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by CaptainZapp 2581 days ago
If your business model is scum I'd wager that it should die a slow and painful death.

I really don't see, why a scummy business should get a pass, just because it's a startup.

1 comments

It hurts the non-scummy businesses as well.

So the regulation causes problems for people that haven't done anything wrong.

A lets be clear here. People aren't dying, it mostly ads and shitty data collection. I think it might be better to actually educate the public (which govs are doing) as to some of the pitfalls of the internet rather than regulating the crap out of it.

it mostly ads and shitty data collection

While this is true it's exactly that, which turned the world (and by extension the world wide web) into a fucking dystopia. Brexit, without the whole concept of targeted ads and the data collection that goes with it would have not been possible.

Yep, I think add tech is utterly and totally evil. And all that to make a buck, or a billion.

I, for one, think that's a disastrously high price to pay for a few successful tech companies.

People aren't dying,

Actually I disagree here. When you look at the consequences of the technology in countries like Myanmar, The Philippines, Brazil, Cambodia and others and the likes of Mr. Zuckerberg and his ilk giving exactly zero fucks (unless it becomes bad PR) I'm afraid you're definitely wrong on that one.

> Brexit, without the whole concept of targeted ads and the data collection that goes with it would have not been possible.

However nobody mentioned all the people that didn't bother voting because they were at Glastonbury which was on at the same time.

I very much doubt that is true. The UK has been a bad fit in the EU and there has been a sentiment for years that we don't want any EU interference. For example many don't want "The EU monopoly money" (not my words mind you) and generally the public is Euro-sceptic.

The papers and politicians were trying to find a scapegoat because quite frankly it didn't go the way they wanted. Much like Trump's victory claiming that Russia hacked the election (there were like a few thousand placed on facebook, which paled in comparison to the Democrat's budget).

Many of the people that voted out were of older generations that don't pay attention to tech. So I find it dubious how much influence the likes of Cambridge analytical really had.

> Actually I disagree here. When you look at the consequences of the technology in countries like Myanmar, The Philippines, Brazil, Cambodia and others and the likes of Mr. Zuckerberg and his ilk giving exactly zero fucks (unless it becomes bad PR) I'm afraid you're definitely wrong on that one.

Like exactly what? You haven't qualified anything here. You just claimed I am wrong because of what? What adverts, what is happening? This is a very vague claim.

I suspect much like the vote to leave the UK it will be very spurious evidence.

Like exactly what? You haven't qualified anything here. You just claimed I am wrong because of what? What adverts, what is happening? This is a very vague claim.

Vague claim? Not at all.

I was asking myself if I should actually bother to even answer, but then decided to invest a couple of minutes into some very basic DDG searches. You can find some results below.

Let me assure you that there's a ton more, if you just bother to open your eyes.

I close my argument here, since anything else would be either counter productive or violate site guidelines.

But please don't accuse me of sprouting vague claims or not qualifying my arguments just because you seem more interested in a timely Uber or a cheap stay and fuck all the consequences.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-rohingya-activists-s...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/03/revealed-faceb...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/world/asia/myanmar-govern...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/how-facebooks-free-in...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodri...

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/facebook-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Whatsapp_lynchings

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/15/india-police-a...

> It hurts the non-scummy businesses as well.

If your business case depends on either abusing or being careless with other people’s personal data, how are you not a scummy business ? That’s basically all the GDPR requires of you, don’t abuse people’s personal data and be careful with it. Both seem like common decency to me.

If that were really all that the GDPR required, it wouldn’t cost businesses that already did show that common decency anything, would it?

In reality, all regulations have costs for compliance and those costs typically apply to some extent even if you weren’t doing anything shady at all.

> all regulations have costs for compliance

if you were _already_ complying before GDPR existed (because your business model isn't scummy), then GDPR compliance _should_ cost very little, if at all.

If you weren't complying at all, then adding compliance is very costly after the fact. If you cannot make your business work without complying, then the business must die, as there's no natural right for a business to exist.

if you were _already_ complying before GDPR existed (because your business model isn't scummy), then GDPR compliance _should_ cost very little, if at all.

But unfortunately, that isn't really how it works. Under GDPR you could still find your privacy policy now isn't written in the correct terms, or your previous consents or notices weren't worded properly and might not stand up any more, or your methods of storing data don't make per-person permanent deletion straightforward. And all of this remains true even if you were compliant with all previous data protection legislation (at least here in the UK) and even if you weren't doing anything sketchy with the data and have no plans to do so in future either.

If nothing else, you probably need non-trivial amounts of management time to understand the new rules, some extra legal advice that you're going to have to pay for, and an update of your key documents to make sure everything uses appropriate structures and wording to comply. That alone could already be a significant cost for a small, bootstrapped business, and that's without changing anything about the actual data you're collecting or how you use it.