A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
but they have been trying desperately to stop all competition.
They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
There's zero reason to think that this will mean the EU won't have a tech market. It just won't have one that includes Apple products which refuse to follow the law. Seems like a massive win for the EU, and because Apple is the one deciding to pull their products rather than follow the law they can't really complain either, so win/win I guess.
"Europeans could end up living in an online backwater with out-of-date phones, cut off from the rest of the world's search engines and social media sites, unable to even access high-performance computer chips."
Sounds like a paradise. More healthy lifestyle. For most people much of this stuff is unnecessary. If one wants to live life "online", glued a screen digesting garbage and propaganda 24/7, then one can relocate to some country where that's what people do. Chances are, tourists from such countries will want to visit Europe even more.
We are all living in an "online backwater" in case the author hasn't noticed. The web is a sewer of surveillance, marketing and ads. Despite the information access possibilities the internet presents, the distribution of factual information seems to be at an all-time low, at least in the lifetime I am living. I have never seen people who were so detached from commonly shared reality as a result of "search engines and social media sites". To access facual information, cf. marketing and propaganda, worthless opinions, and "AI" generated garbage, one did not and does not need the latest "phone" or "high-performance computer chips". This stuff is not making people smarter. Is it is not making society better.
I would be willing to bet the countries that have the populations that are most reliant on "search engines and social media sites" and "high performance computer chips" are going to have the highest rates of mental illness and other complications that arise from too much screen time, and the lowest test scores. These will be dumbed down, whacked out societies. They will have the worst quality of life.
I was listening to an interview with Jonathan Kanter recently and the interviewer tried to get him to comment on Europe's approach to regulation of "Big Tech". He was hesitant to accept any comparison. But I am confident there are plenty of folks, generally _not people who comment on HN_, who are envious of the direction Europe is taking.
The idea that regulating Apple and Meta, companies that exploit people commercially as they use computers, e.g., as data collection sources and ad targets, is going to contribute to cause "poverty" or deprive Europe of useful networking and computer technology, e.g., the type used for national defense, is absurd.
I don't live in Europe, but wish we had these sorts of regulations in the US.
If tech companies cannot provide us a means to control our personal information, and require us to be locked into their gatekeep-y, nanny-state, walled gardens and submit to using locked-down devices that don't actually obey what we want them to do, then those tech companies should not exist.
I've gotten a little bit of a taste of some of this stuff in the form of the CCPA/CPRA, and it's delightful. Getting to tell companies they're not allowed to sell any of my information to third parties is wonderful. I just wish that was the default and I didn't have to opt out.
Big tech is far, far under-regulated, even in Europe, too, and that needs to change.
I wish targeted advertising was made completely illegal here, I am sure our society would greatly benefit from that.
I might be talking out of my depth, as I don’t live in Europe, but I’ve heard the same paraphrased headlines like these since at least 2016. Has status quo been swayed one way or another since then? Theoretically speaking, wouldn’t legislating away the top US players open the market to the local companies a la Naver in SK, WeChat in China or Line in Japan? I understand I’m dumbing it down, but assuming such legislations are supported by the local residents. I don’t think I would support it, personally, but I can see their point as well.
I don't think big-tech companies exiting is a bad thing. They're so used to getting their own way and making the rules that it's probably signal that Europe is on the right track.
Tech sector pretending that the regulations that worked in all the other sectors don't and won't apply to them or they will upend the human civilization.
The real problem is that the requirements for a social platform are getting very onerous, to the point that it takes at least several engineers working full time on the problem.
That really hurts a startup's ability to initially launch in the market, especially one with less VC money. (Certain BigCo new products can be thought of as a startup too, with limited budgets.)
This doesn't just affect social media companies, it affects almost any product where a user can upload data, or any product with a social feature, no matter how peripheral the feature is.
Turns out that's a wide swathe of technology, and that social features are fairly valuable.
Of course the big companies will eventually get around to launching in Europe anyway, it will just trail behind the rest of the world.
Because the EU values their citizens privacy tech may leave. Personally I could live with that if that is the result of my privacy being protected.
Not only the tech market, they're on a pace in destroying the agricultural market as well. Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.
