As its the EU and regulation, its time to trott out your hobby horse.
So let me trot out mine: regulation is good so long as it is backed up by even handed, robust, transparent, quick and effective sanctions.
the Online safety act is a good example of a bad law, which is enforced badly. The first big test (X producing industrial quantities of minors engaging in sexual activity) was failed. Had a small company produced a service that did they same thing, they would have been fined, servers ceased and owners thrown in jail. X got a letter saying they should stop.
An example of good enforcement is the UK's scores on the doors, where the public can see what the standard is, and if they fall below a certain level, the food place is fined/shutdown/other until it improves.
Old school methods like what McDonald's use, literally allow the customer to see in to the kitchen are very effective.
Not always ideal for every type establishment but I've seen high end Indian restaurants even do it by having the POS at the back where you can see the kitchen when paying which keeps the noise separate for the desired quiet atmosphere of a fine dining restaurant
I'm not sure how to translate this to the smartphone market though. Fairphone and LaJolla seem to do well in this regard though so back to brand reputation for a lot of this.
I am unfamiliar with these matters and I am also unsure what specifically you are referring to.
But in general, if big companies get away with wrongdoings by receiving a gentle slap on their fingers, figuratively speaking, it will, in my opinion, lead to no change whatsoever.
Because if there are no material consequences for wrongdoings, they probably would not care. And there are very few kinds of actually material consequences for big companies. One of them being a really hefty fine.
Sadly that mess had a political component, any attempt to regulate US big tech results in howls from over the Atlantic.
Frankly, I'd prefer it if we just let them howl and said fuck it more but it's probably a good job I'm not making those decisions (and in honesty the picture is complex for companies that size/the politics).
Ironically the fact that the howls need to come from the other side of the Atlantic, rather than having any domestically, should tell anyone all they need to know about the situation.
From the article, it seems more about chinese brands, no?
> Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions.
> But even for products that are technically compliant, the listed weblink still rarely offers a direct path to parts prices. For major brands such as Apple and Samsung, it can take some clicking around before you find what you need, Right to Repair says.
Minors were involved. People were responding to pictures of minors and prompting Grok to sexualize them. People were uploading their own photos of real minors and asking Grok to make modifications to them.
I guess when discussing the reasons for the law failing to bring about the intended changes, we only need to agree on that the law did not intend to make this distinction (though it definitely could have made them, even before LLM this was a deliberate choice) - not whether doing so would have been advisable.
What I expect from this is rather that at least a few producers get more repair friendly so I as consumer have the choice again. (Writing this on my first phone without easily changeable battery, I've tried for very long)
So I as my families tech guru can give the right signals to my family and in a few years we see the actual change happen. Slowly but steadily
If it does not happen quickly, then the result might end up similar to data privacy topics.
If you can afford to keep fines in litigation/appeals/formal-defect limbo for a sufficient number of years, you can grow out of even once-threatening fines and delay compliance until the law that you finally bow down to is so old that its signs of old age will in the meantime become popular arguments for undermining or retracting it.
Contrary to popular belief, the EU is not very fast when it comes to enforcement on requirements like these. We already saw this with the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR: those scary hundreds-of-millions-of-euros fines are only handed out after ongoing and deliberate violation, where you've already received plenty of warnings and smaller fines.
18% compliance after one year with zero enforcement is not great, but it's already a massive increase over the near-zero repairable products we had only a few years ago. On top of that it is 18% of models, so there's a decent chance that a huge chunk of the noncompliant ones are obscure brands with near-zero sales: a handful of models by Apple and Samsung already add up to over 60% market share. And the report was literally written by iFixit, so there's a rather clear commercial incentive to underrepresent it and push for the strongest enforcement possible.
You can see the GDPR stats on https://www.enforcementtracker.com/statistics (scroll to “Enforcement over time” and click on “Total €”). 2018–2020 was effectively nothing compared to later.
It's going to be cool to get user-replaceable batteries back in new phone releases.
Depending how it goes I can see myself keeping a spare instead of a powerbank
I appreciate the intent to hold large corporations accountable, but I've lost faith in the EU being competent at doing so. Not as if I see anyone doing it better, but at least others aren't doing it so poorly.
Why would they? The worst thing that can realistically happen is a $1-$5 billion fine a few years from now, which they only need to pay a few years after that when they have exhausted their legal remedies.
That’s easy to calculate with, and almost certainly cheaper than compliance.
I think with many of the recent regulations, they could verify and find many of the egregious cases to be violating today.
The EU is just extremely worried about US tariffs and retracting support to Ukraine.
IMO they should just bite the bullet and do what they need to do. In a world of bullies those that are willing to show their teeth win. But instead we have a lot of politicians without a spine.
A huge part of that was fearmongering by people selling compliance consultancy services and people trying to find loopholes allowing them to keep abusing their users' data. For a lot of companies it really wasn't that big of a deal in practice.
I really don't get the big deal with GDRP. Consider what you are storing and why you are storing. Decide if those things align. If they do not, well don't implement that in first place. And I suppose LLMs are perfect for the boiler plate documentation so not big effort there either.
