Really?
They've been working hard on a mass surveillance legislation (which would outlaw encryption) for a couple years now, it was thankfully voted down in 2023 because of a successful public outcry, but that didn't stop these gestapo assholes, they're gonna "reword it" and keep pushing it and eventually the public will have fatigued and stopped caring and it will go through.
The EU couldn't fix the EU-US privacy framework even for the third try, and when the previous one have been invalidated by the CJEU, nobody bat an eye and continued to do the same thing.
GDPR is simply ignored by any bigger US company, it took 5 years for NOYB to facebook get fined which was less than 0.3% of their income, basically a small tax, not a huge fine.
Also GDPR is full of inconsistency (face biometric data is special data, but a photo of your face from what anybody can get the biometric data is not) and loopholes (required by law, legitimate interest).
They did something, but I wouldn't call that "a long way".
I work for a very large US company and can assure you that GDPR is something we pay a lot of attention to. This isn't the opinion of my employer, but my personal experience is that the big players take it seriously and meet and exceed all their obligations because it's too risky not to, and they have the necessary local legal teams to understand the law as best as is possible.
I think it's the small/medium companies who are where most of the issues are. Small companies write a non-legalese privacy policy because they think that's better for their users, but in fact have written something legally meaningless that gives their users no protections. Some small companies just don't know their obligations because they think they won't apply as they're not in the EU.
Then there are the companies who are big enough to know better, but small enough to know they can get away with it because all the scrutiny goes to big tech. I was asked by a medium sized advertising network to implement a keylogger on our website at my previous company so that the network could enforce their revenue sharing by detecting all user data input into our site and match it against their records. I laughed them out of the room, but they made it very clear this was how everyone did it.
> Some small companies just don't know their obligations because they think they won't apply as they're not in the EU.
To be fair, unless a company has a business presence in the EU there is nobody to sue for GDPR violations. The EU cannot enforce its laws on an entity which isn't under its jurisdiction at all.
Okay, with "any bigger US company" I thought mostly about Facebook and similar companies, of which many does continuously break GDPR rules even after many decisions and fines (simply because their business model is incompatible with privacy / data protection).
But it is still true, that nothing happened after the Schrems II judgment, and many-many companies continued to transfer personal data to providers affected by FISA.
> ... GDPR is simply ignored by any bigger US company, it took 5 years for NOYB to facebook get fined which was less than 0.3% of their income, basically a small tax, not a huge fine. ...
From my experience working at multiple companies, and having interacted with others, the GDPR is not ignored by American companies. websites based out of the US block EU users to avoid fines, or these US based companies which don't block EU users have gone out of their way to comply with the GDPR as interpreted by their respective legal department.
GDPR is closely adhered to by big American companies. They may be the only ones to whom the EU is applying regulatory pressure on this. Chinese and Indian companies, on the other hand, as well as any non-enterprise American company, including start-ups, on the other hand, can and do safely ignore it. (Or follow it in broad strokes.)
What do you think about laws? Or lead in gas? Asbestos in your house? Are you one of these free thinkers who don't use seats belts because regulations are always bad?
Your last sentence makes no sense. Something can both be good, and be undesirable for government regulation. For example, it's good for me to eat vegetables. But it would be odious to have a law requiring me to eat X number of vegetables per day. Similarly, a person can be in favor of wearing seatbelts but opposed to a law requiring seatbelt use.
Your reasoning is flawed, eating vegetables or not basically only affects you and your health, not wearing a seatbelt turns you into a projectile against the general public.
Whether regulation is a good or a bad tool for solving problems is an opinion. It cannot, by definition, be "untrue". At most one can say that they disagree and cite evidence as to why.
It looks like a lot of people have taken this statement to be proof that the poster doesn't believe in 'regulation'. When I read this I believe the poster is pointing out how the US has a tendency to politicized anything with the word 'regulation' associated with it to the detriment of the issue involved. For what it is worth, I too see the attack on 'regulation' without context or thought and it makes it hard to accomplish things as a society, but it also forces you to think of other ways things could get done. Convincing people to vote with their wallets or just bringing bad press are also ways to influence this issue. I personally do think regulation has a very big place in this discussion but maybe if we explored other avenues more we could make progress as well.
I wish people would stop regurgitating this obvious lie. You can’t walk 3 feet without bumping in to something that is better for you because of regulation.
My motorcycle has a rev limiter for a reason. If you let the motor run wide open it will fail catastrophically. Economies are no different.
If you think regulation doesn’t work then you’re simply ignorant of how even basic parts of your daily life work.
you are programmed to think this way because you will focus on some
“good regulations” and say “look, regulation in ____ caused all these positive things.” but regulation means that government decided what can or cannot be done. and government is run by people that spend 70+% of their time fundraising. and people that shell out money at said fundraisers will want things and return. and that leads to regulations which are not in the interest of people in general but you know… also regulation is a double-egded sword as you always imagine that regulation will “go your way cause you are smart and have common sense” but we both know (especially in the USA) that is not the case. every regulation made by one political party the other will do everything possible to remove once they get the power back and vice versa