Is it time for our 'tech companies complaining about EU regulation' article again? Must be a day ending in Y.
Europe is correct.Taking initiative on the moonlighting of hyper cheating of common citizens by big tech firms.It is investing all conceptual strength on wayward money making by the four tech "giants" at the cost if people.They act as sentinels and gatekeeoers to prevent cheats from secret money making.
No, it's not.
This is a not-so-thinly veiled argument for deregulation and rolling back consumer protections, pretty much like the US. It's common to use scare tactics when it comes to regulations and taxes. "Companies will leave". "You're killing companies".
As long as the EU has 400+ million consumers and they have spending power a market will exist and companies will adapt.
Take the example from the article of CUDA being a monopoly. Well, NVidia obviously isn't a European company but it will comply if the EU forces them to open CUDA because the alternative is to close themselves off to Europe. That's never going to happen.
Stop believing this "companies will leave" propaganda.
Could articles like this bemoaning Europe's state of regulation be opinion pieces?
What if what Europe does is a good idea for the people but just inconvenient for companies?
Europe is one of the power houses of the world but with low self-esteem I am afraid. In the long term what matters is the people's quality of life and diversity.
Take China or the US: if a lot of people don't have purchasing power and leisure who are then buying stuff for themselves as end users?
Before you can innovate you need to level the playing field.
Sure at the moment the amount of inner European Innovation in digital technologies is low, but local companies have to fight against foreign behemoths that simply disregard local regulations, or just buy the likes of Luxemburg or Ireland to get their own special law zones inside the single market.
Let the big US companies leave, the vacuum left behind will foster competition and local solutions.
The article doesn't list much in the way of tech. LLMs, social media, and advertising hegemons leaving Europe is hardly a tech flight. In fact, it sounds like a best case scenario. Someone call me when Zeiss moves out because they can't compete in Europe, and I'll be concerned Europe is actually losing something of value.
The entire article keeps saying "Europe" when it means "EU". Many European countries, including some large ones (Russia, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine...) are not EU members.
The article makes a number of questionable assertions such as "Non-personalized ads cannot economically sustain Meta’s services". I do not know whether that is true or not. Apple has a history of malicious so. I think there are multiple reasons the US dominates tech, and I do not believe "the EU’s rules all but ensure there are no comparably successful European companies". There are many successful European tech companies, as the article mentions later on (it links to a list of the largest that is clearly out of date - for example that omits ARM).
I also disagree with its analysis of why. If you look at their list of large tech companies, and there are a lot of Chinese ones which largely exist because China was protectionist and favoured domestic over US companies. I would argue, if anything, the EU (and other European companies) have not regulated American companies enough, to produce their own competitors. In particular they rarely block takeovers by established players of potential future competitors.
I agree the EU's approach to regulation is often badly flawed, but the DMA seems to be a reasonable approach - as other comments have said it only targets businesses with a lot of market power.
Tech is more than social networks though
The article seems unfounded to me. We need regulation because companies are gaining more power, money, and data. Social networks are shaping entire societies to behave in different ways. Android is able to comply with these rules when implementing AI why not Apple? Late? Poor implementation? . However, I hope that movements like this will push the EU to create conditions and finance channels to enable competition in the tech space. I agree that Europe is lagging more and more behind, but Apple not releasing their products here is not the problem. Not having big tech companies is the problem
It’s probably smarter to only kick-in regulations after certain size thresholds are met. You can definitely strangle an organization with paperwork before it even has enough money to hire people to do the paperwork.
If your company requires removing privacy laws and measures to stifle anti-competitive behavior, then by all means leave. I don’t want to live in a technological dystopia just to be “cutting edge”
Funny how any effort to limit Big Tech’s ability to do whatever they want is seen as a negative thing.
IMHO attention to privacy and privacy regulations will help make Europe the leader in privacy-respecting services.
One of the clearest examples of this to me is the requirement to show consent to store cookies. This just simply ruined web surfing experience, where now every site has to show a popup of all kinds of shapes and forms.
Why not let the users decide in whole-sale, if they wish? like with this extension - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/accept-all-cookies/...
