News Summary

• Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do… Just because there is now a multi-billion-dollar industry based on the abject betrayal of our privacy doesn’t mean the sociopaths who built it have any right whatsoever to continue getting away with it.
• It does not allow big companies to “own” markets because free markets (in the EU’s eyes) are good, and privately owned ones that allow big companies to stop being capitalists and act like feudal lords are bad.
• That’s false on two levels 1) they get the worst rates, and 2) the efficiency of highly targeted ads is patently false, as this (and other) studies have shown: op.europa.eu/en/public… One last point: I’ve seen arguments suggesting that the EU is blocking Facebook from doing business, i.e.
• Or is he suggesting that a private company is entitled to defend people’s privacy, but governments are not?And John’s second point about Spotify fundamentally misunderstands the nature of antitrust law in general and the EU gatekeeper system specifically.
• They talk in circles but their argument boils down to entitlement: they think our privacy is theirs for the taking because they’ve been getting away with taking it without our knowledge, and it is valuable.
• But Spotify is an EU company, so of course it wasn’t designated as a “gatekeeper” by the protection racketeers running the European Commission… They’re not saying “pay or OK” is illegal.