
As Facebook Sweeps Across Europe, Regulators Gird for Battle - carlchenet
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/technology/as-facebook-sweeps-across-europe-regulators-gird-for-battle.html
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jakozaur
As a European I wish EU would fight harder to create its own tech giants,
rather than fight existing ones (e.g. Facebook, Microsoft, Google).

There might be some merit in better regulation privacy, data protection,
natural monopolies in tech. However, so far regulations seems backwards (e.g.
permissions to use cookie, VAT regulations). It would be awesome if more
people at EU were a bit more tech savvy.

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tdkl
What would be the incentive of majority of people flocking to EU services ?

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brador
Better privacy protection would pull in some users.

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solve
Yes, your local government controlling your communication channels will result
in far better privacy than some remote government who doesn't care about you
controlling it. /s

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Sir_Substance
Not in the slightest bit true.

The way the US bill of rights applies to non-citizens not residing in the US
is complex, but considering how little the US courts care about the question,
functionally we have no rights when dealing with the US government.

This is the lynchpin to things like seizing people passing through US airports
and holding them indefinitely in Guantanamo bay.

At least my own government can't get away with treating me like a brick.

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solve
Parallel construction.

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blisterpeanuts
_" But with that size comes responsibility."_

Why would European regulators even care about Facebook? It's a completely
voluntary service and anyone's free to create an alternative. It's non-
essential.

If a huge U.S. retailer muscled into the EU markets and started driving mom-
and-pop retailers and smaller chains out of business, I can see where the
regulators would go nuts and try to stop them. It's a clash of U.S. capitalism
versus European style capitalism and if they don't like the raw knock-down-
drag-out American approach, it's understandable.

If huge Asian car manufacturers started undercutting European makers with high
quality, low cost vehicles, causing thousands of factories and parts suppliers
and dealerships across the continent to go out of business, I can see how
regulators would want to limit or stop the disruption.

But Facebook? Just don't use it. Don't browse to facebook.com, problem solved.
Nothing is affected. What am I missing here? It looks like just another
shakedown of a highly successful foreign company that the regulatory
bureaucracy regards as a threat of some kind. Too profitable, too
entrepreneurial, too brash -- some combination of too many ick factors, I
suppose.

As jakozaur says, why not promote and encourage domestic competition? There
are brilliant computer folks in Europe and I'm sure they can come up with a
few classy, high quality alternatives to Facebook. As an American, I'd love to
see some competition to FB.

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DanBC
> Why would European regulators even care about Facebook? It's a completely
> voluntary service and anyone's free to create an alternative. It's non-
> essential.

Tthe problems are

1) privacy setting

2) unfair competition

The EU has strict privacy and data protection rules. Facebook appears to
trample those, and if they want to continue to be allowed to operate in EU
they should probably have a look at whether their rules are compatible with
laws of democratic nations. Facebook probably have tight internal auditing. I
have no doubt that a Facebook employee using engineer access to creep on FB
users would quickly lose their job. So, partly all FB has to do is demonstrate
that to regulators. The rules are pretty simple: tell people what you're
collecting and why you're collecting it; don't collect too much; don't keep it
for too long; make sure other people don't get hold of it. That's not onerous
for FB.

As for unfair competition: well, I dunno. You might have a point there. I see
that eg Amazon has decided to start following a more sensible tax reporting
scheme so EU pressure does seem to work to change behaviour. I'm not sure if
this is a French NIH problem - see also Courrier électronique, galileo, and
the continuing anti-Google measures (first a competitor search engine, and
then drives to force google to present alternative search engine results, etc)

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jakejake
I'm not sure what this means in Europe, but in the U.S. "Government scrutiny"
often means "this company has gotten big enough that politicians can squeeze a
lot of cash from it"

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kuyfiuyg
And on it goes, the EU 'protecting' up from voluntary services... They protect
the tech scene so well there are hardly any great software companies, even
though the EU is (or among) the richest areas in the world, and full of
technical know-how!

Thank you politicians :D

