taysic

It's worth noting that when a country has control of its own currency, its issues are more self-contained. It doesn't get easy money based on the performance of other countries within the EU. It also can devalue its own currency if it can't pay back its own bonds.

Goods sold online will need to be sold at the same price to each region, sans a sales tax. But goods sold locally can differ greatly in the US. If goods sold locally, such as food, need to be prices similarly in the EU that is bizarre to me. Seems great for the more affluent areas.

If its a hobby and you otherwise have a full time job, 30 days is even too short. Not to mention that's when it stops becoming fun as the person mentioned.

That's not how laws work. Someone has to prove they are innocent if another person claims they aren't to regulators. There is a cost to that. There is no way the law can know perfectly who is 'misusing data' beforehand.

Why does your link list maximum fines in millions why other links say billions?

"Three complaints worth €3.9 billion were filed in the early hours of Friday morning against Facebook and two subsidiaries, WhatsApp and Instagram via data regulators in Austria, Belgium and Hamburg. Another complaint worth €3.7 billion was filed with French data protection authority France CNIL in the case of Google’s Android operating system for smartphones." https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/max-schrems-f...

edit: To me, the difference between 'suing' and 'complaints' seems unimportant if the potentials fines from a 'complaint' could be so high.

They work together - tax cuts made the labor market even more competitive

DuckDuckGo is a search engine - meaning its possible to use their tool without the collection of any data, even creating a user account. Many other tools are doing nothing nefarious with data but its not possible to use their tool without collecting data.

It's neat that DuckDuckGo was able to find a business model through showing ads based on what you search into the search box. For me personally, I don't see much of a difference between being shown ads on what I searched at that moment and having a cookie stored in my browser and getting showed ads based on that later on.

None of this disproves what the article is saying anyway - Google & Amazon will be the best equipped to handle the nuances of any data laws and as bureaucracy increases, they will benefit the most, storing more data.

An EU company will have a harder time targeting EU residents under GDPR than a US company will have (for its own residents). Wasted money on non-personalized ads could be the difference between continuing to exist for some. So it could potentially hurt EU companies that want to advertise too - though I really don't know the extent of advertising there.

The level of expected implementation will only be clear after a year or so.

I also think the requirement to provide the same service 'without detriment' if a user doesn't want personalized ads - should only apply to companies over 500,000 users. It should only apply to companies that are ubiquitous that people feel they can't live without.

"The Affordable Care Act kept profit margins in check by requiring companies to use at least 80 percent of the premiums for medical care. That’s good in theory but it actually contributes to rising health care costs. If the insurance company has accurately built high costs into the premium, it can make more money. Here’s how: Let’s say administrative expenses eat up about 17 percent of each premium dollar and around 3 percent is profit. Making a 3 percent profit is better if the company spends more."

Wow. Great example of free market distortions that don't work. Now if there was true competition in the field, a company would never be able to get away with this.

Realistically though its much, much harder to cut down on regulations than invent new ones. There is much more inertia one something is in place, because some people's jobs depend on regulating it / some businesses have already sunk money into complying / etc

It's possible some sites will switch to paid if they feel the targeted ads model in untenable. Others will just disappear, so in that sense there will be no price discovery.

It's hard to tell what fraction of websites have made shifts out of the enormous amount of businesses that exist on the web and serve EU consumers. On top of that, it's still too early to tell what the effects of the law will be. Many are waiting to see how it will be implemented.

About #2, I'm not clear on this: to many services, esp ones like Facebook, a user who does not want targeted ads would not hand over any less data about themselves. And the user would have no additional transparency into their behind the scenes tools or operations under GDPR.

Not sure what 'can still function' means. If a business is unable to make enough of a profit from its new business model, it simply shuts down. It was certainly not always a 'donation'.

Are you talking about cookie tracking? Most websites show their privacy policy or provide a link when you sign up, before one provides any personal information. Either way, nearly all websites have a privacy policy in their footer which can be read before continuing.

Simply because it forces companies to give the same service away without personalized ads. As long as the options are clear, most people would choose non-personalized because there is nothing they get out of handing their data over.

So under this system a user who doesn't mind personalized ads doesn't have the option to 'pay'. They have the ability to 'donate' their personal information but there would be no reason to do this.

Now if GDPR had allowed companies to either choose personalized ads or pay for the content, that would have been different.

People don't want this is in the US. At least I don't. I would be strongly opposed to it as GDPR violates the rights of a person to pay for a product through personalized, targeted advertising.

> Those remaining can force personalized ad compliance by virtue of their reputation

Hm? I don't see this happening. Under GDPR you have to offer the same service 'without detriment' if the user does not want personalized ads. Most people would pick this option as long as it is clear to do so. I don't think reputation makes much of a difference. As far as I can tell, they could become paid subscriptions more likely.

As a note - this is only one interpretation of the situation. In my opinion, if the privacy policy of a website is clear, then using their service and having one's collected data used as stated is not infringing on anyone's rights.

It's not about trusting corporations, but rather trusting in the benefit of the free market which offers more choices than a government which generally limits choices. A well intentioned government but still with too many unintended consequences

That's not possible with GDPR. You have to be able to access the same service 'without detriment' even if you do not want targeted advertising.

So far Google and FB has no complaints about GDPR - that was the word from EU regulators. Why would you think they are so desperate?

This is not the interpretation I've seen everywhere.

GDPR says 'accordingly, consent will not be considered to be free if the data subject is unable to refuse or withdraw his or her consent without detriment.'

The user needs to be able to use the service in the way they expect to, without needing to give their personal data for targeted advertising. Another way of putting it is personal data can no longer be used to pay for a service.

Commonly the data is used for targeted advertising which is why they need the pop ups and consent forms. Their appearance is not because the companies want GDPR to look bad.

You can only have targeted ads if you ask users for their consent which is why these pop ups etc are necessary - going back to the original question.

There seems to be a big difference between enforcing a law on all financial institutions and enforcing a law on all websites basically that serve the EU. The latter seems next to impossible to enforce.

Personalized, targeted advertising is how many services make money. So what is meant by 'the law wants you to not have to do this'. The law wants these services to not make money to cover their expenses? Or scale back their operations?

> really trying to annoy us users with GDPR updates

Isn't that the law that required these updates, pop ups, and new consent forms? Not sure how the companies could be blamed for that.