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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#171

Post by Cthulhu_ »

Scrapemist wrote: post #75
mrweasel wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comes up everything the EU/Europe and Apple comes up: iMessage is hugely popular, it is just not the most popular (or even third or second) messaging platform. Also the largest is Facebook Messenge, and in the top five is another Meta product, WhatsApp. So it's not like it's all Signal, Viper or Telegram, it's mostly platforms from another US tech giant.

Switching is easy

Switching yourself is easy, but you can't expect everyone you interact with to switch too when they don't have a reason for it (and they have the same problem of getting all of their contacts to switch).

If there's interop between the chat applications - and be honest, do any of them have a unique selling point that makes them significantly better to the average user? - then that restriction is lifted.

It improves competition, which is healthy in a free economy (something corporate liberals really push for), forcing the chat apps to innovate instead of benefit off of critical mass / first mover advantage.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#172

Post by Kbelicius »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #135
Scarblac wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Meta could behave like normal companies and require users to pay them money and not sell PII. If that makes them far less successful that's good news for competitors.

You actually can pay Meta €9.99/month for ad-free Facebook+Instagram in the EU. I would hope this also causes them to track and use much less PII, but I couldn't find anything substantiating that.

As far as I understand the problem with that scheme is that by not paying you not only agree to see the ads but also to the tracking.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#173

Post by gschizas »

wolfendin wrote: post #151
theshrike79 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vote for who decides things in the EU. I have no say in how Google, for example, does their business. I'm way too poor for that. I'd need literal billions of stock to get Satya Nadella's phone number =)

Good for you, I can’t and now I have to deal with endless pop ups about cookies.

The cookie popups are just the dark pattern that companies decided to use to avoid using those sweet, sweet money from selling your private data. They were never prescribed by GDPR.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#174

Post by martimarkov »

simion314 wrote: post #124
kernal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple should play their Trump card and threaten to pull out of the EU. The EU would blink first because the public backlash would be career ending.

How Apple would justify the big financial hit? The evil EU forces us to give our customer choices, this will hit our profits so we derided we should lose even more money by just not participating in the market. Though I REALLY want to find an Apple fanboy defending the policy where Apple does not allow an app to display some text like "if you buy or extend this subscription on our website it is cheaper, you have a ch…

As a fanboy what I want to see is not this message because this means fragmentation. I’d like to be able to manage my subscriptions from the settings menu. Honestly the most important part I feel DMA should have tackled and not just forced stuff on big tech. Yeah they are gatekeepers but they also provide value as gatekeepers. Force everyone to use an API for subscriptions management and if they don’t participate allow me to chargeback and not have any legal repercussions and I would NEVER have a problem with any alternative stores.

Also don’t want apps which are saying: visit this to get cheaper rates or completely not offer me to buy in-app as it is a waste of time to go their random website power by Y platform. You establish this go to website to subscribe and it will increase overall fraud.

These are my problems with the above. Very easily solved I think but I’m just worried that every greedy developer will try to get every single % they can (same as Apple) and I don’t believe this will create a “safer” world.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#175

Post by binkethy »

llm_trw wrote: post #153
martimarkov wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s like saying the US started as a colony and that explains the lack of its progressive democracy and having a static constitution. Just because something started as X doesn’t mean that evolution didn’t happen. The reasons for the bureaucracy are a lot and different but come down to power sharing between the stakeholders.

There were two revolutions in the US that changed its politic course significantly. The EU has always been a beurocracy first.

Bureaucracy.

The EU is the European Union. 500 million humans.

This legislation is a win for the common person. Trying to portray as foisted upon the public from on high = a propaganda twist too far.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#176

Post by refurb »

ein0p wrote: post #34

I’m an Apple fan and I keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in Apple stock, and I still hope we at least get side loading out of all this. I do not believe this would be in any way detrimental to Apple - most people don’t give a shit. But for me and others like me it’d be pretty neat to do on my iPhone and iPad what I can already do on my Mac: install my own software that is not arbitrarily time limited.

What we'll most likely get is a backdoor to iPhone encryption in the name of "security".

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#177

Post by Cthulhu_ »

theyinwhy wrote: post #15
kernal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple should play their Trump card and threaten to pull out of the EU. The EU would blink first because the public backlash would be career ending.

So Apple preferring to reduce profit instead of complying to law? It will definitely be seen as a very bold move.

I have rarely seen a company go that far; Google did for a little bit, moving out of China because they refused to comply with their local laws... but a few years later they did anyway.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#178

Post by benfortuna »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #167
bee_rider wrote: post #8

The EU will win this if they want. Their trump card is that, actually, making the EU not a viable market for the most annoying US tech companies would be a huge win for many of their constituents.

Definitely not. If the entire issue is these companies creating closed ecosystems, then what point does it serve to make the EU a closed ecosystem? That would become like North Korea or the USSR technologically, your choice would be government EuroPhone or nothing.

The EU proposals are not THAT unreasonable as to completely kill competition. There are plenty of ways to compete outside of exploiting customers privacy and monopolistic platforms.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#179

Post by Cthulhu_ »

yard2010 wrote: post #47
viraptor wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, get rid of their 2nd largest market, at size ~⅔ of the US one. Yes, that will definitely show the EU who's the boss. /s

But what if they will though? Won't china happily replace the EU market? It's much bigger too and Winnie the Pooh doesn't care about ppl privacy that much

China already is, although it's Chinese manufactured goods (including iPhones) moreso than Chinese developed electronics.

The US based companies don't care about people's privacy that much either, which is why we have privacy protecting laws in place. Also, there's yet to be evidence that China is doing mass surveillance through electronics or tiktok or whatever; a lot of it sounds like unsubstantiated fearmongering. Don't get me wrong, I don't trust them either, but I don't trust the US either, and there's evidence of their mass surveillance thanks to whistleblowers like Snowden.

Or in other words, the US cannot claim the moral high ground when it comes to privacy and surveillance; most privacy-focused EU laws like the GDPR can be traced directly back to US companies taking liberties.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#180

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ein0p wrote: post #113
pjerem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Especially in Apple’s case, I don’t understand how they can’t see that a more open iOS could easily dominate the market.

It already dominates the market though, at least in the US, the wealthiest market there is.

They actually have to put effort into competing in Europe, lol.
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