Forcing global firms to leave is GOOD actually, but EU have essentially no domestic tech markets: most part of the ruling elite have no idea about IT and while they have made many wise choice in theory (eIDAS, e-billings, certified signed emails and so on) the implementation is obscene and mostly done on the shoulders of non-EU firms by not really competent local developers and the result is a practical MESS. All other the EU we almost have smart-card nfc IDs but using them is a pain because of crappy proprietary middlewaren and crapplications even more crappy on top, with public services designed by some mentally ill child with a keyboard. We have public accurate maps of the territory and no unified public way to access them, there is no public common conferencing decentralized/federated infra, some public body offer Big Blue Button or Jitsi meet based infra, others choose some USA private firm. Public money, public code is told everywhere but only told in most of the cases.
The sole way we can fill the gap is MANDATE FLOSS, publicly funding existing FLOSS projects and offering them all the infra through public universities and research bodies to create an EU-FLOSS ecosystem because that's the future we need, where once spread everywhere (desktops, smartphones, cars, domestic IoT etc) will allow private sector to pick and evolve individual ideas. This is the European way and we know it works, IF DONE. Unfortunately most fails to understand IT at all so it's not done, simply. As a result no digital sovereignty is possible on scale.
This is silly. So a bunch of American companies are refusing to go along with EU regulations that cramp their own monopolistic style. That doesn’t mean they are killing the local tech market.
I'm curious on why European people allow such heavy regulation. They really think that the Europe can enjoy their prosperity with little innovation for years to come?
The headline should be corporations are in danger of criminalizing themselves out of existence.
Regulating the tech Market is great for local tech só what happens is pretty the opposite. No country will lose GDP if meta or google leave
Did I miss anything?
Subtitle says "Poorly designed laws are forcing global firms to leave." I didn't see anything in the article that elaborates on the "poorly designed" part or any company that is forced to leave. Instead, the article uses a number of totally irrelevant examples to argue... nothing. I am really confused.
Apparently the author founded the "Center for New Liberalism". I tried to find out how that's funded, but could only see memberships that gives access to a 700+-person Slack, and couldn't find what the dues are. Would be interested in learning more about that, if anyone knows more.
Works where archive.ph is blocked:
x=https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/26/europe-tech-regulation-apple-meta-google-competition/
tnftp -4o"|(echo '<meta charset=utf-8>';grep -o '<p>.*</p>')" $x > 1.htm
firefox ./1.htm
links -force-html 1.htm
links $x
I think it should be remembered that the personalized ads are not just valuable for ad platforms - most of the personalization value actually accrues to advertisers themselves, who basically represent the entire economy.
EU regulators think their enemy is big American tech companies, but they are hurting their domestic advertisers and domestic economies even more.
I am saying this as someone who hates seeing ads and uses adblock, but I greatly appreciate the societal value.
We should be making laws that foster competition and safety. I struggle to see how cross-site tracking and personalized advertising by itself is anti-competitive or unsafe. The bigger issues that need to be solved on these platforms are gatekeeper monopolies, social division, and mental health.
I think we can debate regulations being productive or not all day and either side of the camp will never agree, however my biggest personal issue is that the government is removing the choice from anyone involved. As an adult you should be able to chose for yourself - if everyone chose no, then nobody would use these services and the companies wouldn’t do it. I think the effort needs to be focused on awareness and education, not restriction.
If the average user is fine with their data being sold in exchange for a service, then why not let them?
I’m personally not okay with it and I keep my data footprint as low as I can, but I know lots of people who just do not care if they get a service in return, and are fully understanding of what that means.
Always hilarious reading big tech propaganda. They're trying oh so hard to convince people that, no, us harvesting every single iota of information and selling it to data brokers is progress, actually!!!
The best part, for me, is while they flail and scream about the big bad EU, Japan and India are following suit with similar laws and regulations. It's only a matter of time until more and more countries start adopting these laws, and the tears from the techbros is going to be delicious.
The website the "article" (aka paid propaganda piece) is hosted on has over 700 partners that they'd like me to consent to having my data shared with. It also completely shits itself thanks to uBlock, meaning it's made so terribly that blocking the privacy-invasive trackers they have breaks the whole site.
