EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech giants

Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by DCKing on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:41AM (#26115481)

We'll probably disagree on this, but I think we're well past the point where this is "absolutely necessary". Some of best engineering talent in the world is spent on engineering the internet to 1) misuse human psychological affinities to lure you in and keep you in and 2) build large profiles of you to make as much money from (1) as possible. Targeted advertising and the incentives it creates should be banned as a benefit to society.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by emteycz on Friday February 12, 2021 @11:55AM (#26115658)

The technical solution wasn't even tried, I will agree with you after that fails. Also for example subsidy for Firefox and other independent browsers (of Google/MS/...) could be tried. Law should be the last resort.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by DCKing on Friday February 12, 2021 @12:19PM (#26115984)

I'm curious what the technical solution is you're proposing. I was considering OP's context of a technical solution that's "clearing your cookies regularly". Surely that's both not sufficient (not by a long shot) and being tried at some scale [1]? So probably you mean something else, but I'm not sure what.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_browsing

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:EU privacy agency urges more safeguards to curb U.S. tech... by emteycz on Friday February 12, 2021 @02:36PM (#26117633)

First step would be making private browsing the default. Second step would be making strong, capable adblockers built-in. Third step would be something like Firefox containers, one for each domain. Fourth step could be analyzing network traffic for potentially fingerprinting information and blocking it. I am sure there is much more to think of.

[ Parent | on HN ]