[TeMPOraL]

> And if getting your "act together" is a substantial cost for small companies, no matter?

Yes, no matter. Should small companies also get free pass on food safety laws? Health inspections are a PITA for restaurants too.

This reaction is pretty much textbook psychological reactance[0]. People doing business had some freedoms wrt. user data, but it turned out in practice that they should never have them in the first place. Now that those excess freedoms are being removed, businesses cry foul.

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[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactance_(psychology)

[dTal]

Exactly. It's very sad that reasonable privacy measures present such a technical challenge, but nobody promised being responsible was easy. That's why we have regulations - to force businesses to place the common good ahead of profits, where applicable.

[Mirioron]

>Should small companies also get free pass on food safety laws? Health inspections are a PITA for restaurants too.

But if you look at how reality works, then you'll see that small companies often do not implement the proper food safety standards. This causes all sorts of problems, because if a company already does one shady thing, then doing one more isn't as much of a problem anymore.

[pjmlp]

And then they get closed down when a food inspection takes place.

[Mirioron]

Yep, that's exactly the case, but another one of these opens up somewhere else at the same time. We've had inspections like this happen for many years, but it's still happening. And these companies that don't adhere to the law could outcompete those that do by saving in some costs.

[pjmlp]

Yes, it is unfortunate that the authorities lack resources to track down all misbehaviors, but that doesn't make crime acceptable.

[Mirioron]

But it means that the laws are poorly thought out, if only some of them get caught and it gives a big advantage to those that do it.