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Re:Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law by rglullis on Monday March 18, 2024 @10:11AM (#39744819)
> The law is updated to say you are not allowed to charge the user a fee unless you tell him in advance.

Why not a real regulation then to get rid of hidden fees and heavy fines/jail time for companies that are found to be doing it?

PG's argument (I hope) is that there is no point in talking about "regulation" and "customer protection" if companies STILL get away with their ridiculous and hostile practices.

There is no customer benefit in having user data collection and tracking. Companies do it only to exploit you. Even the usual BS excuses ("oh, we need user data to customize the experience") could be done completely in-device.

I don't want regulatory bodies to just give more hoops for other companies to jump. They will jump it anyway, because it is profitable to do so. What I want is for regulatory bodies to effectively stop predatory practices.

Re:Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law by danaris on Monday March 18, 2024 @10:45AM (#39745277)
I mean, that would be great, but I suspect that even just here on HN you'd get a lot of people strongly disagreeing with you. Because that would infringe upon the companies' "freedom" to profit in whatever way they see fit—and the people's "freedom" to let their data be vacuumed up and sold for massive profits.
Re:Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law by rglullis on Monday March 18, 2024 @11:17AM (#39745717)
Whether they agree or not is irrelevant. I think that PG's argument is that all the "regulation" and "strength of the EU" amounts to nothing. It's just people pretending to play power games, doing privacy theater and solving absolutely zero problems.
Re:Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law by paulmd on Monday March 18, 2024 @03:44PM (#39749058)
have him register a new, anonymous HN account and go say that in one of our weekly "apple bad" threads
Re:Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law by rglullis on Monday March 18, 2024 @04:04PM (#39749289)
Two wrongs don't make a right. Apple is bad and the EU bureaucracy is ineffective.