If this is their idea of innovation, they can keep it and shove it where the sun don't shine.
I find this extremely misleading. It's not surprising, given the average american publication is not aware of the fact that the "big tech" relies on so many obscure open source software from all around the world
In my little buble hanging around the Berlin start up scene (not founder) I've never heard about complains for DMA, Ai Act etc. (only GDPr for medical stuff , but that is tackled by new laws... With less privacy).
Current stuff (other mentions): Germany's state of digitalisation and bureaucracy, investments.
So this guy clearly gives an lousy tech lobbyist .
Giving his initiative DMA is certainly pro market oriented. Why does he have a problem with it?
Well done EU and good riddance to any company that doesn't like these laws.
We have a tech market?
Europe is a place to take social benefits; there is no tech, no innovation. It's better to sit on the couch and watch Netflix than start a business. There is too much risk, too many taxes, and too many regulations.
> But politicians such as Vestager don’t get to then act shocked and outraged when tech companies choose to leave.
Much as I dislike Vestager, that is not an accurate description. This appears to be the original source:
https://www.youtube.com/live/GmQ5SsMFbsU?si=IgTi-ezhulsCl6Gp...
That is not someone "shocked" or "outraged" at Apple not bringing the AI features to EU markets. Vestager doesn't give a fuck about whether iOS ships with AI features or not. She is just saying that by citing the DMA as the reason, Apple are pretty much admitting that the features as implemented are anti-competitive. And she is stunned that Apple would be stupid enough to make that admission.
Like, you'd at least expect the Apple C-suite to pretend it's because of some technical reason, or because the cost structure isn't viable to support in Europe, or something other than that it's breaking competition laws.
I think that people outside EU who believe it does not need big tech may be unaware that average salary in EU IT is around 80k, and actually a lot of people (not only IT, but also doctors, for instance) relocate to US/UK/Swiss hoping to make much more money. Its not clear who will be running innovative companies here and how EU is going to compete with China's completely different work ethics.
I used to not understand these aggressive "everything else is shit" articles, as in whats the value proposition for the audience.horra patriotism is not in the market dor analysis. Nowadays i understand better, these articles is the closest thing the us has to systemic self-doubt for deciders.
Nah, not really. The EU will have a thriving tech market. It just won't have ad-supported sites. Because if anyone hasn't noticed, "data privacy" is just targeted ads.
"This company was caught tracking which users visited each page" Yes, for targeted ads.
"Cambridge Analytica was" Yes, for targeted ads.
"3rd party" Yes, targeted ads.
It's all targeted ads. They want to serve you targeted ads. Any attempt to paint "data privacy" as something other than this is irresponsible fearmongering.
Didn't US lose most of its production capability for the same reason? US protected its workers' rights, but there are other places with cheap labor treating the workers like shit, so businesses are using factories in other places, which then build massive expertise at production.
This is similar. EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens for good, but there are also places like US where rights are less protected, or not at all. (and frankly, a sizeable amount of people there don't even give a crap about rights that seem ephemeral for them, like privacy). So naturally businesses go to those places.
It's not poorly designed laws, or at least not just it. It's also a tragedy of commons in a global economy, moving too fast vs too slow, and many other things.
It’s all European regulation really. The cyber resilience security act is another example. You are compelled to come out with security fixes for the life of the product. If this is embedded hardware this gets increasingly difficult.
Imagine you come out with a secure boot product for the pi. Currently this is considered beta at the moment. In any case it’s quite possible that it could change, making it impossible to provide an update.
So under this regulation do you think anyone will offer any extended warranties ? The small amount of extra money will not be worth the massive extra risk.
15 million euros fine or 2% of your income doesn’t make for a very attractive incentive on platforms where it’s complex and risky to perform low level upgrades for example.
So expect increasingly shorter product lifetimes going forward and more and more products that just won’t be released in Europe, I expect even ones developed by European companies. And what do you think about small players who can’t even afford one court care for example ?
while we use it a lot apple is not our tech market.
Good.
Tech needs to slow down; neither society has caught up, nor quality controls.
1. Pay to play (tax)
2. Comply to play (regulation)
These are big markets with massive winnings even with regulation and tax. Corps can either step aside and let someone else profit or comply and play.
