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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

#81

Post by chalst »

koonsolo wrote: post #66
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…

Fellow EU entrepreneur here: you being downvoted says enough about what kind of people are commenting here. US works with a "better ask forgiveness than permission" model, where you are pretty free to do what you want, but people can sue you. EU works with the opposite: create rules and keep companies compliant with those rules. It's pretty obvious to see that the 1st model is very beneficial for startups and bootstr…

I didn't downvote but I thought it was a weak comment: it's a generally valid perspective but doesn't seem tailored to the actual news, which is mostly tailored to large capitalisation/turnover companies.

The general pro-vs-anti regulation dimension of the argument over tech policy seems to lack the necessary nuance if it doesn't ask about antitrust. The lack of antitrust regulation in the US has meant that the SV pipeline which fifteen years ago supported a diverse tech landscape is at risk of degenerating into one that only aims to produce targets for monopolists to buyout. It's a possible future of your "1st model" I'd rather we were more worried about.

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

#82

Post by chockchocschoir »

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…

> 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 progress has been made in 25+ years, despite the platform being hopelessly insecure.

A more successful example of open standards would be the various standards that browsers use. Would you say that browser innovation has slowed down? The model adopted there is less "Wait for everyone to adopt this new standard we wrote" and more "If you have a feature you found many people are using, suggest it as a standard and we'll get all browsers to implement it".

This model could be replicated to messaging solutions as well, without slowing down any innovation as companies can add new features, as long as they get standardized over time.

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

#83

Post by watwut »

koonsolo wrote: post #66
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…

Fellow EU entrepreneur here: you being downvoted says enough about what kind of people are commenting here. US works with a "better ask forgiveness than permission" model, where you are pretty free to do what you want, but people can sue you. EU works with the opposite: create rules and keep companies compliant with those rules. It's pretty obvious to see that the 1st model is very beneficial for startups and bootstr…

That does not make US less regulated. It makes regulations unpredictable and unevenly enforced.

Also, cookie banners are mostly bad faith restriction implementation. You can have functional cookies with no banner. What you cant have are those tracking cookies which is what the whole thing is about.

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

#84

Post by chockchocschoir »

pabs3 wrote: post #20
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…

Pidgin is still there, still works and supports modern chat platforms too, via plugins: https://pidgin.im/plugins/ Of course, some platforms ban you for using alternate clients.

> Pidgin is still there, still works and supports modern chat platforms too, via plugins

Nice!

> Of course, some platforms ban you for using alternate clients.

Less nice... Doesn't seem like that list outlines which platforms will/could ban you either, which makes the entire list a no-go for me, and I'm sure others.

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

#85

Post by giorgioz »

blue1 wrote: post #74
giorgioz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah wow this is a brilliant sentence! I never saw governments as platforms but they DO ARE! In fact I was always critizing Apple App Store 30% by saying: "What is the App Store a government that can charge me a 30% tax?" and in fact my fear is the reconstruction of a DIGITAL FEUDAL SYSTEM. Where there is a King that charge a tax and then there is smaller and smaller nesting of feudal lords that charge other taxes. KIN…

*Marquis

Both Marquess and Marquis are correct so I guess I merged them into Marquees XD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess

In Italian, which is my native language, it would be MARCHESE.

Fun fact, there is a whole Italian region called Marche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche

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

#86

Post by nonrandomstring »

This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need.

You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple.

But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle:

- Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobbying (bribes)

- "Preferred solution" impositions masquerading as fake security "policy"

- Lack of skills in organisations.

- Poor education about the risks of technological mono-cultures

- Technical lock-in measures, DRM, TPM enclaves

BigTech domination has been going on for 10-15 years now, and it has become more than just than just a set of facts around market shares and network effects. It's gotten soaked into our culture and the marrow of our institutions and will take a good deal of pain to chase out.

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

#87

Post by rolisz »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #63
grishka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's perfectly fine to support some baseline feature set (one-to-one text messages) and build more optional features on top of it. So keep the status quo (SMS/MMS) and build more features on top of that ?

In the EU (at least in Romania), MMS is not a thing, and even SMS is not the status quo. Everyone talks using WhatsApp mostly.

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

#88

Post by madsbuch »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #63
grishka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> It's perfectly fine to support some baseline feature set (one-to-one text messages) and build more optional features on top of it. So keep the status quo (SMS/MMS) and build more features on top of that ?

Those are not extensible enough as they are bound to the transport layer.

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

#89

Post by aspenmayer »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #30
FreeHugs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well once I saw their application, I wasn't interested in working at Canonical either. And I'm currently looking for work, for what it's worth.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678

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