As Facebook Sweeps Across Europe, Regulators Gird for Battle | Hacker News Reader

As Facebook Sweeps Across Europe, Regulators Gird for Battle

nytimes.com

32 pointscarlchenet26 comments

As a European I wish EU would fight harder to create its own tech giants, rather than fight existing ones (e.g. Facebook, Microsoft, Google).

There might be some merit in better regulation privacy, data protection, natural monopolies in tech. However, so far regulations seems backwards (e.g. permissions to use cookie, VAT regulations). It would be awesome if more people at EU were a bit more tech savvy.

What would be the incentive of majority of people flocking to EU services ?

Better privacy protection would pull in some users.

With an heavy emphasis on "some".

Yes, your local government controlling your communication channels will result in far better privacy than some remote government who doesn't care about you controlling it. /s

Better the devil you know?

Historically, doesn't seem to be true at all. Local law enforcement likely cares far more about prosecuting you individually and has far more means to do so, than some foreign national agency. Imagine if Twitter was based within one of those countries that had a major uprising. Would the locals still be as safe using it, as if it were based far beyond the control of their country?

Not really anything unknown about this situation. There are many obvious historical incidents.

Not in the slightest bit true.

The way the US bill of rights applies to non-citizens not residing in the US is complex, but considering how little the US courts care about the question, functionally we have no rights when dealing with the US government.

This is the lynchpin to things like seizing people passing through US airports and holding them indefinitely in Guantanamo bay.

At least my own government can't get away with treating me like a brick.

Parallel construction.

Depending on your threat model, the very fact that Facebook and google are non European companies IS the privacy advantage. ..on the other side most people fear tailored ads more than their omnipresent government agencies. That's why I think people will like it anyway.

better multilingual support.

This might be the case but I don't think that is the main reason. In fact, Europe has many excellent universities. I believe one of the reasons that Europe is lacking IT giants is because investors are risk averse and they would rather invest in tangible industries. For example, in Switzerland which is ranked first in global innovation index [1] the IT industry is almost non-existing even though it has vibrant medical, food, financial industries.

Another reason in my opinion is the lack (or weakness) of military industrial complex. In the US many innovations are funded directly or indirectly with public money through military contractors and projects. (DARPA, Silicon Valley [2], Internet,...). Just by looking at patent portfolio of NSA you get a taste of technology transfer with public money to private sector.

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Innovation_Index

2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

Silicon Valley won't happen in Europe for the same reason it didn't happen in New York and East Coast. It's cultural. Europe should not compete with Silicon Valley by copying what's there. Europe should work on stuff that doesn't work in US e.g. Music Industry - very hostile in US, all unicorns are in Europe (Spotify, SoundCloud)

You mean other than Pandora, which is a successful, $4 billion company that has seen a massive revenue boom:

2012: $274m

2013: $427m

2014: $920m

Pandora is obviously not a unicorn because it's public, but counting Spotify as a start-up would be equally absurd, they're nine years old.

Good exception that proves the rule. Startup industry is order or magnitude bigger in US, normalize and then compare.

EU as a geographic entity, or EU as a political organisation?

EU is not a state with a single national mindset and identity - it's a bag of different countries with different fragmented cultures and languages. China has its Baidu and Qzone, and Russia has its Yandex and VK. All this in spite of the obvious lack of Silicon Valley analogs.

the US is a group of states that often times adopt completely different opinions, not sure your first point translates well.

"But with that size comes responsibility."

Why would European regulators even care about Facebook? It's a completely voluntary service and anyone's free to create an alternative. It's non-essential.

If a huge U.S. retailer muscled into the EU markets and started driving mom-and-pop retailers and smaller chains out of business, I can see where the regulators would go nuts and try to stop them. It's a clash of U.S. capitalism versus European style capitalism and if they don't like the raw knock-down-drag-out American approach, it's understandable.

If huge Asian car manufacturers started undercutting European makers with high quality, low cost vehicles, causing thousands of factories and parts suppliers and dealerships across the continent to go out of business, I can see how regulators would want to limit or stop the disruption.

But Facebook? Just don't use it. Don't browse to facebook.com, problem solved. Nothing is affected. What am I missing here? It looks like just another shakedown of a highly successful foreign company that the regulatory bureaucracy regards as a threat of some kind. Too profitable, too entrepreneurial, too brash -- some combination of too many ick factors, I suppose.

