But heaven forbid governments hold a dominant corporation accountable in the public interest.

That's not really relevant to the parent's observation that Facebook is likely arguing that they're being singled out in an environment where their practices are so rampant as to be standard.

>But heaven forbid governments hold a dominant corporation accountable in the public interest.

"accountable to the public interest" is an incredibly disingenuous way to say "enforce their laws". The difference matters in this context because the counter argument would be "why is the law being enforced predominantly against a handful of American companies instead of the industry at large?"

Either it is enforced against Facebook first, and Facebook complains "Why don't all of the the small fries have to do it yet" and if it is enforced against the small fries, they will say, "Why doesn't Facebook have to do it yet"?

And the answer is, the justice department will probably enforce the law in the way that the expect to have the best effect for themselves. It is not necessary to wait until you are sued before you become legally compliant?

When a government agency (think IRS or FAA) decides on a specific interpretation of a law, rule or regulation, they don’t go after a random guy to prosecute. They publish an opinion, a guideline, or interpretation and a compliance deadline. The industry is given a choice to comply or present an alternative interpretation (through courts, lobbyists or legislative representatives).

It’s one thing if one company out of a hundred doesn’t comply, and somewhat different when the standard industry practice goes against new interpretation.

Selective encorcement is more typical of countries with weak judicial systems and endemic corruption, where “friends” of the current government get compassionate understanding, but everybody else is subject to the strict rule of the law.

That erosion is not corruption on its own, but can lead to it.

Which, granted, is something that happens but people largely regard this kind of unequal protection of the law to be a bad thing.

I don't see the point of this sort of "but johnny did it too" line of argument. So authorities are looking into a report of widespread abuse. Where's the relevance of not advertising how they may or may not look into other small-scale and lower-profile cases? In fact, aren't resources better spent by going after the single largest and more eggregious source of abuse that has a global reach and has been continuously abusing its position for over a decade?

EDIT: Downvotes? I'm stating facts. How can you downvote facts?

> How can my argument be US centric when I'm European and have never even visited the US?

You don't have to be from the US for your post to sound US centric. It sounds exactly like every other "USA is da best! The east is inferior in every way. We have zero problems." argument which is found everywhere online, especially on sites with a large proportion of US users (like HN).

The comment I replied to had no sources as well and yet it isn't downvoted.

> It sounds exactly like every other "USA is da best! The east is inferior in every way. We have zero problems."

Actually my comment says the exact opposite, it says that at least the western part of the EU is less corrupt than the US. Do you realize that I said the west [of EU], not the west as in the US? You're the one who is thinking US-centric after all, thinking that when someone says "the west" they mean the US even though it's in a sentence that talks about parts of EU, this possibility didn't even occur to me - that's how foreign it is to me.

Read it again. It stated much less confidence in those baseless claims, inviting sourced rebuttal. You claimed to be "obviously" right without any sources, and apparently you were not.

Edit: also, complaining about downvotes, especially without even trying to admit mistake is considered as a bad behavior here.

That kind of hand-wavy stuff doesn't fly here. If you're going to make a claim like "EU Countries are more corrupt than the US", YOU have to provide a credible source for that claim.

Telling people to go and verify for themselves a claim that you made is just lazy and disingenuous.

[0] https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept...

Such activities are illegal and considered corruption in most countries.

The US is not unique. If you see something happening here, it is almost always happening in other western countries, and acting like we are the only to have a problem does a disservice to worldwide development.

[1] http://files.transparency.org/content/download/2183/13748/fi...

[2] http://files.transparency.org/content/download/2183/13748/fi...

Lobbying has nothing to do with donating money, and lobbying elected representatives is definitely not illegal in most democracies.

Please don't twist conversation into debates about semantics: it's not helpful.

Yes, and you said that both are illegal in most "other" counties. Except lobbying isn't illegal in any healthy democracy, including in Europe. Donating "millions of dollars" isn't really legal in the US either.

This is flat-out untrue, and repeating this incorrect meme ad nauseum simply makes it harder to address actual problems when they arise. Lobbying is simply the process of petitioning elected officials. It's a necessary part of any functioning democracy, or else there's no fundamental feedback loop connecting elected officials to their constituents in between elections.

> If there was a lobbying group that did not donate money you would have to specify that in conversation

Corporate entities are prohibited from donating money to campaigns, whether or not a quid pro quo is implied.

The same issue comes up with the word theory to scientists vs it's meaning in the common vernacular.

As to your second part about corporate entities being prohibited from donating money to campaigns, excuse me while I set up a PAC to donate funds to a senator who is aware that I donate to the PAC and that I would really appreciate it if I got a tax break.

What the law intends != what is actually happening

Yes, and just as we ignore people who dismiss evolution because "it's just a theory", we should take the same attitude towards people who conflate lobbbying and campaign contributions, because they clearly don't understand how the democratic process works, and acting on their demands is actively harmful.

> What you've stated is true by the technical definition of the term, but lobbying in the _common vernacular_ of the United States is synonymous with paying money.

Yes, and the "common vernacular" is wrong and actively harmful. The two things are completely unrelated, and perpetuating the conflation makes it harder to understand what's actually going on.

If you think something is broken, you actually have to understand how it's broken in order to fix it. There's no virtue in going out of your way to make it more difficult for people to understand how things work. That's how you end up with people wasting time advocating "reforms" that span the range from "well-intentioned but redundant and/or ineffective" to "completely self-contradictory and nonsensical".

E.g. your assumptions being incorrect. You could have avoided a lot of downvotes with showing some humility. Assuming someone does not know about large shifts in EU membership seems like argument in bad faith.

