[HN Gopher] Breaking Free
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Breaking Free
Author : Aissen
Score : 174 points
Date : 2026-02-27 09:56 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.forbrukerradet.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.forbrukerradet.no)
| Epa095 wrote:
| From the english letter:
|
| To achieve a better digital world, where technology works for
| people rather than against them, several steps must be taken:
|
| 1. _Rebalance power between service providers and consumers._
| People should be allowed to control their digital experiences and
| decide how they want to use products that they own. It should be
| possible and practical to switch to alternative service
| providers, or tweak services they already use to suit their needs
| and preferences.
|
| 2. _Tackle dependency on Big Tech._ To lay the groundwork for
| innovative products and services and pave the way for
| alternatives to Big Tech, competition in digital markets must be
| restored. Technology based on principles such as openness,
| interoperability and portability must be advanced through
| strategic investments. For example, the public sector should
| leverage its power as a major procurer to support alternatives to
| big tech through exploring options for ethical procurement of
| technology services.
|
| 3. _Double down on the enforcement of existing laws._ Far from
| hindering innovation, regulations provide crucial guardrails to
| guide innovation and ensure a level playing field. Weak
| enforcement allows big tech to continue its damaging practices at
| the cost of freedom of choice, service quality, and innovation.
| To remedy this, enforcement of existing laws must be strong and
| vigorous. This includes the DMA and competition laws more
| broadly, but also other digital rules such as the GDPR and
| consumer law.
|
| 4. _Close the existing legal loopholes by adopting a strong
| Digital Fairness Act._ Increase legal certainty and address
| loopholes in the legislation to better protect people for
| instance against deceptive and addictive design, and unfair
| personalisation.
| girvo wrote:
| I hope this leads to them pushing for Jolla and similar to not
| be locked out of banking apps (and EU IDs...)
| Nursie wrote:
| Reinstate strong powers to understand and adapt devices you
| own, rather than pandering to US industry interests.
| madspindel wrote:
| "Meta estimates that ten percent of the company's annual revenue
| comes from fraudulent ads on its services - amounting to a
| dizzying 16 billion dollars.
|
| - Meta is earning billions from consumers being scammed. Even if
| the company gets fined - a process that takes years - the fines
| we have seen so far only amount to a fraction of these profits.
| In other words, Meta has no incentive to solve the problem.
| Meanwhile, the company doesn't lift a finger to help its users,
| whether their profiles are misused in the scam ads, or they fall
| victim to the scams, Myrstad says. "
| notachatbot123 wrote:
| Where is that quote sourced?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| https://www.forbrukerradet.no/news-in-english/digital-
| produc...
|
| You can find the 10% from scam thing all over the place. ala-
|
| https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-
| fortu...
| Nursie wrote:
| And somehow they are allowed to continue operating, and we
| accept them saying "we couldn't possibly actually police all
| this content! There's just too much of it. We're too large for
| such concerns!"
|
| I really wish the rest of us could turn around and say, to
| their faces "That sounds like a you problem"
| brador wrote:
| It's like fake products on Amazon. The numbers are jaw
| dropping, the punishment non existent.
|
| If a real store had that much fake stock it would be shut
| overnight.
| darkwater wrote:
| It should be easy: 10% of revenue from fraudulent ads? Fines
| amounting to 15% of the total revenue. This way, Meta will be
| incentivized to invest ~5% of its revenue on getting rid of
| that 10%.
| alphawhisky wrote:
| Yes but also include accountability in the boardroom. If
| illegal things happen, a human needs to see court, not a
| company. Let the "risk takers" actually take on risk.
| limagnolia wrote:
| The US Postal Service seems to derive upwards of 90% of their
| revenue (Or at least of the mail I receive) from similar
| scams. Are they going to have the same fines applied to them?
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Common carrier vs. curated platform?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| The US Postal Service doesn't serve the American people, by
| its own admission. I can find the quote from the Postmaster
| General if you like, but the gist of it was "the 400 direct
| mailers are our customers". They are a spam company that
| has outlived its usefulness, if ever it had any. Don't fine
| them, dissolve them.
| woah wrote:
| And you can't escape. Facebook is less of a concern because
| you can just not go to the website and you're good. The US
| Postal Service is the basis of an entire huge industry
| devoted to finding you at your physical location to try to
| scam you.
| thenewnewguy wrote:
| How would you find a government entity? This is just moving
| money from one government budget to another.
|
| The USPS is like this because of the persistent belief that
| it's not enough for government entities (think USPS,
| Amtrak, etc) to provide a good service for the citizens -
| they must also (try to) turn a profit.
