
E.U.’S New Digital Czar: ‘Most Powerful Regulator of Big Tech’ - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/world/europe/margrethe-vestager-european-union-tech-regulation.html
======
jwr
I am both glad that Margrethe Vestager remains in the same position and sorry
that she hasn't been promoted to even more important posts.

She has done excellent work so far, keeping companies in check. It is largely
thanks to her that the ridiculous roaming charges which telecoms used to gouge
us with are gone. Her work shows that this kind of regulation is necessary,
because "the market" will not magically solve everything.

Contrast her work with the ridiculous decisions of Ajit Pai at the FCC to see
how you can run things differently.

~~~
M2Ys4U
> I am both glad that Margrethe Vestager remains in the same position and
> sorry that she hasn't been promoted to even more important posts.

Indeed; I was hoping that she would become the President of the European
Commission. But I'm certainly glad she'll still be Competition Commissioner
and, now, Executive Vice-President of the college.

------
firasd
I've been thinking about to what extent I support regulation of tech
companies. Usually I side with software companies against governments
(especially in cases like protecting encryption, etc.) But there are some
battles where it doesn't seem like a tech issue per se, and I don't see why I
need to side with the company:

* Apple vs govts on taxes

* Amazon (even Uber) vs govts on employee status and income

I don't really believe in the 'break up Google/Facebook/etc' case though. It
is not likely to address the harms people imagine it will. (As a minor
example, consider how cookie prompts solved nothing.) But some regulation on
specific features across the board makes sense (like laws about facial
recognition, or existing regulations like COPPA.)

I've always thought the Cambridge Analytica scandal was overblown and I think
some of the anti-FB ballast provided by that story is fading. I think elite
media/political opinion might over-emphasize it. Are average Americans really
sitting around asking for Google to be cut apart? I don’t think so…

Plus, what about the beneficial aspects of the SV ecosystem? Reducing the
power of Silicon Valley is a great way to let the NSA have more spying power,
have fewer immigrants at top executive roles, let Comcast charge extra based
on apps you use, enable record labels to shut down Youtube… and mess up many
other things we take for granted.

~~~
xg15
I don't know. Digital services and connected devices are becoming essential to
almost all areas of modern life.

Yes, you can decline to use many of the services of you have serious
dedication and want to miss out on all technological progress of the last
decades. But other services are almost unavoidable: You need a bank account
and email address to take part in society; You need a car to travel, which
today is most likely already a rolling computer with cloud uplink. In the
future, just walking on the street might place you into some database via
automatic facial recognition.

Currently, control about all those services is seen purely as a business topic
and therefore the service providers are given complete freedom. I think that
mismatches greatly with the impact those services have have on modern life, so
I think there is a case to put them under democratic control.

~~~
firasd
Yeah this is definitely something to think about.

------
spiderfarmer
Although I generally hate regulation, I must say that as a European I see a
lot of good that comes with the bad. It's a shame the EU is somewhat forced
into this leadership role, because it would be best to organize regulation of
Big Tech on an even more international scale. If we could get more people at
the table, we wouldn't have all those stupid cookie warnings and we could have
regulation in place that succesfully targetted the root cause (the Ad tech
cowboys).

~~~
Tomte
> we wouldn't have all those stupid cookie warnings

Why wouldn't we? Those are the effect of web people not understanding the law.
It doesn't matter whether the law is written by a more international alliance,
they would still misunderstand it.

Another example: in the hey-day of the Web, a German court ruled that you
cannot escape liability for slanderous statements on another web site you
linked to, just by writing a disclaimer notice on your web site.

Because in that case the author had clearly endorsed it in many, many words,
and the disclaimer was obviously not meant seriously.

From then on you could find the "the court has ruled that I'm responsible for
linked content, unless I'm adding this disclaimer" notices everywhere.
Including other courts' web pages.

Although the ruling was exactly opposite. People just copied and pasted this
magic formula that would keep them out of trouble.

Or see the recent Instagram hoax, where you had to post some boilerplate text,
in order to keep the rights to your content. Well-known celebrities fell for
it.

People are stupid, they go with the flow, and they will get legal stuff wrong.

~~~
hanspeter
> Why wouldn't we? Those are the effect of web people not understanding the
> law. It doesn't matter whether the law is written by a more international
> alliance, they would still misunderstand it.

How is it not the law people not understanding the web?

How would you obtain consent from the user to store cookies without a pop-up
or an even more disruptive method?

~~~
purple_ducks
> How is it not the law people not understanding the web?

They clearly do and got input from technical people.

> “This shall not prevent any technical storage or access for the sole purpose
> of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic
> communications network, or as strictly necessary in order for the provider
> of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or
> user to provide the service.”

~~~
hanspeter
Are you talking about 1st party cookies vs 3rd party cookies?

Because the web people got that. The web is still polluted with cookie consent
popups on 99 % of most used websites because 99 % of most used websites use
3rd party cookies.

If the law people understood the web they would not create regulations that
forces every user in the continent to click a pop-up on every site they visit.

~~~
purple_ducks
> Are you talking about 1st party cookies vs 3rd party cookies?

No.

I do not need to be served personalised ad cookies in order for the site to
provide their service to me.

ditto with analytics.

ditto with social sharing.

ditto with anything else that stores inessential information.

