>has almost no significance to the average person's life.

I very much disagree that prescribing a common charging port for phones has had no significance to the avg. person's life. I am old enough to remember my drawer full of chargers for various phone companies - some even created new plugs for newer generations of phones.

> we should consider if those pennies would be better in the pockets of workers

That's not how it works, those pennies would end up in the pockets of anonymous wealth funds and the family offices of the filthy rich while workers had to buy phone chargers with all their new phones.

> I very much disagree that prescribing a common charging port for phones has had no significance to the avg. person's life. I am old enough to remember my drawer full of chargers for various phone companies - some even created new plugs for newer generations of phones.

The market ultimately fixed this though (mostly anyway). Personally I like Apple's charger ports, but I'll soon no longer have this choice as a consumer because regulators think they know what's best for me.

> That's not how it works, those pennies would end up in the pockets of anonymous wealth funds and the family offices of the filthy rich while workers had to buy phone chargers with all their new phones.

We're getting into an economic debate now. I think generally it's good to assume that the more a business makes, the more people it will be able to employ and the more those employees will make.

I think the problem you're touching on here is that in recent years the bottom line of businesses don't correlate well with the income if its workers. I think there are better ways to solve this problem so that if Apple makes more money on chargers their workers would share in the profits. Regulating phone chargers and browser preferences may not be the best solution here.

>I think the problem you're touching on here is that in recent years the bottom line of businesses don't correlate well with the income if its workers.

Yes, I was attacking your argument that eased regulation would profit the workers - in our current climate, it doesn't. So regulating phone chargers makes a difference to the plutocracy only, not the workers. And you should not forget that a phone that comes without a charger can be cheaper by the BOM of the charger.

Too bad your unregulated ideal free market doesn't work in real life because companies tend to merge until you as a consumer end up with 2 or at most 3 options that are equally shitty.

It would be just fine if you had 20 interchangeable OS vendors competing for your buck indeed. Unfortunately you have 2 or at best 3 if you count the mythical desktop linux. And they're not interchangeable.

Same for phones, can I choose between 10 phone operating systems? Um no, there are just two of them.

Speaking as an American, I'm jealous of the EU approach. Yes, I think some of the EU regulations are silly. But they're taking a default position in favor of the citizens. Not in favor of the corporations. In this day and age, that's kinda heartwarming.

Here in the US we're obviously in the opposite situation. We get some good protections occasionally, but the default position is almost always pro-corporate. With extra favor given to those who donated money to the politicians. I'd so much rather have the EU way of thinking. Even if it leads to more annoying cookie banners.

> Even if it leads to more annoying cookie banners.

Those are not the result of EU regulation; they're not even compliant with EU regs, usually. I don't know for sure why companies put up those stupid banners, but I suspect it's partly a kind of protest, and partly an (illegal) attempt to trick users into consenting to data collection.

Thanks for the correction. I always assumed those banners were to comply with the regulations. Nice to know the companies are being annoying for no reason.

The other guy is wrong. It just takes a simple Google search to confirm this.

I've had to implement and manage these banners at almost every company I've worked for the last several years. It's EU law. Websites that operate in the EU must obtain explicit consent to use tracking cookies. The exception here would be essential cookies which are needed to provide service – although you may still need to consent to do that depending on what data the service is collecting / processing.

Some banners don't comply with EU regulation because they default checkboxes to approve cookies and the EU regulation requires "explicit consent". That said, you almost certainly won't find a major website that doesn't comply for EU visitors and where sites get this wrong it's usually not intentional and is normally because smaller companies don't have the time or resources to comply with the nuances of EU data law. The larger companies who do have the resources hire people like myself to do it for them. There's a sizeable industry around complying with EU GDPR regulation here in Europe. Companies like Usercentrics make millions charging companies for EU-compliant cookie banners, https://www.cookiebot.com/

It's not great for small businesses, but it's great if you're a larger corporate with the money for compliance or an individual riding the EU regulatory gravy train.

The regulation is only 99 articles long and full of fun legal talk if you're interested in reading it yourself. It's just one of the many documents you'll need to familiarise yourself with if you want to do business in the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

Thanks for the correction of the correction. I thought the banners were required, but I hadn't done much research. Therefore, I thought I might be wrong after the initial correction. Nice to know my original hunch was correct. Sounds like a good business to be in.

> people's income being redistributed to regulators

You mean, taxpayer funds being used to fund the operation of a regulatory body? I wonder how they should be funded in your ideal world:

* Don't fund them at all; the world is better with no regulators and no regulations.

* Cut them loose from the taxpayer; let them behave like an LE agency, and fund themselves by levying fines.

As far as I'm aware, there's no regulator involved in this, taxpayer-funded or otherwise. This is simply a law (which you can call a "regulation" if you prefer). As such, the only "regulatory" body involved is the EU lawmaking apparatus, and EU citizens seem to be OK with funding that.

Microsoft want to advertise to users because it makes them money. That money will come from the pockets of the people you're describing, and not as a fraction of their income as with many taxes.

Companies making more money isn't bad?

> That money will come from the pockets of the people you're describing

Very indirectly maybe. Ad spend is a cost to businesses, not consumers.

I'll also add that making ad spend less inefficient (as this regulation will do) will ultimately cost either the business or consumer as someone will need to eat those extra costs. Assuming that those inefficiencies are not passed to the consumer and is instead is a cost to the business, this would still only be a good thing if you believe companies making more money is bad.

Money spent on ads doesn't cost businesses money, it makes them money. Otherwise they wouldn't do it. That money comes directly from consumers, who are also taxpayers. I haven't said whether this is good or bad.

Those regulations mean the average worker won't have to buy a new phone when the battery degrades, and if they do buy a new one, their existing chargers will continue to work with it, so contrary to your point, it saves the average worker money and improves their life in a very tangible way.