> If tech and politicians agree that some policy is a good idea, then tech does it voluntarily, so no regulation is needed. The only cases where it becomes a matter of regulation are the cases where tech and politicians disagree.
And these cases are the utter majority.
> For example, GDPR cookie banners are a joke.
They are, but only for those services that want to squeeze their customers like they're data lemons. What you need to do to provide the customer with the service they desire is covered automatically, the thing where you need a GDPR consent banner is if you want to include a truckload of external services to track your users across the Internet.
I set up a nice little webpage, that did not use any tracking at all. There was one cookie for a home-brew login functionality, and even that was only linked to an extremely limited amount of data (namely, the login name, and the password, didn't even mandate email...).
By all means, this one cookie - whose use was completely voluntary - was a 'technical cookie' which I do not need consent for under the EU's cookie laws.
It took about 30 minutes after the go-live before the first madmen came around and started shouting at me that I needed a cookie banner.
The problem with that law is not only that it caused everyone to set up a cookie banner to operate as they used to, it also is that it created a class of people who are self-declared data protection vigilantes.
I do consider publishing on Gopher (or Gemini) in the future, if only to prevent zealots - who often have no technical knowledge - from accessing my services. The people I address are capable - and willing - to use other protocols.
I think it's the opposite -- tech and politicians agree on the vast majority of things, but they're considered banal so the topic never comes up. But, you could imagine an alternate universe where tech did things differently, and then politicians wanted to regulate them. Here are some examples:
* Tech companies offer most of their services for free. You could imagine a world where Google charged for searches and Facebook charged for posting, and so "poor people being excluded from the Internet" became a political issue.
* Tech companies translate their services into a variety of languages. You could imagine a world where Google and Facebook were only available in English, and so "non-English-speakers being excluded from the Internet" became a political issue.
* Tech companies don't allow anyone to view DMs, private posts, etc. except law enforcement. You could imagine a world where Google and Facebook had a culture where it was normal for employees to snoop on other peoples' DMs, and it became a political issue.
* Conversely, you could imagine a world where tech companies refused to allow law enforcement access to peoples' DMs even with a valid warrant, and it became a political issue. (This is starting to happen.)
* Tech companies allow anyone to post by default. You could imagine a world where tech companies only allowed people to post if tech companies liked their political views (similar to how newspapers' biases affect which editorials they publish) and it became a political issue. (This is starting to happen: the left is pressuring tech companies to restrict certain right-wing content, and the right is talking about regulation to force tech not to do that.)
* Tech companies sometimes kick people off the platform for arbitrary procedural reasons, but not for personal pettiness reasons (with the notable exception of Elon Musk kicking people off Twitter). You could imagine a world where it was normal for e.g. Google to delete a journalist's GMail account if the journalist published something Google didn't like, and it becoming a political issue.
* Tech companies often contribute to open-source standards and software. For example, Google is heavily involved in defining web standards; and they made Chromium open-source, allowing rivals like Microsoft to build on it. You could imagine a world where the tech ecosystem was much more fragmented and closed-source than it is today, and it becoming a political issue.
This is what I was saying about a selection effect: You can easily think of ways that politicians want to regulate tech more, because those topics are controversial and make the news. But there are actually a ton of ways that tech _could_ be much worse than it is, but those topics never come up, so it takes some imagination to think of them.
And these cases are the utter majority.
> For example, GDPR cookie banners are a joke.
They are, but only for those services that want to squeeze their customers like they're data lemons. What you need to do to provide the customer with the service they desire is covered automatically, the thing where you need a GDPR consent banner is if you want to include a truckload of external services to track your users across the Internet.