Europe, Germany and France in particular, has a strong history of state involvement in large corporations.

I suppose you could call that an administrative philosophy. To me it sounds like another form of corruption.

And I guess Facebook and others have been trying to lobby it away for years already.

The entire tech industry can now consider themselves warned. Not even giant American corporations with direct links to the White House are above the law.

Still, the lawsuits should be simultaneously served to all companies. Preferably with a courtesy heads up.

GDPR had been announced 2012, implemented fully in 2016. Active enforcement will start May 2018 with again a temporary period to allow companies to correct. Refusal to comply after that can result in penalties up to a maximum of 4% of the companies global revenue.

How much courtesy lead time does a company actually need to comply?

"You have 20 seconds to comply" says the robocop :-)

The summary of the court of the case, if ruled in favor of the one suing or in favor of the public interest, will be used to prosecute all other offenders if they do not comply. If the defense wins, it can be used by others as a defense.

While not 'fair' it works as the smaller fish will probably go bottoms up trying to mount a proper defense against larger governmental or lobbying groups which results in a no-win scenario for all: The company is dead and there is still no ruling, or a ruling lacking proper defense.

Or say Intel users that are now sewing on the meltdown bug should they get involved in AMD too from some feeling of solidarity?

In this case someone did something illegal and someone else complained to the justice, should they first find all (I hope you understand what all means, aka don't forget anybody) and try to do what? start 1000 processes in justice? It makes sense to start with the bigger criminals, if the court decides favorably then you continue to the next ones.

2. Do you realize how much manpower it would take to require that all separate cases be tried at once? You might as well just come out and say you don't want any cases to be tried at all, as that would be the outcome.

The courts are just agreeing with these citizens/rights group. It's not like an EU agency is targeting Facebook unfairly.

Personally I can only see this as a good thing. As a non-user I don't want Facebook tracking me. Same as I don't want tracked by any other company.

Because the largest companies that European citizens are using and that breaking the law are American. There is no point in targetting first the Chinese and Russian companies doing the same tracking, as few European citizens are affected. And as far as I know, there is zero European company doing the same thing on such a level.

That's not a counter argument but dissatisfaction. Are you saying that EU companies also don't follow their laws?

You're correct but mainly because I wasn't paying attention and phrased it as a question. Written instead as a statement, it's a valid counter argument because it's criticizing the parent comment's ridicule of a different instance of criticism.

> Are you saying that EU companies also don't follow their laws?

I'm insinuating that if someone wanted to defend Facebook's position one avenue would be to argue that the law is being selectively enforced. Obviously this isn't a comprehensive argument but it's an easy platform to jump in other directions from.

I doubt a statement expressing dissatisfaction is a valid legal argument responding to a legal ruling. Clearly the term argument in this context is for a legal argument not a colloquial use of the term, since a legal appeal is what is being discussed.

When people get traffic tickets, the judge won't let them off for saying, "But, your honor, the police officer didn't pull over any of the other speeders around me."

Not so if it is the only way for the business model to be profitable. More generally, this argument assumes that there is a fixed profit to the business, and the only thing to compete for is a bigger share of that fixed profit. The reality is that corporations are amenable to increasing the profit all around so long as they get part of it, and don't particularly care who gets exploited in the process. Conversely, they do tend to protest when the pool is reduced, even if it affects their competitors similarly.

If I go to the police to complain that my neighbour is spying on me, it's only natural that the police only investigates that neighbour.

"But, officer, everybody else was speeding, too!"

That said, you'll end up driving white-knuckled and fearful of your life if you dare go the speed limit on the Mass Pike. You'd have to drive 70-75 minimum here just to feel safe.

I hate when someone drivers respecting the limit and you get jerks with big cars or trucks behind you and force you to go faster(by force I mean get close behind you, use the horn and other bad behavior that can intimidate a new driver).

Well, you are just the fisrt one and the biggest one.

"Officer, The guy in front of me was driving fast too, so why not him?"

However, regulators like to make examples of bigger corporations since the publicity is more effective with them, and also they are able to both pay up and/or change.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/27/the-largest-fines-dished-out...

If you look at EU court decisions concerning privacy, you see that it mostly concerns European companies and government bodies (e.g. people storing their fingerprints being stored for passport applications). Those cases just don't get as much exposure in the US:

https://ec.europa.eu/anti-fraud/sites/antifraud/files/casela...

Another factor here may be that EU companies generally stick more to privacy rules, because it is easier to get sued directly by their citizens. E.g. in Germany many institutions and companies are paranoid when it comes to privacy and go out of their way to avoid lawsuits.

To use your example, US has targeted companies from IP-protection-weak countries. Was it directly targeting China? I'd say not necessarily.

It is like the Microsoft anti competition case would not take place until we find some small non US OS vendor to punish first so the Americans won't get upset.

I read that as: why are you only paying attention now? (i.e. after allowing the industry to reach its current, pathological state)

Do you prefer that we create laws for fixing problems that do not exist yet?

Also: from the jurisdiction's point of view, this is perhaps the only efficient way to allocate legal / judicial resources. You go after a small handful of big-name "make an example" cases, and hope that this deters use of the business strategy by the long tail of smaller companies you can't afford to go after.

That's not true in this case. As the large incumbent in social media and advertising, Facebook are the company most impacted by this, whether or not their competitors are impacted.

"Why have you singled us out for dumping 1000 tonnes of ash into environment each day? Look, this guy is dumping his ashtray on the grass right now!"