|
| If we as a society considered it acceptable for the USPS to
| spend money to ensure everyone in the US had mail access
| without selling out to corporations to turn a profit, they
| wouldn't need to have products like EDDM blasting spam to
| entire zip codes.
| Avicebron wrote:
| The whole governmental agencies should be profit seeking
| businesses needs to died ignobly in a ditch. The reason
| we pay taxes is so that we don't have to handle the
| logistics of running the thing we pay for.
| jandrese wrote:
| You have a very different profile of junk mail than I do.
| While the services may be overpriced or of dubious quality,
| they are rarely outright scams the way FB marketplace
| frequently is.
| mikestew wrote:
| If you think there is actual fraud going on via the US
| mail, report it. The Postal Service takes mail fraud very
| seriously.
|
| But I suspect you mean to say 90% of what ends up in your
| mailbox is junk. If that's the case, there's a fix for
| that, too:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36131222
| latexr wrote:
| Considering that 10% percent estimate seems to come from Meta
| themselves, if they were fined that amount what would stop
| them from just estimating lower next time?
| limagnolia wrote:
| From the sources I have seen, that 10% was a projection for
| 2024, with goals to significantly reduce it in 2025 and 2026
| onward. It also includes "banned" goods, which are not
| necessarily fraudulent nor illegal. I have not seen any data on
| whether or not Meta has achieved their goals of reducing fraud
| and banned goods advertising.
| dotandgtfo wrote:
| Considering the absolute deluge of politicians and
| celebrities allegedly promoting financial scams on norwegian
| Facebook my hunch is absolutely not.
| kruffalon wrote:
| It is so nice to see that in reality there already are useful
| laws to combat enshittification, we just need to use them.
|
| It is also hopeful that publicly funded organisation asks for
| better governance rather than just bowing down.
|
| Obviously it is in the Zeitgeist to do this now, could (should)
| have been written 20years ago, but who would have listened?
| skrebbel wrote:
| Seriously the production value on that video is way too good
| d-us-vb wrote:
| The deadpan irony is on point. Something it seems the
| Norwegians have perfected.
|
| Another one of my favorite examples of this (an ad for Oslo
| tourism): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vhD59ac7nw
| colinprince wrote:
| I think a city should feel a little hard to get
| Sammi wrote:
| I mean that's fine I guess. But the best deadpan Norwegian
| sketch is kammelasa: https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk
| schappim wrote:
| 100%! I thought it was going to be way shittier. Suspect a
| budget > $1M was spent.
| renhanxue wrote:
| The Norwegian Consumer Council's entire yearly budget is
| about 100M NOK, or about $9.5M USD at the current exchange
| rate. They most assuredly did not spend >$1M USD on a short
| video clip.
| ruralfam wrote:
| Wow gotta agree. It was satire I think, but... not sure. Also
| the below link to the Oslo ad was also great. Thx for this, RF
| uzish wrote:
| What is a fraudulent ad? If a massive health influencer promotes
| a "healthy" powder that in labs does not show health benefits -
| do we consider it a fraudulent ad?
| jandrese wrote:
| On Facebook? It's ads for products where they do a bait and
| switch or claim to have some kind of "difficulty" and never
| ship a product or ship some garbage instead.
|
| Example: My wife saw an ad for decorative skulls that were made
| in such a way that you can safely put them in a campfire for
| Halloween. They had a video and everything, it looked pretty
| good. She orders a set and they get delayed, then she gets and
| email saying that US Customs would not let them in the country
| and they instead ship a $0.50 plastic Christmas tree ornament
| instead and immediately ghost her.
|
| We reported the company to Facebook but it continued to run for
| weeks. I've also seen ads for $500 Aventon E-bike "closeout"
| that's clearly a scam, reported it, and had no action from
| Facebook. Another ad for an all metal "puzzle kit" of a V8
| engine listed for $50 that I guarantee is fake. Every day I get
| ads that would not have passed the smell test from any reviewer
| yet continue to run.
| uzish wrote:
| Do you see this as different than the example I gave of a
| health influencer promoting a health powder with false
| claims?
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I'm sure this will be downvoted but the fact that the front page
| of this site features photos of the organizers means to me, this
| is a promotional movement for these people, not a serious
| organization. Seeing their faces filling up large portions of the
| front page means the actual supposed point of their supposed
| purpose is being subverted for self promotion.
| em-bee wrote:
| the front page does not feature the organizers, it features
| links to a video and a seminar, and the seminar and the video
| happen to feature the speakers. featuring speakers of a seminar
| is what i expect, because i want to know who is talking.
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(page generated 2026-02-27 23:01 UTC)