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Glad-Driver-24 t1_iyaesvv wrote

Reply to comment by DataGOGO in Social media firms face big UK fines if they fail to stop sexist and racist content by diacewrb

So you honestly think that a foreign company can serve ads in the UK/EU, profit off of users in these countries and not follow any local laws? In what universe are you living?

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DataGOGO t1_iyarqx0 wrote

Yes, happens all the time. Goto websites not on in UK/EU , pick one, Doesn’t matter which, do you see ads and banners?

Do you honestly think seeing ads or earning money of foreign users is all that is required to be subject to local laws?

Let’s try a simple one. Goto cnn.com

Do you see ads? Do you think that means CNN has to follow uk/eu laws? Obviously not.

Serving content, presenting ads, and earning revenue is not what determines if a forgien company has to follow local laws. They have to operate in the country; have an office, have employees, have a formed business entity in those countries.

If they don’t, they don’t have to care.

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Glad-Driver-24 t1_iyaturm wrote

>Do you think that means CNN has to follow uk/eu laws?

When I visit CNN.com I see a popup box asking me if I consent to using cookies. This isn't present everywhere and is there for GDPR.

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DirtyPolecat t1_iyawelj wrote

Because CNN also operates in the EU. They have offices all over the world. That person's point remains. If I create a website in the US, and keep all my servers in the US, but don't block Europe and its users from accessing it, I am NOT subject to EU law. I am subject to US law, where my actual infrastructure is. There's millions of websites I can access from here that weren't intended to be viewed by my region but because of the open nature of the Internet, I can still see them.

Edit: Not sure how old you are but in the early 2000s this is how the famous filesharing website Pirate Bay was able to keep evading being taken down by moving their servers from country to country every time they encountered trouble with the local authorities. Foreign countries weren't able to do shit about it, but their users were still able to access it. That's how the Internet has always worked since its inception. The region blocking thing and serving different data to users of different countries is a relatively new thing. It's carving up the Internet into little bubbles and enclaves and defeating the whole purpose of it.

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Glad-Driver-24 t1_iyaxv1z wrote

His point was that US websites can serve UK/EU users relevant ads without being present in the UK/EU, which is incorrect. I would understand if the US website only targeted US users but if you have UK/EU ads it means you're targeting users from those territories and could get fined.

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DirtyPolecat t1_iyaxzsh wrote

Fined by who, exactly? Is an EU/UK official going to fly over to the US, find the offending website operator, and fine them? Good luck with that.

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Glad-Driver-24 t1_iyaydnq wrote

Tell me genius, how are you supposed to target UK/EU users with relevant ads without explicitly being in the UK/EU? Do you honestly think that you, as a company, are going to be able to collect data from users in the UK/EU and not have any kind of repercussions? You're in the US, not Iran.

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DirtyPolecat t1_iyayhuy wrote

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. My government isn't going to do shit if users from the EU see any of my ads and I happen to profit off them. That's how a sovereign country works.

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Glad-Driver-24 t1_iyays3b wrote

They literally will. You wanna know why? Because literally no company has done it. Every US company, even those that don't even target EU users like US news sites block EU IP addresses because they don't want to comply with GDPR.

The US and UK/EU are not lawless lands, they comply heavily with each other. Imagine if copyright law was incompatible between the two.

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DirtyPolecat t1_iyaza6t wrote

If I had the time, I can log onto a European VPN right now and probably find you hundreds of websites hosted inside the US not complying with GDPR but yet are still accessible from inside the EU and give you log files and screenshots and everything. There's way more out there than the big corporate sites that will bend over backwards for any country's laws.

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Glad-Driver-24 t1_iyazm11 wrote

As someone who is actually in the EU and actually knows how many US websites either respect GDPR or block, it is the vast majority. Those that don't usually think they're small enough to get away with it. Certainly not when it comes to something like Twitter.

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DirtyPolecat t1_iyb0805 wrote

Because the EU is a 700 million person market, and no big company wants to forever sully their potential profit on those people by getting on the EU's bad side. JimbobJamesNews.com however, isn't going to give a shit, and nobody in the US is going after them. The big ones aren't doing it because they're forced to. They're doing it because money.

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DataGOGO t1_iyd885i wrote

>Tell me genius, how are you supposed to target UK/EU users with relevant ads without explicitly being in the UK/EU?

Easy. The source IP address, which is present in every request, reveals the source geo (unless using a VPN). So the site can present to you UK/EU specific ads.

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>Do you honestly think that you, as a company, are going to be able to collect data from users in the UK/EU and not have any kind of repercussions?

Yes, because that is exactly how it works today.

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DataGOGO t1_iyd7u7i wrote

> which is incorrect.

It isn't.

> but if you have UK/EU ads it means you're targeting users from those territories and could get fined.

Incorrect.

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DataGOGO t1_iyda1r9 wrote

Aww... yep, CNN has a UK office, my bad.

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