> 99 % of most used websites use 3rd party cookies

You're referring to "3rd party cookies" but it applies to ALL cookies that are
not essential so I will answer with respect to all cookies...

Essentially, that's the company's problem. If they want to continue using
cookies to store information(regardless if 1st or 3rd party) to do something
that is not needed for me to use their service, then they have to inform the
user and obtain consent.

If they find the cookies(& popups) result in less users using their service,
they should change their behaviour or you know - actually check if they need
these active all the time for everyone.

Please read the Description section of this primer before continuing to
engage. It is very accessible.

[https://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm](https://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm)

~~~
hanspeter
I'm a little late with the answer, but what you're saying actually boils down
to _law people not understanding the web_.

Using cookies (and pop-ups) does not result in less users using the service,
at least not in a scale that outweighs the advantage of using cookies. The
result is obvious: If you pass a law that requires websites to ask for consent
to use their site, those websites will implement a method for collecting that
consent.

If the law people had understood the web and actually wanted to protect user
privacy, they would've outlawed those unwanted cookies. And not passed a
ridiculous law for collecting consent that applies to almost every popular
website in existence.

You ask me to read the regulation in detail as if I lack some insight in that
(I don't). But the details of the regulation is irrelevant. The relevant
understanding here is that websites will not turn of tracking unless it brings
a substantial downside. It's crucial to the businesses behind those websites
to be able to analyze traffic and usage with external tools.

------
tschellenbach
I'm from the EU and I firmly believe that some level of regulation is a
healthy development. GDPR, the cookie prompts and Article 13 are terrible
though. There is no/slim real improvement to privacy and the costs are off the
charts. It would have been better to spend those resources on education,
healthcare, basic research or space travel. Such a crazy ongoing waste.

~~~
DCKing
I agree that Article 13 is a major misfiring. I really hate that narrative
though where Article 13 and GDPR are lumped together as a "EU regulation bad"
narrative. One (Article 13) is a major product of corporate lobbyism and
misguided profits protection, the other (GDPR) is a major protection for
consumers. They couldn't be more different.

As a EU citizen and person directly involved with GDPR consequences, I also
strongly disagree with the view that GDPR is either ineffective or not worth
it.

~~~
makomk
The trouble is that the people with power in the EU don't see this difference.
They're convinced that Article 13 and the GDPR are both victories for the
people against big tech, and that all the ordinary people who oppose Article
13 have just been tricked by Google into going against their own interests:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190215/18005841607/eu-
co...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190215/18005841607/eu-commission-
decides-to-mock-public-insists-fears-about-eu-copyright-directive-are-all-
myths.shtml)

The media are naturally happy to go along with the big tech vs people
narrative too. The BBC even ran an article about all the great things the
European Parliament has achieved in the run-up to the European elections that
described Article 13 as one of its successes and summarized the controversy as
follows: "Supporters say the rule helps to ensure that artists, musicians and
other creators are fairly compensated. But tech companies say it will destroy
user-generated content." They pretended the remarkable public backlash which
got many MEPs (though not enough) to vote against it just didn't exist,
turning a demonstration of how little say the public had into a success story
for European democracy. It's not like this was even a European Parliament
achievement in the first place; the details of the bill were dictated by
Germany and France and MEPs merely ignored voters' complaints to rubber-stamp
it.

------
mikl
Good grief. All this power in the hands of a career politician, with no
background in technology (she studied economics before becoming a politician).

I imagine we’ll see more ham-fisted attempts from the EU to regulate the
internet in the immediate future.

~~~
vixen99
At least she's elected by the people of Europe. No, sorry, I got that wrong.
As with all the other commissioners, the only ones able to initiate
legislation affecting everyone in the EU, she's appointed by an elite clique
who know how to deal with recalcitrant folk in Denmark, France and Ireland
whose majority vote is ignored. As someone remarked ' We have no power to sack
them. They don't have to account for their actions. We can't elect them but we
can download a poster picture of them.'

~~~
M2Ys4U
The European Commission is accountable to the directly-elected European
Parliament.

Parliament will hold hearings over the next month to scrutinise the
Commissioner Designates and will then hold a vote to approve the entire
college of Commissioners.

And this process has, actually, resulted in unsuitable candidates being either
replaced entirely or portfolios being redistributed in the past (including the
last time around in 2014).

Parliament can also sack the Commission at any time if it so desires. That
last happened to the Santer Commission in 1999.

~~~
johannes1234321
In addition to the confirmation vote by the Parliament (which will be tough
this time ... considering the president only had a single vote majority) they
are also nominated by the national governments (each government a
commissioner) thus the differences in countries are represented as well.

This is more democratic legitimation than most ministers in most state
governments have, where ministers are often appointed by the head of
government without confirmation. (The EU commission is similar to a government
and commissioners are similar to ministers in their role)

------
shpx
A woman should be called a Tsaritsa (Царица). A Czar/Tsar is a man.

~~~
CamperBob2
Wouldn't it be "Tsarina" when Anglicized?

For that matter, why does the gender need to be baked into a title unrelated
to gender? We don't have separate occupational titles for female engineers,
taxi drivers, or astronauts, so why for tsars? Not trying to push any agendas
here, just posing a question.

~~~
llukas
FYI: You borrow word from a language that has gender information baked in
almost every word - that is why there is separate word. Ignoring this is
pushing an agenda - conscious or not.

