Here’s the thing, the article might be completely right. It’s just the age old problem of capitalism. This dude just prioritizes growth of the economy over a happy population.
The GDPR… he literally lists it. The GDPR retains consumer privacy, thus making you much happier that 1. Your government cares about you 2. Your private data isn’t being shared around the world in order to psychologically manipulate you into buying things or track you every moment of your life.
I wonder how many people see it that way. The GDPR never claims to be a privacy regulation. It can be used for the purpose but only in a limited way. It has nothing to say about psychological manipulation.
In the fediverse, data is shared by instances around the world. Yes, that’s probably illegal. Knowing that doesn’t make me happy. It rather seems incredibly pointless.
How it is viewed is not the point. The question is whether it helps people.
The issue was whether the GDPR makes people happy. That depends on people’s perception of the GDPR, rather than it’s actual effects.
Whether it helps people is also a good question. It certainly costs a lot of money. I don’t think people find that helpful. It can help a little with privacy, but that could be had easier, better, and cheaper. I’m sure it helps with PR, but how many people actually benefit from that? I’m really skeptical.
The DSA regulates dark patterns
Thanks for backing me up on this. Not sure why you get upvoted for it and I downvoted.
That depends on people’s perception of the GDPR, rather than it’s actual effects.
That’s disingenuous. We have a lot of regulation that improves people’s lives but isn’t well-regarded due to politicial campaigns, or in the case of GDPR, malicious compliance [1].
At the same time: Even if a con man tells you that anti-con-men legislation is bad, and even if they’re successful at convincing you of that — that doesn’t change the reality that legislation against con men is probably a good thing and helps you.
Thanks for backing me up on this.
Ok, so I actually previously read too little of the discussion to participate competently. I missed was that you moved the goal posts: The poster above you mentioned that due to GDPR, people’s personal data couldn’t freely be shared around the world. That was the point and psychological manipulation was only mentioned to illustrate an end goal.
[1] I.e. it’s totally possible to run GDPR-compliant site without a cookie banner, except corporate interests don’t want that. Instead they’d rather harvest all the data they can and blame the inconvenience of the cookie banner on. GDPR
That’s disingenuous. We have a lot of regulation that improves people’s lives but isn’t well-regarded due to politicial campaigns, or in the case of GDPR, malicious compliance
I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say here.
Ok, so I actually previously read too little of the discussion to participate competently.
Thank you. Better late than never.
But you need to be more careful. They said that the GDPR increases happiness because it allegedly does certain things. IE the happiness effect depends on what people believe about it. At least, I do not see how people would be made happier by stopping international data transfers in a way unknown to them.
Obviously, the GDPR does not literally prevent data from being shared around the world, so I’m not really sure what to make of the claim otherwise.
it’s totally possible to run GDPR-compliant site without a cookie banner,
Cookie banners have more to do with the ePrivacy directive, though the GDPR would require something like it.
In any case, the reason why sites have cookie banners is so that they can serve personalized ads. These ads pay better. There are probably sites that could not be run economically without cookie banners. The more profitable sites are not going to leave the extra cash on the table. It is not malicious compliance.
Here’s the thing, the article might be completely right. It’s just the age old problem of capitalism. This dude just prioritizes growth of the economy over a happy population.
How so? IE what happiness generating regulations does he want to sacrifice for growth?
The GDPR… he literally lists it. The GDPR retains consumer privacy, thus making you much happier that 1. Your government cares about you 2. Your private data isn’t being shared around the world in order to psychologically manipulate you into buying things or track you every moment of your life.
I wonder how many people see it that way. The GDPR never claims to be a privacy regulation. It can be used for the purpose but only in a limited way. It has nothing to say about psychological manipulation.
In the fediverse, data is shared by instances around the world. Yes, that’s probably illegal. Knowing that doesn’t make me happy. It rather seems incredibly pointless.
How it is viewed is not the point. The question is whether it helps people.
The DSA regulates dark patterns: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2025/767191/EPRS_ATA(2025)767191_EN.pdf
The issue was whether the GDPR makes people happy. That depends on people’s perception of the GDPR, rather than it’s actual effects.
Whether it helps people is also a good question. It certainly costs a lot of money. I don’t think people find that helpful. It can help a little with privacy, but that could be had easier, better, and cheaper. I’m sure it helps with PR, but how many people actually benefit from that? I’m really skeptical.
Thanks for backing me up on this. Not sure why you get upvoted for it and I downvoted.
That’s disingenuous. We have a lot of regulation that improves people’s lives but isn’t well-regarded due to politicial campaigns, or in the case of GDPR, malicious compliance [1].
At the same time: Even if a con man tells you that anti-con-men legislation is bad, and even if they’re successful at convincing you of that — that doesn’t change the reality that legislation against con men is probably a good thing and helps you.
Ok, so I actually previously read too little of the discussion to participate competently. I missed was that you moved the goal posts: The poster above you mentioned that due to GDPR, people’s personal data couldn’t freely be shared around the world. That was the point and psychological manipulation was only mentioned to illustrate an end goal.
[1] I.e. it’s totally possible to run GDPR-compliant site without a cookie banner, except corporate interests don’t want that. Instead they’d rather harvest all the data they can and blame the inconvenience of the cookie banner on. GDPR
I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say here.
Thank you. Better late than never.
But you need to be more careful. They said that the GDPR increases happiness because it allegedly does certain things. IE the happiness effect depends on what people believe about it. At least, I do not see how people would be made happier by stopping international data transfers in a way unknown to them.
Obviously, the GDPR does not literally prevent data from being shared around the world, so I’m not really sure what to make of the claim otherwise.
Cookie banners have more to do with the ePrivacy directive, though the GDPR would require something like it.
In any case, the reason why sites have cookie banners is so that they can serve personalized ads. These ads pay better. There are probably sites that could not be run economically without cookie banners. The more profitable sites are not going to leave the extra cash on the table. It is not malicious compliance.