Musk has been acting like a wealthy douchebag on Twitter with Trump-style meltdowns about fake news, especially concerning the (excellent, quality journalism) reports about unsafe practices and union busting at his factories.
Basically, he's an empathy deficient exploitative narcissistic a-hole, an laying people off fits that picture perfectly.
This is what pisses me off the most about all the hysteria and whining:
"The law has been in effect for over two years at this point, and the DPD, the European Data Protection Directive has been in effect for over two decades. So no, this law was not sprung on anybody, though it is very well possible that you only became aware of it a few weeks or months (or days?) ago. If that’s the case do not panic, you too will most likely be fine."
Nevermind the fact that the underlying privacy laws are much older, and so many practices were already essentially illegal but went unchallenged so far.
It's not the law that's the difference here. The clue is under the headline:
> The GDPR’s premise, that consumers should be in charge of their own personal data, is the right one
That's not just the GDPR's premise, that's the very foundation privacy as a civil right in Europe, and has been for a very long time.
The GDPR is just yet another attempt to force companies who have wilfully ignored the rights of millions of Europeans to start complying with laws we already had in place. It's not something new, just an iteration in enforcement.
America should make laws that suit America's values and principles, but as it stands, America has no deep concept of privacy. The GDPR is alien to American values.
(BTW, that quote is subtly wrong but illustrates the huge gap in perception: it should be "citizens", not "consumers"...)
As long as Facebook still aggressively and effectively policies its platforms for violations of its reactionary puritanical agenda, nothing they say about the difficulties of policing hate speech and other hateful propaganda is in any way credible.
This shouldn't be in the hands of a regulatory agency. Serious privacy violations should be legislated and treated as outright crimes, not just regulation infringements.
Violating basic civil rights should not just result in the off chance of having to pay a fine. People like Zuckerberg belong in jail way more than the average drug dealer.
> This shouldn't be in the hands of a regulatory agency. Serious privacy violations should be legislated and treated as outright crimes, not just regulation infringements.
IHIPAA is largely in the hands of HHS as a regulatory body, and yet violation of its privacy mandates (including those HHS is empowered to detail by regulation) are “outright crimes” as well as also potential civil offenses, not some distinct and lesser category of “regulatory violations”.
Your argument seems deeply grounded in an incorrect assumption about what it means to involve a regulatory agency.
This is the ultimate act of Silicon Valley arrogance, at it will backfire hard.
Not just on Facebook, and not just in the UK. This crosses a line all democratic nations in which SV companies have significant interests and even more significant influence will take note of.
SV and apparently large parts of HN are completely delusional if they think this won't have serious consequences.
> Funny thing is, this would all blow over after a few months, and everyone will go back to the usual habbits.
It can't blow over in the UK or the EU, because it is seriously f-ing illegal in those places.
Yes, we "knew" it was happening before this (hence all the regulatory steps taken that were dismissed as anti-American protectionism), but we were lacking hard evidence, so all we could do was reinforce regulations and regulatory authorities.
Now that shit has leaked, it's simply not an option for those authorities to not act. Not to mention the fact that they really, really want to act.
So no, this will not blow over. Maybe in the US and/or the media, but not where it matters.
Because "globalism" is a misnomer, it's shorthand for "economic globalism". Economic globalism is the exploitation of the masses by opening the borders for trade and desirable workers, whilst keeping them closed for the 99% of this planets population.
That's the kind of "globalism" the tech elite supports. They love to hide behind closed borders when it protects their wealth and power.
Those "same class of people" have always supported true globalism for the people in terms of a complete removal of borders. Don't blame them because greedy neoliberals have hijacked the term globalism.
During the TPP debate I thought there was a discussion about this type of "free trade" I think this article from C4SS sums up the position of this new globalism
"In the early 20th century, when most industrial capital was national, Western countries’ main imports were raw materials from the colonial world and their main exports were finished industrial goods. So it was in the interest of American manufacturers to restrict competition in the domestic market from imported goods manufactured in other industrialized countries. Fast forward 100 years though, and most American imports are by the Western-owned global corporations themselves, importing goods produced under contract for them so they can sell them in the domestic market at an enormous “intellectual property” markup over the cost of production.
Since the movement of goods across borders is now mostly an internal affair of global corporations themselves, outmoded tariffs that impede the movement of goods have become an inconvenience. What they need, instead, is a form of protectionism that still gives them a monopoly over selling a particular product in a particular market — but operates at corporate boundaries rather than national ones. That’s what “intellectual property” does.
Aside from the manufacturing corporations we just discussed, most of the other profitable industries in the global economy have business models centered on IP: Entertainment, software, electronics, biotech, etc.
So what’s falsely called “free trade” today isn’t a decrease in protectionism. It’s a shift from one kind of protectionism that no longer serves corporate interests, to a new kind of protectionism that better serves them."
In itself it has nothing to do with management, except you're now exposed to it, shielding your people from it.
Take it from someone who's been there: it's not worth sacrificing you're health over it.
You're devs will be fine, one way or the other. Invest your energy in a company that's worth it, and that will actually change due to your efforts.