31–40 of 44 posts
The tech world is going to have to decide pretty quickly what it wants to be: 1. A set of dumb pipes and a public square for information. Or 2. A curated community built for advertising where things that offend people are censored. Right now tech has chosen option 2, but in answer to any regulation it doesn't like, it pretends it has chosen option 1 and loudly screams "free speech". Tech is trying to have its cake an…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook will have a lobby that carves out an exception for itself while simultaneously shutting down any threat to its monopoly through this legislation.
Governments could take down fb (and google) if they chose to. They'll fight back but the Chinese have demonstrated that it's possible given sufficient will. With fb having recently been targeting Kremlin propaganda at voting populations I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they didn't get canned in the name of national security.
The tech world is going to have to decide pretty quickly what it wants to be: 1. A set of dumb pipes and a public square for information. Or 2. A curated community built for advertising where things that offend people are censored. Right now tech has chosen option 2, but in answer to any regulation it doesn't like, it pretends it has chosen option 1 and loudly screams "free speech". Tech is trying to have its cake an…
Interconnects and ISPs are largely dumb pipes.
Individual websites can choose whether they're curated or shitshows. Sites like 4chan do exist, as well as other "wild wests" of freedom.
Sites like facebook where the actual user curates their own information (via following or not certain people) do exist and seem to do particularly well.
And on the final side, personal sites, like "Alice's Blog" do exis, where all content is curated by the central person running the site and all users get the same experience.
I don't get why you say "OR" or say that tech has chosen particular options. Each website gets to make its own choice and deal with various consequences.
The parts between a user and a given webpage -- the isp, interconnects, bgp routing, dns, and hosting/vps-providers/clouds -- have largely chosen to be dumb pipes offering services to anyone who pays.
The tech world is going to have to decide pretty quickly what it wants to be: 1. A set of dumb pipes and a public square for information. Or 2. A curated community built for advertising where things that offend people are censored. Right now tech has chosen option 2, but in answer to any regulation it doesn't like, it pretends it has chosen option 1 and loudly screams "free speech". Tech is trying to have its cake an…
Usually the industry defends regulation aligned with its own interests and has ties with governments.
I'm sorry, but an article like this should contain quotes or at least links to the actual text under discussion. Like this, it's only an opinion piece.
Try getting information from actual organization putting their money where their mouth is: European Copyright Reform: A New Directive Against Fundamental Freedoms[1].
See also: https://changecopyright.org/en-US/ and https://netcommons.eu/sites/default/files/netcommons_eecc_no...
Without links to the actual proposal this sounds like a propaganda piece.
Dunno what else is in the document, but the thing I'm looking forward to is the single digital market. I'm frankly pissed that a ton of services are unavailable outside the few European posterboy countries.
Could you electorate what services are missing? The only thing I noticed is that the catalogue of streaming services is smaller in some European countries but I don’t think a "single digital market" would help much. The single digital market is oriented towards lowering trade barriers and having unified regulations instead of splitting local monopolies such as media companies and phone companies (which would help Net…
In simplified terms, all member countries agree on a set a set of shared requirements for a type of product, and any product meeting those requirements is allowed to be sold in all EU countries.
So where you earlier had to meet certifications in each EU country, you now have only one standard to meet with your product. That's a big reduction in red tape, saving a lot of time and money for everyone! (contrary to popular opinion, the EU has reduced bureaucracy more than it increased it)
Individual countries can deviate by have more lax requirements (which is why you can still buy cazu marzu in Sardinia, despite it not meeting EU regulations), but not stronger.
Remember, all EU countries have to agree to sign up, and this is also why it can take many years and tweaks to come to such an agreement.
And the rabbit hole is deeper than you think. It isn't just fire safety regulations for flags, making idiots look like idiots[0], it goes all the way down to agreeing what kind of cardboard is acceptable for sending your mail (IIRC, there were different standards in what chemicals were considered toxic or not).
The thing is, I can't really imagine how one would apply the same kind of principles to the Internet. What is there to unify? The internet doesn't really have borders, does it? I mean I guess the underlying infrastructure could be unified, but that's not really the "market" part, is it?
Without links to the actual proposal this sounds like a propaganda piece.
1: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/11/scientists_free_sof... 2: https://torrentfreak.com/mandatory-piracy-filters-could-brea... 3: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook will have a lobby that carves out an exception for itself while simultaneously shutting down any threat to its monopoly through this legislation.
In the EU, maybe not. This may be a signal that the internet has become way too centralized. The irony of the centralization of a decentralized platform is suddenly enforcement of regulations like these become feasible. The nuclear-war proof internet is suddenly vulnerable to people sitting behind desks or whatever the hell they do in Europe.
The tech world is going to have to decide pretty quickly what it wants to be: 1. A set of dumb pipes and a public square for information. Or 2. A curated community built for advertising where things that offend people are censored. Right now tech has chosen option 2, but in answer to any regulation it doesn't like, it pretends it has chosen option 1 and loudly screams "free speech". Tech is trying to have its cake an…
I wonder what you conflate into a supposed "tech world". Much of the tech industry is unrelated to building the internet infrastructure. Usually the industry defends regulation aligned with its own interests and has ties with governments.
We could call it Information Tech but that's already been claimed by people in corporate environments.