Somethings are big more challenging like getting the data for customer when asking or deleting it when reasonable. But as user I also like at least having that option. It is least any business can do.
GDPR is reasonable, maybe too weak regulation of big businesses with lots of data.
The problem is that it applies to small organisations, even non-profits, that do not trade that information which is proportionately a much bigger burden. Real examples of organisations I have come across who have to comply with GDPR include a local community theatre, a parish church etc. They are keep fairly simple information, and not exchanging it with anyone, but they still have to put effort into ensuring compliance. They are pretty good and ethical anyway - the theatre recently impressed me when I found out that if you give them medical information in case of emergency they put it in a sealed envelope and no one opens it unless there is an actually emergency that requires it (i.e. you keel over there!).
So let me trot out mine: regulation is good so long as it is backed up by even handed, robust, transparent, quick and effective sanctions.
the Online safety act is a good example of a bad law, which is enforced badly. The first big test (X producing industrial quantities of minors engaging in sexual activity) was failed. Had a small company produced a service that did they same thing, they would have been fined, servers ceased and owners thrown in jail. X got a letter saying they should stop.
An example of good enforcement is the UK's scores on the doors, where the public can see what the standard is, and if they fall below a certain level, the food place is fined/shutdown/other until it improves.
Another good example is NCAP ratings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SO8KcfhJmc
Old school methods like what McDonald's use, literally allow the customer to see in to the kitchen are very effective.
Not always ideal for every type establishment but I've seen high end Indian restaurants even do it by having the POS at the back where you can see the kitchen when paying which keeps the noise separate for the desired quiet atmosphere of a fine dining restaurant
I'm not sure how to translate this to the smartphone market though. Fairphone and LaJolla seem to do well in this regard though so back to brand reputation for a lot of this.
I am unfamiliar with these matters and I am also unsure what specifically you are referring to.
But in general, if big companies get away with wrongdoings by receiving a gentle slap on their fingers, figuratively speaking, it will, in my opinion, lead to no change whatsoever.
Because if there are no material consequences for wrongdoings, they probably would not care. And there are very few kinds of actually material consequences for big companies. One of them being a really hefty fine.
Frankly, I'd prefer it if we just let them howl and said fuck it more but it's probably a good job I'm not making those decisions (and in honesty the picture is complex for companies that size/the politics).
> Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions.
> But even for products that are technically compliant, the listed weblink still rarely offers a direct path to parts prices. For major brands such as Apple and Samsung, it can take some clicking around before you find what you need, Right to Repair says.
1. There were no minors involved.
2. There was nobody doing anything sexual.
As disgusting as real CSAM is, this sits in the realm of "no human harmed", similar to Japanese hentai depicting underage girls.
One is drawn comics. Other is LLM based token generator.
(Depending on your local jurisdiction. But GP said "Online Safety Act" so I'm making an assumption).
What I expect from this is rather that at least a few producers get more repair friendly so I as consumer have the choice again. (Writing this on my first phone without easily changeable battery, I've tried for very long)
So I as my families tech guru can give the right signals to my family and in a few years we see the actual change happen. Slowly but steadily
If you can afford to keep fines in litigation/appeals/formal-defect limbo for a sufficient number of years, you can grow out of even once-threatening fines and delay compliance until the law that you finally bow down to is so old that its signs of old age will in the meantime become popular arguments for undermining or retracting it.
18% compliance after one year with zero enforcement is not great, but it's already a massive increase over the near-zero repairable products we had only a few years ago. On top of that it is 18% of models, so there's a decent chance that a huge chunk of the noncompliant ones are obscure brands with near-zero sales: a handful of models by Apple and Samsung already add up to over 60% market share. And the report was literally written by iFixit, so there's a rather clear commercial incentive to underrepresent it and push for the strongest enforcement possible.
Spare battery: ???
That’s easy to calculate with, and almost certainly cheaper than compliance.
The EU is just extremely worried about US tariffs and retracting support to Ukraine.
IMO they should just bite the bullet and do what they need to do. In a world of bullies those that are willing to show their teeth win. But instead we have a lot of politicians without a spine.
Politicians have a tendency to think that passing legislation fixes problems, where is its only the start of the process.
Being in favour of the GDPR will bring out downvotes and FUD from the people whose very salaries are dependent on invading your privacy.
Somethings are big more challenging like getting the data for customer when asking or deleting it when reasonable. But as user I also like at least having that option. It is least any business can do.
The problem is that it applies to small organisations, even non-profits, that do not trade that information which is proportionately a much bigger burden. Real examples of organisations I have come across who have to comply with GDPR include a local community theatre, a parish church etc. They are keep fairly simple information, and not exchanging it with anyone, but they still have to put effort into ensuring compliance. They are pretty good and ethical anyway - the theatre recently impressed me when I found out that if you give them medical information in case of emergency they put it in a sealed envelope and no one opens it unless there is an actually emergency that requires it (i.e. you keel over there!).