Seems like a good thing.
Looking at the google lawyer privilege drama it sure seems like big tech needs a firmer hand
EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
41–50 of 351 posts
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#42> mandates to allow users to install apps from third-party platforms Some people at Apple are getting a headache right now. Other companies that have been dabbling with the idea to lock down their OS probably too. If this happens my next phone might even be an iPhone.
I had the same thought.
Apple makes great hardware and the main thing that was holding me back from getting one was their heavy handed approach on what applications I am allowed to install on my device and from what source.
If this works I would probably go for it.
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#43One 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…
I would say most people don't agonize over it because most people don't follow GDPR here in Germany. I think more and more people are slowly complying, but certainly in the last 3 years no one has cared.
I personally believe GDPR will never be properly enforced and most people will ignore it. The easy parts of GDPR (cookies, fonts, I guess CDNs now) are automatically detectable, and the hard parts (deletion of data, data processing agreements, necessary collection) are not. There is no way to automatically find out if someone is storing IP addresses in their access logs.
One of the really funny things I encountered in Germany is the emphasis on data privacy/protection...
But every single citizen has to inform the government where they live and their religion. You also have to inform your boss of your religion. If you make creative content, you have to publish your address as well (unless you can afford to start a business at another location).
You can find out where anyone in Germany lives for a small fee.
Those things have about 10x greater impact on my day-to-day life than Twitter finding out I watched a "cancer prognosis" video. I know they're not mutually exclusive, but it shows where priorities lie.
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#44> 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…
>interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger
Who will be decrypting WA and Signal message to pass them to Facebook Messanger?
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#45It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose.
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#46> EU officials have agreed on landmark rules I'm not sure what this means in terms of the timeline. Will it be voted for in European Parliament and if yes, when? To what extent this may be changed in the final edition? And if it's adopted as a law, how much of a grace period will the companies have?
The trilog between the parliament and the member states decided upon a text. Next each chamber will vote on it but this is usually just a formality since they gave the negotiators a mandate beforehand. If it passes, the text will become a EU directive which needs to be incorporated into national law by the member states. After that it becomes enforceable.
Edit: whoops
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#47> 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…
At the end of the day, chat apps are nothing more than a bunch of text, some compressed pictures, and maaaybe a voice recording. It's very simple data to be transmitted, and any problems with interop are self-made bloat and proprietorship.
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#48> 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…
> Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out.
Capability negotiation is a thing. It's perfectly fine to support some baseline feature set (one-to-one text messages) and build more optional features on top of it. But, yes, it's important that the protocol is designed to be extensible in the first place.
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#49I pray that this, especially the interoperability requirements comes through not only with teeth, but with claws and a ravenous hunger. I believe one of the key things that allow innovation to foster is beating down the rentseekers,i.e. enabling adversarial interoperability https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interop... and making it easy for individuals to tinker and innovate without needing capital or lawyers to protect themselves. I am severely envious of the californian "right to compete" for these reasons https://www.callahan-law.com/are-non-competes-enforceable-in... and a "right to interoperate" will go a long way towards breaking monopology-enabling network effects.
Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> open standards also slow down the development of new features On one hand, that is not right: open standards mean no walled garden, rather than each garden equally ugly. On the other hand, that is exactly the point: no new feature can be used to buy the users' freedom to interact with customers of other services.
Would you like to go back to the dark times of IE6?
All the browsers since IE6 are built on open standards. It was stagnation and lack of openness (ActiveX) which caused IE6 to hang around so long.