Please don't dissuade them/us from doing so.
It’s interesting to observe how detached the discussion here is from the issues created for Europe due to the DMA. A majority of the comments here make the implicit assumption that the DMA is good because it will penalize big tech companies and force them to change business models in the EU. This is not what is happening or will happen.
What’s really being destroyed by the DMA is Europe’s access to new technologies and services. It’s almost like a self-embargo on the AI building blocks of their future economy.
When Nvidia GPUs are supply constrained do you really think it matters to Nvidia if they need to redirect the small chunk of their supply constrained volume that they were previously selling into France? Who is harmed in this picture? The only EU AI player of note, Mistral, and other EU businesses.
Does it really harm Apple if the DMA forces them to withhold new AI features in Europe? They still earn their device and services revenues. Who is harmed in this picture? EU consumers and businesses.
We’ve now seen within just a couple months, Apple withhold AI features and Meta withhold multimodal AI models from the EU. Expect this cutting off of the EU from new features to become a recurring event over the next year.
DMA-supporting voices are under a serious misapprehension of what the effect of the DMA is and will be over the next few years. It’s cutting off European access (consumer, business & government) to critical technologies which are all being developed outside the bloc.
The DMA violates a number of longstanding principles of good legislation - it is vague, it’s written to enable arbitrary enforcement, it’s penalties are not designed to be proportionate to damages, or even require actual damages in order to be applied, the regulator’s actions stray into actual takings of property (European Commission opinion that Facebook cannot charge a subscription fee for its ad-free offering… so it must operate as a charity? This is a taking of property. European Commission opinion that Apple cannot charge a platform fee for use of its IP? This is a taking of property).
Yes yes, we took away Apple's money funnel...
Let me go find the thinnest violin, to match this thinly veiled tantrum.
As always, empty space will be filled sooner or later. The question is, filled with better or worse?
Think of regulation as a higher form of tech.
Then ask yourself how exactly the architects were self-medicating.
I think it already did.
I am an avid reader of Show HNs. And I remember many that became successful businesses. But not a single European one.
All the "startups" that I see here in Europe are very classical businesses. They build software tools for local enterprises.
It seems nobody in Europe is building something for the open web. Maybe because nobody here understands all the regulations that come with it. The GDPR alone is 100 pages of legal mumbo jumbo.
Interesting they start the article using Apple. *In general* Apple has(had?) a reputation for creating smart and useful products which work in surprisingly simple and convenient ways. Apple is dogmatic (and aggressive), but the goal has been _something great_. Drawn into the article, you ask yourself--Why is the EU handcuffing Apple? The article wouldn't have the same momentum if you started with, say, Facebook. The rules described are perverse (ex. Twitter/X's blue checkbox). The imagined outcome is a shocking lack of products which people enjoy freely elsewhere in the world.
Then I started thinking of this through the lens of B2B SaaS software I use in small business every day. The outside of the box makes promises. Sales reps make promises. Demos abound. Contracts are signed. Setup fees are paid. Setup manhours are invested. And then you start using these services and products. Support issues go unresolved--not supported at this time--and go on the 'wish list' void. What you thought of as a solution to your business needs turns to questions of sunk cost. Total frustration resulting from the obviously profit seeking economizing decisions not described on the box--devil is in the details. Who is the more naive? Businesses for having purchased these products or the companies who develop and market them as industry solutions (vs. just another product with hidden cost-benefit determinations)?
Now think of the B2C environment the article is talking about where there are known deceptive practices working to profit on user's personal privacy. I have to laugh. Seems fitting to read about naive regulation against the decisions of manufacturers and developers making abhorrent conditions in the consumer market. I see the same frustrated naive decisions of business owners trying to get out of contracts for bad products and services they have chosen.
I would hope that the EU regulates a silicon-valley style tech market out of existence. That the US is more than happy to let their megacorporations go wild as long as it benefits their economy doesn't mean that others need to do do the same.
Europe is very afraid, too much protectionism for the people. It will solve itself when it most definitely back fires in the form of the actual harm showing up because of it
If only
You know you're out of good arguments when you have to defend the eX-Twitter's blue checkmark fiasco
No they won't but okay.
