As its the EU and regulation, its time to trott out your hobby horse.

So let me trot out mine: regulation is good so long as it is backed up by even handed, robust, transparent, quick and effective sanctions.

the Online safety act is a good example of a bad law, which is enforced badly. The first big test (X producing industrial quantities of minors engaging in sexual activity) was failed. Had a small company produced a service that did they same thing, they would have been fined, servers ceased and owners thrown in jail. X got a letter saying they should stop.

An example of good enforcement is the UK's scores on the doors, where the public can see what the standard is, and if they fall below a certain level, the food place is fined/shutdown/other until it improves.

Another good example is NCAP ratings.

• s_dev

  today at 12:53 PM

  A lot of scores on the doors are often faked defeating their purpose. Helpful but not bullet proof.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SO8KcfhJmc

  Old school methods like what McDonald's use, literally allow the customer to see in to the kitchen are very effective.

  Not always ideal for every type establishment but I've seen high end Indian restaurants even do it by having the POS at the back where you can see the kitchen when paying which keeps the noise separate for the desired quiet atmosphere of a fine dining restaurant

  I'm not sure how to translate this to the smartphone market though. Fairphone and LaJolla seem to do well in this regard though so back to brand reputation for a lot of this.

• noir_lord

  today at 12:54 PM

  Sadly that mess had a political component, any attempt to regulate US big tech results in howls from over the Atlantic.

  Frankly, I'd prefer it if we just let them howl and said fuck it more but it's probably a good job I'm not making those decisions (and in honesty the picture is complex for companies that size/the politics).

  • kvuj

    today at 1:07 PM

    From the article, it seems more about chinese brands, no?

    > Some records even refer customers to Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair instructions.

    > But even for products that are technically compliant, the listed weblink still rarely offers a direct path to parts prices. For major brands such as Apple and Samsung, it can take some clicking around before you find what you need, Right to Repair says.

• nekusar

  today at 1:10 PM

  > The first big test (X producing industrial quantities of minors engaging in sexual activity) was failed.

  1. There were no minors involved.

  2. There was nobody doing anything sexual.

  As disgusting as real CSAM is, this sits in the realm of "no human harmed", similar to Japanese hentai depicting underage girls.

  One is drawn comics. Other is LLM based token generator.

Does it really matter this early?

What I expect from this is rather that at least a few producers get more repair friendly so I as consumer have the choice again. (Writing this on my first phone without easily changeable battery, I've tried for very long)

So I as my families tech guru can give the right signals to my family and in a few years we see the actual change happen. Slowly but steadily

• jgilias

  today at 1:11 PM

  It does matter, yes. Because it won’t lead to the outcome you want until someone actually gets a painful fine.

Contrary to popular belief, the EU is not very fast when it comes to enforcement on requirements like these. We already saw this with the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR: those scary hundreds-of-millions-of-euros fines are only handed out after ongoing and deliberate violation, where you've already received plenty of warnings and smaller fines.

18% compliance after one year with zero enforcement is not great, but it's already a massive increase over the near-zero repairable products we had only a few years ago. On top of that it is 18% of models, so there's a decent chance that a huge chunk of the noncompliant ones are obscure brands with near-zero sales: a handful of models by Apple and Samsung already add up to over 60% market share. And the report was literally written by iFixit, so there's a rather clear commercial incentive to underrepresent it and push for the strongest enforcement possible.

• robin_reala

  today at 1:10 PM

  You can see the GDPR stats on https://www.enforcementtracker.com/statistics (scroll to “Enforcement over time” and click on “Total €”). 2018–2020 was effectively nothing compared to later.

• today at 12:46 PM

I appreciate the intent to hold large corporations accountable, but I've lost faith in the EU being competent at doing so. Not as if I see anyone doing it better, but at least others aren't doing it so poorly.

Cheat until caught then lie.

They need to start fining.

I suspect it’s something similar to the GDPR where the EU passes a law but has very few resources on how to check if you’re actually compliant.

• microtonal

  today at 12:42 PM

  I think with many of the recent regulations, they could verify and find many of the egregious cases to be violating today.

  The EU is just extremely worried about US tariffs and retracting support to Ukraine.

  IMO they should just bite the bullet and do what they need to do. In a world of bullies those that are willing to show their teeth win. But instead we have a lot of politicians without a spine.

• crote

  today at 12:44 PM

  A huge part of that was fearmongering by people selling compliance consultancy services and people trying to find loopholes allowing them to keep abusing their users' data. For a lot of companies it really wasn't that big of a deal in practice.

I don't want to get down-voted but I like this regulation, good job EU!

• shermantanktop

  today at 12:45 PM

  Being in favor of right-to-repair is generally popular on HN, for obvious reasons.

  • GJim

    today at 12:52 PM

    Whereas, given a large part of the HN demographic works in the AdTech industry.....

    Being in favour of the GDPR will bring out downvotes and FUD from the people whose very salaries are dependent on invading your privacy.

Why would they? The worst thing that can realistically happen is a $1-$5 billion fine a few years from now, which they only need to pay a few years after that when they have exhausted their legal remedies.

That’s easy to calculate with, and almost certainly cheaper than compliance.