I am so happy about my latest video :) The Nerves Quickstart which makes for a fun introduction to trying the Nerves framework and Livebook. I had a ton of fun nervously recording extreme angles and generally trying to be artistic, definitely my most creative video attempt so far. And my editor did a fantastic job. If you need video work done, reach out to Niklas. He has helped me with coaching on how to record better, scripts, planning shots, better lighting, editing. All of it.

It seems like I'll be doing a bit of a series on self-hosting certain types of cloud services for EU-compliance. It isn't going to be limited in usefulness to EU folks, overall it is about setting up self-hosted options to either have control of your tools or complying with regulation.

Beyond that I'm finishing up a script for a video I'll record this afternoon. The Regular Programming podcast has released an episode about Docker. And I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Standing Out by Not Sucking

I groaned my way through this pretty entertaining Twitter thread about how Apple is absolutely doing the worst effort they can to comply with regulatory pressure about third party payment systems.

Apple has historically made a point of trying to delight their users as much as they can in UI, UX and design. And even if you take immense issue with their closed ecosystem, their walled gardens, their aggressive pricing, deals with China, self-importance, dumbing down of computer and poor stance on repairability. Which I do, to various extents. You could still respect them for a few things. They've had a stronger privacy-stance than any other megacorp. They've done a good job of designing an end-to-end user experience in many areas. It has often felt like they put users front and center compared to some others.

Now when regulatory pressure comes they've clearly decided to not do the rightest possible thing by developers, by users and by the overall experience and make it smooth, sensible and nice. They have said "shred the user experience, terrify the average user, make sure no revenue can ever grow there". Comply as little as possible.

There are already signals about this backfiring and I can't decide if I should feel glee or have a headache about this potentially being escalated to EU-level courts.

Apple is an exceptional case of a very large overall tendency. The GDPR was introduced to control how companies were allowed to use our data, requiring consent for tracking, requiring that it be easy to decline, protecting your right to be forgotten and all of that. Industry did not have to introduce the GDPR banners. They chose to. They refused to back off of the level of tracking they were used to and the tracking vendors of course offered those banners as a way forward. Complete with dark patterns and the art of annoying you into compliance.

Assuming the EU political body stays the course this will lead to escalation. We already see that Google, Microsoft and Amazon have been using an illegal GDPR consent system. A quote from that post.

All data collected through the TCF must now be deleted by the more than 1,000 companies that pay IAB Europe to use the TCF. This includes Google’s, Amazon’s and Microsoft’s online advertising businesses.

..

The decision was made by the Belgian Data Protection Authority in agreement with 27 other EU data protection authorities, and is immediately binding and enforceable across the European Union under the GDPR’ “one stop shop” mechanism.

Companies feel like they are entitled to analytics. Apple feels entitled to a 30% cut and full control. Unfortunately for them all, we live in a society and ideally companies don't get to do whatever they want. These companies face legal reform that tries to mitigate harm to normal people and they choose violence. I'm curious to see how far the EU can press this and whether we will see the groundswell of other options.

One thing that is still up in the air is which clouds are okay in Europe now? None that have US ownership arguably. How long until the big actors spin up non-owned EU companies that license the systems and operate legally in the EU? Or will some company step up and be Stripe for the EU? AWS for the EU?

There are some very neat companies, usually not the biggest ones, that are more customer-centric. They avoid lock-in, they'd rather not track than badger you about consenting to tracking, they work with open standards. I like that in a company. Many of these are open source project and can be self-hosted.

If you are running something online, consider minimizing the BS you put your users through. It is a balm on the soul to feel like you are dealing with a reasonable entity on the other side.

I fear I may be a broken record on this topic. But if you agree or disagree and want to discuss you can reach me at lars@underjord.io or on Twitter where I'm @lawik.

Thank you for reading. And as always, I appreciate your time and your attention.

- Lars Wikman