting something here?

Are you aware of the irony in your post?

I don't recall sharing my opinion on this particular regulation.

I think perhaps you need to reread my comment or lookup "irony"

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