Re:Regulating Big Tech makes them stronger, so they need com...
by lwhi on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @05:54AM
(#21451255)
It does change the way we culturally view the practices relating to privacy though.
I think a lot of the net effect of legislation like GDPR, can be viewed through the lens of 'in essence'. Ultimately, it's setting in place a culture where companies need to think twice before monitoring users without consent.
The smaller companies are more likely to build their companies with a view to good practice, while the larger companies can be brought closer to an acceptable line through punitive measures.
For example imagine a hypothetical email safety law that says you must keep everything encrypted and have multiple audits over all of your processes and systems. Such a law doesn’t do anything to protect users, but audits will suddenly result in a massive flat cost to start a new email company.
In reality look at the “privacy” legislation pushed by Facebook and google: mostly it reduces/removed their liability if they do a few relatively cheap things but doesn’t require them to stop spying on you or stealing your data. But relatively cheap for Facebook and google isn’t cheap for anyone else.