I wonder if Silicon Valley lobbyists are deliberately sabotaging the Eurozone regulatory environment. Technically there’s no reason why almost all huge Western tech companies have to be located in the US. European cost of labor in this space is much lower, and access to markets is much better, since they’re on the same continent. Their ineptitude in high tech can’t be coincidental
I have noticed all the comments on HN now are pro socialist and pro regulation. I remember a time when they were mostly pro libertarian. What changed? Are these AI generated comments to push a specific viewpoint?
Actually if europe builds tech working well and delivering within regulations and the us sink into ccc capitalism caused civilunrest,europas overregulated tech may be the last man standing and the one trusted by the world for stability.
The most telling feature of the DMA is that it doesn't include Spotify.
Spotify would not be compliant under the DMA for the same reason why the EU has charged Meta with non-compliance:
>Under Article 5(2) of the DMA, gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between designated core platform services and other services, and if a user refuses such consent, they should have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative. Gatekeepers cannot make use of the service or certain functionalities conditional on users’ consent.
- Source: EC statement¹
However the EU doesn't deem there to be any gatekeepers for music.² YouTube has over 80 million music subscribers. To avoid this obvious conflict they label "YouTube" as a video sharing site, deliberately ignoring one of the largest drivers of youtube traffic is music videos. Something which Google themselves advertise.³
If the EU cared about privacy and user harm they'd make the DMA protections apply to every business, not just big foreign ones.
Spotify's ads website actually brags about how it targets and tracks users and the various 3rd party data companies they partner with to extend that beyond Spotify.⁴
It's clear as day that the EU doesn't care about user harm or privacy, they just want that money for themselves. A view that is buttressed by what they're trying to do to encrypted chat communications.
¹ https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
² https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en
³ https://www.youtube.com/trends/records/
⁴ https://ads.spotify.com/en-US/goals/audience-targeting/ https://ads.spotify.com/en-US/partner-directory/
If there is one thing we need to be afraid of, it is, that we don't regulate tech giants enough. That they can continue to exploit people. Maybe also, that GDPR continues to be violated by 90% of companies, because they think they will get away with it.
The core issue with the DMA is that there is no kind of pre-vetting or assurances available. This is combined with a very wide set of interpretations from a vague set of texts. We've already seen the DMA being waged against a scenario which Margrethe Vestager¹ herself had originally stated would be an ideal outcome of the DMA.²
When 10% of global revenue is on the line it makes adequate sense to tread carefully with EU releases until there is some legal precedent. (And 20% if the EU finds that compliance isn't being met.)
Margrethe Vestager has stated that withholding features is proof of anti-competitive behaviour. Such a statement would be hilarious if it wasn't so obviously preordained, and patently tone-deaf from the consequences of her own statements.
So what's the end game for the EU? In theory this should allow local and small competitors to fill the void since they're not beholden to the DMA. My expectation is that it'll just be the EU perpetually several steps behind the rest of the world and some types of tech involvement only available via US-based purchases/import basis.
¹ Margrethe Vestager: "I would like to have a Facebook in which I pay a fee each month, but I would have no tracking and advertising and the full benefits of privacy." https://www.euractiv.com/section/competition/interview/vesta...
² Facebook and Instagram’s ‘pay or consent’ ad model violates the DMA, says the EU https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/1/24189796/eu-meta-dma-viola...
That's hilarious to see Apply trying to punish Europeans for standing up for their rights.
Good luck with that, we don't care for your "intelligence".
Oh the irony of this article being covered by a consent screen that starts with:
„We & our 735 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store and access personal data on your device.“
The Human Brain Project's final 3 year period could have actually delivered a platform for actually modeling real human brain data, and GDPR totally blew that possibility out of the water: no one had the budget to take on the legal risk, and everything was finished up with synthetic/augmented datasets or done "locally".
our colleagues in the US and China are chuckling, so we'll just move our science there.
It's not like europe has any viable economic future left anyways. They've regulated, taxed and sanctioned their own industries out of existence and tourism is an excessively poor substitute economically. Good luck having high-tech industry or market without domestic support for it.
