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EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

politico.eu

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Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#21

Post by kuboble »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #17
hrnnnnnn wrote: post #2

> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient…

> meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms The way i read it, they're calling for open standards, which can be a good thing. Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out. Take email (SMTP, IMAP, etc) as an example, where no major progr…

Yes. That lowest common denominator will be probably being able to send text messages. Maybe a little more.

It's a big thing. And it's a great thing.

Already in email you have some cool features that only work Gmail to Gmail but you can still send basic emails to people outside of Gmail.

Businesses will not need business accounts on 6 different platforms just so thay can have a simple chat with all their customers.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#22

Post by FreeHugs »

ivancho wrote: post #19
FreeHugs wrote: post #8

One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amo…

Oh, man, such a shame about all these laws.. [checks notes].. protecting users from predatory company behavior. Things would be so much easier if we didn't have those laws - we could all start web startups.

Regulating local companies is making things only worse. That is the reason why all of Europe depends on foreign tools in the first place.

It is a similar death spiral to how we deal with the housing problem. People have a hard time finding affordable apartments in the city centers? Create more laws that limit rents! Does this create more apartments? No. It just send the local housing market further down the drain.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#23

Post by matthewmacleod »

FreeHugs wrote: post #8

One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amo…

One reason the EU missed out on the internet… Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup

The EU does actually have a variety of "internet" companies – and that includes Germany! There are certainly less of them; regulation could be one of the things that affects that, but it seems way more likely to be a wildly different environment for funding. Investors are more conservative and far less likely to throw dumb money at anything that moves, which means fewer successful unicorns. I'm not sure that's the best approach, but I'm not an investor.

they spend endless amounts of energy on agonizing over the GDPR

No they don't. GDPR compliance is generally fairly straightforward for any company which isn't trying to deliberately harvest and profit from your data—particularly a new company with no legacy—and in any case represents a set of practices that should be followed by any company dealing with private data in any case.

By the same token, those startups have to worry far less about the nonsense patent and IP environment in the US. So worst case we'll call it a wash.

We sanctioned ourselfes by making the use of foreign SAAS illegal.

This did not happen. Use of non-EU SaaS is legal, subject to it being compliant with local regulation.

I'm always a bit weirded out by strenuous objections to GDPR – it seems to me that the data privacy environment in Europe is broadly pretty sensible. You need to:

- know what data you are using

- have a good justification for using it

- take appropriate precautions to secure it

- make sure users are aware of what you are doing with it

- allow users to access and correct the data you hold on them

I find it hard to object to that.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#24

Post by FreeHugs »

mschuster91 wrote: post #11
FreeHugs wrote: post #8

One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amo…

> One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. Bollocks. The key difference between here and the US is the simple fact that we don't have enormous amounts of "dumb money" from pension and hedge funds screaming to be invested into anything that remotely smells like it could be worth money one time - remember Yo! which got 1M funding?! - and then founders making big money a…

Dumb money is not the basis for the web as we know it.

Look at where we are communicating here. On a US website built by a single person.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#25

Post by dureuill »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #2

> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient…

good news. we also need interoperability requirements for social networks. like twitter and facebook must be mandated by law to provide access to their networks to smaller networks. only then would people be free to leave these networks without suffering from "network effect"

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#26

Post by hnbad »

FreeHugs wrote: post #8

One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amo…

Funny how I have worked both as a developer and a business owner building applications for startups and established businesses alike and yet as both a consumer and a professional I'm glad to live under EU jurisdiction instead of the US because all those evil privacy protections and regulations mean I can have a reasonable expectation that companies can't just do what they want with the data I entrust them.

People like you love to complain about cookie banners but somehow fail to acknowledge that the reason cookie banners are a thing is that companies go out of their way to try and game the regulations instead of actually implementing them. Sure, you can't build the next Facebook in the EU but maybe not being able to build a business on intentionally abusing your users' trust is not a bad thing.

If you just want to get rich, there's still plenty of nigh-unregulated banking and speculative investment you can get involved in with narry a consequence. If you want to build software, I'm not very sorry you're inconvenienced by regulations that actually protect people from your overreach.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#27

Post by Zenst »

elcomet wrote: post #15
Zenst wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, somewhat reminded that some things move slow. Of note I remember the whole Microsoft monoply for web browser fiasco by the EU with the time they got around to a rulling/actioning, Google had come out of no were and usurped Microsoft as the dominante browser.

Why do you say it was a fiasco ? It seems to have worked as expected, browsers are much better than IE from those days due to competition.

Time they did anything, the problem/market had sorted itself out.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#28

Post by can16358p »

While I think big tech needs to be controlled, I think this is the wrong approach.

This will slow down development by being forced to implement interop where they shouldn't be forced to IMO, and will confuse less savvy users (e.g. "Why can't I send this $platform_native_content to Bob but can send perfectly to Alice in the same app?").

Controlling entities' presence within the public (the Internet) is one thing, forcing to do things within their own platform/domain is another.

Sadly, EU picked the latter.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#29

Post by AitchEmArsey »

FreeHugs wrote: post #22
ivancho wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, man, such a shame about all these laws.. [checks notes].. protecting users from predatory company behavior. Things would be so much easier if we didn't have those laws - we could all start web startups.

Regulating local companies is making things only worse. That is the reason why all of Europe depends on foreign tools in the first place. It is a similar death spiral to how we deal with the housing problem. People have a hard time finding affordable apartments in the city centers? Create more laws that limit rents! Does this create more apartments? No. It just send the local housing market further down the drain.

By your own argument, foreign companies can navigate the rules for selling into Europe just fine - so what is stopping a European company from doing the same?

If there is any remaining problem it is that the rules are not enforced strictly enough on tech giants.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#30

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

FreeHugs wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. Bollocks. The key difference between here and the US is the simple fact that we don't have enormous amounts of "dumb money" from pension and hedge funds screaming to be invested into anything that remotely smells like it could be worth money one time - remember Yo! which got 1M funding?! - and then founders making big money a…

Dumb money is not the basis for the web as we know it. Look at where we are communicating here. On a US website built by a single person.

>Dumb money is not the basis for the web as we know it.

It's not, but it's the basis of ad-driven, surveillance-ware, and user engagement optimized companies that drive the ludicrously high profits and wages in the US tech sector.

Do you see US tech workers lining up to work for Canonical? Yeah, I thought so too.

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