darelrex

Let's say, arguendo, that Facebook is telling the truth, and that it would be a horrendously expensive, lengthy, and probably very damaging undertaking to attempt to comply with these new laws to the EU regulators' satisfaction. Now combine that with enforcement mechanisms that include repeating fines of 10% of worldwide revenue, then 20%, and eventually leading to forced breakup of the company into pieces, and the selling-off of its assets, IP, and brands.

Is that going to happen? No. What will happen is that Facebook will exit the EU market. People who think it won't/can't are going to be surprised.

Apple has the winning argument here, because it is not actually disabling tracking — it's just giving each individual user the option to allow/disallow tracking in any particular app. Therefore, FaceBook's counterargument becomes, de facto, "every user should be forced to allow tracking whether they want to or not."

Imagine if Coke sent new signage to Kroger, for the Coke section of the store, that announced, "This soda would be a lot cheaper if Kroger didn't mark it up so much above the wholesale price." Would Kroger happily install that signage in their store? No. They would send it back or throw it in the trash.

The positive accomplishments of Nader's Corvair exposé might be just a happy coincidence. Consider Upton Sinclair, who is heralded today for exposing the horrors of the meat-packing industry in his book, "The Jungle," which resulted in the pure-food-and-drug laws. But if you read that book, you find that he was really a hard-left socialist who was trying to convince his readers that meat-industry abuses are just one example of the inevitable evils of free-market economics, and the cure is a government-run economy. Maybe Nader, like Sinclair, wasn't really trying to get Chevy to make safer cars -- he was trying to convince people to replace market economics with state socialism.

In his open letter to Tim Cook, Nader delivered what appears to be a sincere attempt at a comprehensive laundry list of popular, Apple-is-evil sophistry, then concluded with the line, "I look forward to your thoughtful response." Three months later, he apparently has tired of sitting at his computer waiting for Cook's response, so he has to start shouting publicly again. Good for him; he's an important somebody -- not an inconsequential nobody.