As jakozaur says, why not promote and encourage domestic competition? There are brilliant computer folks in Europe and I'm sure they can come up with a few classy, high quality alternatives to Facebook. As an American, I'd love to see some competition to FB.

This is not a very good argument. There are many products and services that are voluntary but regulated such as tobacco and alcohol. There are many laws that are designed to protect people even against their own will. Laws such as minimum wage.

The point is that notions such as privacy is not universal (at least not yet) and we should accept and respect that each region has their own value systems.

I am not rejecting that their opposition is not political. In fact, Europe and US have had many similar cases such as agriculture subsidies.

> Why would European regulators even care about Facebook? It's a completely voluntary service and anyone's free to create an alternative. It's non-essential.

Tthe problems are

1) privacy setting

2) unfair competition

The EU has strict privacy and data protection rules. Facebook appears to trample those, and if they want to continue to be allowed to operate in EU they should probably have a look at whether their rules are compatible with laws of democratic nations. Facebook probably have tight internal auditing. I have no doubt that a Facebook employee using engineer access to creep on FB users would quickly lose their job. So, partly all FB has to do is demonstrate that to regulators. The rules are pretty simple: tell people what you're collecting and why you're collecting it; don't collect too much; don't keep it for too long; make sure other people don't get hold of it. That's not onerous for FB.

As for unfair competition: well, I dunno. You might have a point there. I see that eg Amazon has decided to start following a more sensible tax reporting scheme so EU pressure does seem to work to change behaviour. I'm not sure if this is a French NIH problem - see also Courrier électronique, galileo, and the continuing anti-Google measures (first a competitor search engine, and then drives to force google to present alternative search engine results, etc)

>Why would European regulators even care about Facebook? It's a completely voluntary service

Not if your employer insists you use it.

I just finished reading The Facebook Effect [0] and the author there suggests that countries are worried that Facebook poses a threat to a countries sovereignty. Facebook often has more information on citizens of a country than the political body does. If Facebook plays along and is willing to share that information, the politicians would probably be happy. But it is still an uncomfortable thought to some that a private entity holds that much influence. Facebook has been aggressive in establishing deep roots in the web such as universal login and tracking information. You can argue their entire worth depends on being deeply integrated with the lives of its users. Integrating Facebook information with things like passports and voting doesn't seem so far fetched.

I'm curious as to what a democratic country can do to punish a service like Facebook. I don't think most governments have the authority to force ISPs to block access to a website. What could happen if Facebook doesn't comply?

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Facebook-Effect-Company-Connecting...

> Why would European regulators even care about Facebook? It's a completely voluntary service and anyone's free to create an alternative. It's non-essential.

Is it really too much to ask for a foreign company to play by the rules and the values of the country it is doing the business in?

I know many foreign car manufacturers adjust their cars according to U.S. laws before exporting? Couldn't one use the same argument and say: Driving a foreign car is completely voluntary? Who cares if it does not include all the safety features demanded by U.S. law? Just use a different car instead.

I know, this issue is debatable. But I fail to see the difference to other industries.

> If a huge U.S. retailer muscled into the EU markets and started driving mom-and-pop retailers and smaller chains out of business, I can see where the regulators would go nuts and try to stop them. It's a clash of U.S. capitalism versus European style capitalism and if they don't like the raw knock-down-drag-out American approach, it's understandable.

Call me old-fashioned, but I remember a time where the goal of regulation was to create competition and not protectionism.

> As jakozaur says, why not promote and encourage domestic competition?

A great way of promoting domestic competition would be to oblige facebook to create an open API that would enable other social networks to connect to Facebook and vice versa. This way the social network with the best features (for example privacy protection of their users) would win and not the one enjoying the advantages of having a monopoly (which includes the user lock-in).

I'm not sure what this means in Europe, but in the U.S. "Government scrutiny" often means "this company has gotten big enough that politicians can squeeze a lot of cash from it"

And on it goes, the EU 'protecting' up from voluntary services... They protect the tech scene so well there are hardly any great software companies, even though the EU is (or among) the richest areas in the world, and full of technical know-how!

Thank you politicians :D

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