[pyuser583]

European countries aren’t known for strong privacy against the state. There are exceptions, but the EU’s “privacy rights” are almost exclusively against corporations.

American privacy, by contrast, is almost exclusively focused on state surveillance.

There are holes, the biggest being that foreigners on foreign soil have no privacy rights. Nor do the dead.

But I’m not impressed with the “rights” Europeans have against state surveillance.

Europeans aren’t willing to spend the money to do massive spy programs. Ok, fine. But that’s not the same as having civil liberties opposition.

Switzerland has a reputation, good and bad, for strong privacy. But that’s not the norm.

[dmix]

I read an article that dug into public GDPR cases, which is a surprisingly small set, and it explained they have had a near zero impact on the massive advertising and data broker industry. They mostly just have a large back log of legal cases against large US companies like Google which occasionally result in fines - but even that moves very very slowly and has little impact on their global business models. They do also occasionally charged a few smaller European companies a few grand for violations.

The key thing is that companies like Google and Meta run giant ad networks, there's many thousands of companies buying ads then collecting data in their own systems and reselling it.

The privacy issues of data retention on Google/Meta/etc social and SaaS platforms is something to care about but it is only a small piece of the puzzle of data privacy.

Ads will remain a major business for the foreseeable future as nobody is going to pay $5/m to use Instagram with no data collection.

[BobbyTables2]

Even if one paid monthly, why would they actually stop the data collection?

[pyuser583]

I’ve read the GDPR has zero impacts on national security/law enforcement. It applies weakly to other state functions.

I’ve also seen cases where GDPR is used against religious groups that have a strong religious justification for keeping lists of believers. Think Orthodox Jews and the Catholic Church, which regard family trees and baptismal certificates as semi-sacred. And kept on paper or scrolls.

Not sure what to think about that. Regulating a sacred scroll like a database table seems wrong.

[DANmode]

Not “nobody” - just not as many people they’re value-extracting from now. So why change?

[roger110]

I think the US basically sees DMA, GDPR, etc as a tariff

[ta9000]

It’s definitely made browsing the open web a worse experience. There should be global opt in/out.

[aspect0545]

> Lately the EU Commission came up with a plan to create an inventory of every single valuable items owned by every single EU citizen: from Magic The Gathering and Pokemon cards to jewelry/heirloom, paintings, gold and silver coins/bars, cryptocurrencies coins, watches, cars, boats, etc. Anything with some value: would go in the inventory. >The European Parliament asked the question: "Can you guarantee us this will never ever be used as a basis to confiscate these items?" to which the European Commission answered: "No, we cannot guarantee that".

Excuse me for not taking this at face value but this sounds like disinformation. Where did you get that from?

[ben_w]

> And it's obvious that either taxation of confiscation is the end goal.

And? Money is, and has always been, the government's stuff, the rest of us use it because it is helpful stuff, it is helpful stuff only to the extent that some government maintains it (and when they don't maintain it correctly it stops being useful, see all examples of hyperinflation). There's a reason the Bible says "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's".

I've seen a flat that was funded by the sale of an inherited stamp collection which was valued at £1 by the tax people. When I saw the tax statement, I thought someone must have made a mistake, then the rules were explained to me and I thought it was madness.

[rcxdude]

I mean, it is very useful to keep in mind that for any question of 'can you guarantee that X government system won't be used for Y in the future' the answer is 'no', because the government is what makes the rules. That would hopefully work to prevent X being built, but I think it's better than pretending that it's possible to guarantee Y won't happen.

[LadyCailin]

This is just actual straight up bullshit. Either you’re starting this misinformation campaign, or yourself gullible enough to just be repeating it.