EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone • Hacker News Board

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#181

Post by winston_smith » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:07 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #172

dcposch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly what they're worried about. Here's a less flattering angle on the same worry. Europe is caught pants-down. They are realizing how weak they are in tech and scrambling to fix it. The facts: - None of the 20 most valuable companies in the world are European. Most are US or China based, and many are tech. - A tiny number of successful startups are European. I think their biggest in the last 20 years is…

If EU doesn't have valuable companies and cannot produce valuable products how come that EU is not much different for living standarts than the US then? Is EU a petrostate? Where the money comes from if USA makes all the good stuff and EU none? From pumping out the Bulgarian crude or mining the Spanish rare earth metals? The thing is, Europe missed out on the Software&Internet and the reality is, it is not the only t…

You can have an okay economy without tech heavy hitters, but the point is that being dependent on US internet tech or Russian natural gas or whatever can be a significant vulnerability.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#182

Post by dougmwne » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:15 AM UTC

syntaxing wrote: post #60

I know this is a heated topic but I really don’t understand what the other options are. Having businesses dictate who they want to serve seems like censorship but having the government dictate it seems way worse. I’m not sure how to decouple or balance the freedom of will as a business, freedom of will as a person and the societal mandate of the majority (which is how democracy works? It’s always about the majority v…

No freedom is absolute. As a society, we choose where to draw the line for the common good. We can choose to make whatever laws we want to regulate business and technology. Indeed, we already have made many, many of them.

Tech benefited enormously from moving fast and being mostly unregulated as a result. Looking at the finance industry though, every new law was written in blood or tears over the course of centuries. Now blood has been spilled by social media in the US Capitol and the world has taken notice.

It's not going to be easy or fast, but good policy can help keep Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg from controlling the political outcomes of every democracy in the world.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#183

Post by zdragnar » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

wolco5 wrote: post #154

op00to wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the EU doesn’t like it, they should make their own platform. This isn’t a public park, we are talking about privately owned property.

The point is to regulate social media for European citizens. They set the rules. If facebook or twitter cannot follow them they will pull out of that market allowing space for a local platform to take over.

It would be interesting to see how that pans out for social media, since they tried with Google News and that, if I was correctly informed, hurt local publishers rather than helped.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#184

Post by analog31 » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:21 AM UTC

winston_smith wrote: post #181

mrtksn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If EU doesn't have valuable companies and cannot produce valuable products how come that EU is not much different for living standarts than the US then? Is EU a petrostate? Where the money comes from if USA makes all the good stuff and EU none? From pumping out the Bulgarian crude or mining the Spanish rare earth metals? The thing is, Europe missed out on the Software&Internet and the reality is, it is not the only t…

You can have an okay economy without tech heavy hitters, but the point is that being dependent on US internet tech or Russian natural gas or whatever can be a significant vulnerability.

Out of curiosity which tech heavy hitters would Europe be vulnerable to losing? I assume they could live without Facebook for a few days.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#185

Post by mrtksn » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:24 AM UTC

winston_smith wrote: post #181

mrtksn wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If EU doesn't have valuable companies and cannot produce valuable products how come that EU is not much different for living standarts than the US then? Is EU a petrostate? Where the money comes from if USA makes all the good stuff and EU none? From pumping out the Bulgarian crude or mining the Spanish rare earth metals? The thing is, Europe missed out on the Software&Internet and the reality is, it is not the only t…

You can have an okay economy without tech heavy hitters, but the point is that being dependent on US internet tech or Russian natural gas or whatever can be a significant vulnerability.

Sure, just as US is dependent on Chinese manufacturing.

That’s why the respective actors are taking actions to fix it.

Another argument is that not having heavy hitters but more evenly spread diverse businesses is a better thing.

US’s economy is tied to extremely large consumerism. An argument is that as humanity we should reduce consumption anyway.

