GDPR Is Good — Just Look at Who Hates It
You Know GDPR Is Good Based on Who Hates It
The author argues that GDPR's success is proven by the intensity of opposition from the tech industry. He traces the regulation's origins, its rapid global spread, and its enforcement teeth, from Max Schrems' dorm-room complaint to the EU-Japan data deal. He contrasts Europe's privacy-as-human-right approach with America's market-based view, blaming 9/11 and lobbying for the US's regulatory paralysis.
If you're doing something hard and nobody hates it, you probably aren't doing it.
- blfr
Banner gets a lot of attention because of the never-ending annoyance it's causing. It's like being surprised that someone would care about something so small as a little rock in their shoe. Yeah, you care about these little things.
It is also definitely true that the regulations are largely written by people who do not understand the tech they're regulating and its potential. Again, not some weird controversial point.
With every next leak where my full name, PESEL (that's like SSN here in Poland), email, phone number become semi-public and... nothing happens, I am becoming more convinced that we are annoying ourselves for nothing. Just degrading our digital lives and generating tons of legal digital text no one reads for no benefit of anyone involved.
At the same time, the very people who pretend to defend my privacy, oppose Tor, Signal, anonymity online, and other tools that definitely benefit me.
- apexalpha
Watching the US go from laughing at "silly EU bureaucrats making regulations" to "oh shit there's a national, privately owned AI surveillance network already" in two years is interesting.
- sourcecodeplz
there is a whole campaign online about hating on the EU & its regulations.
- marcle
Tobacco control advocates sometimes referred to a "scream test": the more vigorously the industry opposed a measure, the more likely that the measure was effective.
- scott_w
As someone who, until recently, worked in a company heavily impacted by GDPR, it’s a good thing. It forced the mindset away from “just do whatever is easiest,” to considering how it affects where our customer’s data is stored.
Was it a PITA? Sometimes, yes.
Was it stressful having a conversation with Legal to determine whether we had a PII leak under the GDPR terms that would mean we had to reach out to customers? Definitely.
But you know what? That’s the cost of doing business. The outcome for EU citizens was that their data is in a better place than it otherwise would have been. And that’s a good thing.
- blainm
The reasoning treats a correlated characteristic as a causal mechanism.
successful person → unusual trait
And infer:
unusual trait → success
The most popular example of this in tech (that never seems to die) is when people notice moments where Steve Jobs was an asshole, or he said no directly to customers, and infer they need to be more like this because it's the unusual trait they're missing and need to emulate.
FDR's hatred was a byproduct of his consequential actions. But consequential actions are not the only things that produce hatred. In fact, rather petty actions can cause someone to feel hatred.
If you use hatred as a proxy for importance, you are effectively saying: "All impactful people are hated, therefore all hated people are impactful." This is logically equivalent to saying "All dogs are animals, therefore all animals are dogs." The metric has zero predictive power because the set of "hated people" is vastly larger than the set of "impactful people."
Friction is also terrible metric for progress. I would argue privacy has actually gotten worse due to the banners because if you decide you're not going to sign in to do something like a Google search (so it's not tied to your account), then you're immediately punished with a nag box. So you actually decide you'd rather stay signed in so you don't get nagged. Even if you're in favour of using the government, you should be using friction as a counter-signal. For example, switching to the Euro, reduced friction. Stand […]
- ChrisSD
Note that GDPR did not mandate the cookie banners we see everywhere today. Those are a form of malicious compliance. Their goal is not to conform to regulation but to undermine the regulation itself in the eyes of the public.
- bsian
"You know x is good based on who hates it" is too generic an argument to be useful. It applies to so many things.