The decisions of some Silicon Valley corporations increasingly have a great impact on the world, beyond the laws applied by countries.
In March 2011, the European Union's (EU) privacy directive came into effect, requiring countries to adopt laws that control how businesses track users' activities on the Internet. network.
The directive, also known as the "cookie law", is designed to provide transparency and control over cookies to Internet users. However, this law failed in practice, when introduced in the context of online privacy issues that are not as prominent as they are today and make many users uncomfortable.
People see no improvement in privacy, but face a series of annoying messages when surfing the web, preventing them from accessing the sites they want. The European Commission (EC) in 2016 also acknowledged that the new laws had "hindered the experience of using the Internet".
User tracking control feature on iOS 14.5. Photo: Macrumors.
Regulations are also ineffective. Most cookie notices are ignored, and websites also find ways to hide them instead of notifying visitors. One study found that about two-thirds of websites, including government ones, still track users.
Essentially, the act gives ostensibly control but makes surfing much worse. Subsequently passed user data protection laws yielded similar results, being designed to protect users but more offensively.
Meanwhile, the actions of a few large technology corporations are very effective, far exceeding all laws passed by the EU.
Apple last month rolled out the iOS 14.5 update, which comes with a "cookie law" in the smartphone age. This feature is called "App Tracking Transparency," which requires every iPhone app to ask permission if it wants to track the device owner's activity. A message will appear the first time the app wants to share data with other companies.
Applications that used to track users by default had to ask for permission. Only 13% allow apps to track, a percentage so low that many companies like Google announced they would stop tracking users between apps, instead focusing on those who allow it.
Apple's decision is the clearest example, showing that the decisions of a few Silicon Valley companies have far more impact than any legislation that can be approved.
Changes in iOS 14.5 could hurt Facebook more than any government action. The largest fine that this social network has to pay is $ 5 billion to settle with the US government, but still much lower than the decline in revenue after Apple's change.
Apple and Google are also ahead of governments in phone tracing technology, advocating a decentralized model to protect privacy but still promote development.
Google says its Chrome browser from next year will block most cookies by default, following in the footsteps of Firefox and Safari. Chrome is now the browser used by two-thirds of the world's Internet users, which makes Google's changes far more influential than the EU laws enforced over the past 10 years. The advertising industry opposes this vehemently and repeatedly pushes governments to intervene, arguing that Google is exploiting its dominant position in the browser market.
Many regulatory agencies have been closely monitoring this development. Both the EC and the UK are investigating Google's war on cookies, because the tech giant not only profited from developing a cookie alternative, but also stemmed from the idea that an engineer could change the digital economy with just a few lines of code, worrying many governments.
Apple has not encountered a similar situation, despite objections from Facebook and many advertising businesses. The iPhone manufacturer believes that they do not hold power, but only hand rights over to users.
These examples show the huge impact from just lines of programming code. Tech corporations are constantly demanding that the government adopt privacy laws, while it is they who shape the rules.