No disagreement here generally. The EU had a good track record in terms of holding big tech accountable, and GDPR has certainly paved the way for similar regulation elsewhere (looking at you, California).
That said, EU bodies have recently shown much less determination: the recent Twitter fine under the DSA was a joke, born from fear of retaliation from the Trump administration which had been bought by Musk beforehand stands in firm support of American companies out of the pure goodness of their black hearts. The same goes for the so-called trade “deal” with the US and the “Digital Omnibus”, both of which caved to American business interests. And with regard to the EU’s ongoing dependence on the US - both technologically as well as militarily - that is unlikely to change in the short term.
There have been some wins from GDPR, but it’s woefully under enforced. I became very familiar with the GDPR when I did an internship in the regulatory risk department of a big bank when everyone was frantically trying to rebuild shit to ensure compliance. I think it’s a damn good piece of legislation, and it’s a shame to see it doing so much less than it could be.
i also think the idea of gdpr is good in principle but if a legislation is unenforced and/or unimplementable then it is effectively useless. and gdpr is a case of mostly unenforced because it is practically unimplementable.
for example no company can reasonably implement the right to delete users data (one pf the core principles) when requested… at least not in the extent as it is defined in gdpr (i work as a data engineering manager and trust me, we tried, in every company i worked for…). it is a similar task in scope as if an author of a typesetting font suddenly had the right to revoke your permission to use random letters from their font… and when they did it you would be expected not only to stop using it immediately, but somehow remove it from all of your existing documents including printed copies and copies you sent out to your clients and suppliers (dear supplier, could you, please, replace the invoice we sent you last year with this attached copy add shred the one we sent you originally? we replaced all instances of letter “a” with different font…).
We definitely encountered challenges, like rouge data sets from silod teams, rehydration of backups, etc. but we managed to comply with the right to be forgotten. And these are large companies. If someone as a data engineering manager admits to not being able to do it? Well thats either a resourcing problem, a negligence problem, or a skill issue.
Seriously… If you commit fraud and lie to the government, you go to jail. A corporation does it and the fine is a fraction of a percent of their profits.
If this capitalist dictatorship shit — where sociopaths, psychopaths, and pedophiles collude with the government to defraud and exploit the people — is what Liberals consider “democracy”, Liberalism is a full blown cuck ideology that deserves to die as much as conservatism.
It is almost impossible to state this because it’s proving a negative. A company says they changed, sometimes they have, sometimes they only haven’t been caught anymore - there is no real way to know.
I know I’ve had to go through a bunch of trainings in my company of how not to do something that would get us fined, but I don’t know if it actually has worked or if it’s just a checklist item that keeps the fines down somehow
With all due respect, that is the dumbest shit I’ve heard in a while. Congrats!
If you don’t pay attention to the world and don’t know shit about modern history you can simply say you don’t know, instead of asserting some fantasy where oligarch criminals could be rehabilitated by a negligible inconvenience because the proles have to do compliance training.
The vast majority of people I know never commit anything that lands them in jail. However nearly all consider paying the speeding ticket fine once in a while just a cost of life they thinking nothing of.
Time for a slap on the wrist, that’ll teach 'em!
You can joke about it, but European regulators in the tech space are doing important work that rolls downhill to much of the world.
It sounds like a very good thing to me that Europe is maybe going to force Tesla disclosures and/or force them to work out the bugs in their tech.
Explains a lot of the Musk meddling in EU politics
No disagreement here generally. The EU had a good track record in terms of holding big tech accountable, and GDPR has certainly paved the way for similar regulation elsewhere (looking at you, California).
That said, EU bodies have recently shown much less determination: the recent Twitter fine under the DSA was a joke, born from fear of retaliation from the Trump administration which
had been bought by Musk beforehandstands in firm support of American companies out of the pure goodness of their black hearts. The same goes for the so-called trade “deal” with the US and the “Digital Omnibus”, both of which caved to American business interests. And with regard to the EU’s ongoing dependence on the US - both technologically as well as militarily - that is unlikely to change in the short term.There have been some wins from GDPR, but it’s woefully under enforced. I became very familiar with the GDPR when I did an internship in the regulatory risk department of a big bank when everyone was frantically trying to rebuild shit to ensure compliance. I think it’s a damn good piece of legislation, and it’s a shame to see it doing so much less than it could be.
i disagree on a technicality.
i also think the idea of gdpr is good in principle but if a legislation is unenforced and/or unimplementable then it is effectively useless. and gdpr is a case of mostly unenforced because it is practically unimplementable.
for example no company can reasonably implement the right to delete users data (one pf the core principles) when requested… at least not in the extent as it is defined in gdpr (i work as a data engineering manager and trust me, we tried, in every company i worked for…). it is a similar task in scope as if an author of a typesetting font suddenly had the right to revoke your permission to use random letters from their font… and when they did it you would be expected not only to stop using it immediately, but somehow remove it from all of your existing documents including printed copies and copies you sent out to your clients and suppliers (dear supplier, could you, please, replace the invoice we sent you last year with this attached copy add shred the one we sent you originally? we replaced all instances of letter “a” with different font…).
Could you expand on some of these challenges? We haven’t had these issues in any companies I’ve worked at, but those were mostly on the smaller side.
We definitely encountered challenges, like rouge data sets from silod teams, rehydration of backups, etc. but we managed to comply with the right to be forgotten. And these are large companies. If someone as a data engineering manager admits to not being able to do it? Well thats either a resourcing problem, a negligence problem, or a skill issue.
Seriously… If you commit fraud and lie to the government, you go to jail. A corporation does it and the fine is a fraction of a percent of their profits.
If this capitalist dictatorship shit — where sociopaths, psychopaths, and pedophiles collude with the government to defraud and exploit the people — is what Liberals consider “democracy”, Liberalism is a full blown cuck ideology that deserves to die as much as conservatism.
I mean, if they got fined something like 100 days’ revenues¹ they’d change their tune right quick. European law allows for that kind of fine.
¹ One day’s revenues being calculated as the total revenues in their last fiscal year divided by 365.
How many corporations have experienced fines that make them stop committing crime? Are they in the room with us right now?
It is almost impossible to state this because it’s proving a negative. A company says they changed, sometimes they have, sometimes they only haven’t been caught anymore - there is no real way to know.
I know I’ve had to go through a bunch of trainings in my company of how not to do something that would get us fined, but I don’t know if it actually has worked or if it’s just a checklist item that keeps the fines down somehow
With all due respect, that is the dumbest shit I’ve heard in a while. Congrats!
If you don’t pay attention to the world and don’t know shit about modern history you can simply say you don’t know, instead of asserting some fantasy where oligarch criminals could be rehabilitated by a negligible inconvenience because the proles have to do compliance training.
But but but Europe is going to kick big US tech in the teeth!
The vast majority of people I know never commit anything that lands them in jail. However nearly all consider paying the speeding ticket fine once in a while just a cost of life they thinking nothing of.
Are you comparing fraud to speeding, or agreeing that fines are not punitive enough to matter to corporations?
Neither. I’m stating that as a society, we treat them similar. Whether that’s right or wrong is not a judgment I am making.