Pretty much only thing Europe is consistently producing nowadays is new legislations (EU and national, which are enforced incoherently and at the times contradictory)
Quite frankly I would prefer no tech industry over today's large, unregulated, monopolistic and aggressive tech industry. I feel like my life has not significantly improved at all relative to the enormous growth of the US tech industry in the last ten years, I'm no happier today than I was back then. Almost all of the gains have gone to a concentrated elite that I am not part of. Lately I've been looking at my phone and devices and other tech toys and asking "was any of this worth it?".
Pretty sure they already did that. Isn’t their flagship SAP? Lol
did goon lawyers in Silicon Valley write this?
Foreign Policy is pearl-clutching because they've seen what actually enforced antitrust law looks like for the first time since Borke and Reagan ratfucked it.
The thing is, the tech business is uniquely conducive to generating monopolies, for a handful of reasons. The biggest being we're a copyright industry. Congress made the mistake of putting software under the same legal framework as Mickey Mouse, so the monopoly tech companies have over interoperability is government granted, has little bounds on its power, and lasts forever. And when tech and creative industries got together to enforce those legal rights through software, we got DMCA 1201, an awful law that gives anyone with a valid copyright veto rights over technological progress. The only way you get shit done in the tech industry is to get acquired so that you have enough market power to license and collaborate.
Outside of copyright we have online services firms like Google and Facebook, who operate primarily through surveillance capitalism. In prior media landscapes, if you wanted to sell to New York Times readers, you had to buy inventory in the Times. Today, you ask Google and Facebook to put ads on anyone who went on nytimes.com in the past week, which is just as lucrative for the ad buyer but Google and Facebook can pay the other sites less than what an actual NYT ad would command. Targeted advertising moves money away from a diverse and distributed group of publishers towards a pair of ad networks who know exactly everything about everyone at all times.
Facebook absolutely could be 'paid for' through nontargeted ads, but it makes Facebook a far less valuable business if they can't siphon data off you and sell it to other companies. Hell, Apple already proved this: iOS 14 moved ad tracking to opt-in[0], so nobody opted in, and Facebook had a revenue hit.
Europe is not inhospitable to tech, but it is inhospitable to tech monopolization, which is predominantly how American firms operate. And to be honest, I don't think Europe is wrong to do this. In fact, I want America's government to start doing the same thing. I want a government that acts less like a rubber stamp for a handful of megacorporations and more like the villains in an Ayn Rand novel.
Do you want to see what the alternative is? Simple: the end of democracy. Trump was just a preview. Democracy is not a given, it requires distributed political power, which requires distributed wealth and economic power. If a handful of firms can centralize economic power to themselves, then they become the economy, and they can start pulling the strings politically. We already saw this with oil in the 70s, but basically every American industry works this way. The only vestige of democracy left is that sometimes industries have conflicting economic interests and that sometimes the working class hurls an orange brick through everyone's windows.
[0] Unless you're Apple, who can still track you. Related note: Google is basically being forced to keep third-party cookies in Chrome because they dragged their feet on removing them for far too long.
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They have some valid gripes but then they get to:
Or consider the recent charges the EU levied against X. Under Elon Musk’s ownership, anyone can now purchase a blue check with a paid subscription, whereas blue checks were previously reserved for notable figures. EU regulators singled out the new system for blue checks as a deceptive business practice that violates the bloc’s Digital Services Act.
What are they thinking?? The blue check mark is supposed to mean verified. They changed it to simply mean paid subscription. They took a symbol of trust and utterly ripped out the trust part. I don't care how much you publicize it, that's not acceptable.
Would he be ok with my going and purchasing a SSL certificate for www.x.com???
Eliminating goggle, apple and meta could only be regarded as a good thing...
Throw out bozo too for the win-win...
The efficacy of bureaucratic destruction is explicit in warfare guidance [0]. We pretend peacetime is different. It’s not.
So among non-EU-dwellers, let’s raise a glass to our fallen competitors and erstwhile comrades. Better than Nordstreaming them, or at least more subtle. Onward, toward a new vassal-state future!
edit: It appears that EU subjects are distraught, or the topic is too raw. Let me know!
https://archive.ph/sLsnW