That’s why I would stick with quality of life indicators instead of top list and charts of the economic indicators.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#186

Post by RhodoYolo » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #126

It's hard to overlook that the political class is suddenly up in arms about this primarily because they suddenly perceive themselves as being under threat from it. Ordinary individuals and businesses have had to deal with the hegemony of the platforms for a long time and it hasn't really mattered until now. I fear the outcome of this is going to be that it translates into massive regulatory overreach and splitting up…

What would breaking them up even mean? I feel we would be in the same situation as brexit - How do we split them without collapsing all the pieces? You can point to microsoft but modern american has brought an entirely different, much larger, more entrenched behemoths than what we've seen.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#187

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #172

dcposch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly what they're worried about. Here's a less flattering angle on the same worry. Europe is caught pants-down. They are realizing how weak they are in tech and scrambling to fix it. The facts: - None of the 20 most valuable companies in the world are European. Most are US or China based, and many are tech. - A tiny number of successful startups are European. I think their biggest in the last 20 years is…

If EU doesn't have valuable companies and cannot produce valuable products how come that EU is not much different for living standarts than the US then? Is EU a petrostate? Where the money comes from if USA makes all the good stuff and EU none? From pumping out the Bulgarian crude or mining the Spanish rare earth metals? The thing is, Europe missed out on the Software&Internet and the reality is, it is not the only t…

> If EU doesn't have valuable companies and cannot produce valuable products how come that EU is not much different for living standarts than the US then?

I think you need to turn this question around: if the USA has all these valuable companies and all this amazing innovation, how come our standard of living is the same or lower than that of Europeans? What's all that stuff for? Just making a bunch of people very rich?

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#188

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

corty wrote: post #169

zmmmmm wrote: post #126

It's hard to overlook that the political class is suddenly up in arms about this primarily because they suddenly perceive themselves as being under threat from it. Ordinary individuals and businesses have had to deal with the hegemony of the platforms for a long time and it hasn't really mattered until now. I fear the outcome of this is going to be that it translates into massive regulatory overreach and splitting up…

The hypocrisy of the political class is even deeper, at least in Germany. Just recently, laws were passed to make platforms like Facebook filter, censor and rapidly delete content that might be against some law. Not after a court decision or at least an official order, no no, nothing so formal. A user complaint is sufficient to trigger the need to check within a few hours, have the platform decide to delete and repor…

[deleted]

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#189

Post by shripadk » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #126

It's hard to overlook that the political class is suddenly up in arms about this primarily because they suddenly perceive themselves as being under threat from it. Ordinary individuals and businesses have had to deal with the hegemony of the platforms for a long time and it hasn't really mattered until now. I fear the outcome of this is going to be that it translates into massive regulatory overreach and splitting up…

> encourage competition through enforcing open standards

Big Tech destroyed this hope the moment it banned Parler and everyone cheered this ideological censorship.

Big Tech crossed every line in launching a coordinated attack on a rival. The damage this has done cannot be quantified. The ideal way to have gone about this is involvement of Courts/Legislature to decide if Parler should be banned or not. Not a group of private companies deciding to fuck a competitor. It is a horrible horrible precedent which has absolutely zero excuses.

Re: EU Commission: ‘No longer acceptable’ for platforms to take key decisions alone

#190

Post by foofoo4u » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #160

mc32 wrote: post #123

I think the EU understands the precedent this sets. The tech giants have established that if they disagree with something (using their preferred value system), they feel they have the right to take action. Let’s say the an EU minister proposes something that’s antithetical to US principles but is lawful in the EU, now tech giants feel emboldened with the right to take action _unilaterally_ without the right to an app…

That is certainly what they're worried about. Here's a less flattering angle on the same worry. Europe is caught pants-down. They are realizing how weak they are in tech and scrambling to fix it. The facts: - None of the 20 most valuable companies in the world are European. Most are US or China based, and many are tech. - A tiny number of successful startups are European. I think their biggest in the last 20 years is…

I have similar observations and concerns in regards to the United States’ overdependence on China as its supplier. I believe COVID-19 has revealed how dependent we are on China for even the most basic of supplies. America’s inability to domestically manufacture simple things such as masks is deeply worrisome. Think about it. We are unable to manufacture basic things at scale to fulfill basic needs of the country. We are no longer self-dependent. America’s generals have voiced concerns for years about how the majority of rare earth metals are derived from China. Metals of which are used in all of our sophisticated technology, such as computers, missiles, jets, satellites, etc. But COVID has revealed that these concerns span far greater than just technology and weapon systems. Similar to how the tech conglomerates can unilaterally erase the president of the United States in one fell swoop, China can also pull the rug from under us when it comes to supply chain. It’s a national security issue. We shouldn’t make ourselves so vulnerable.