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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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221–230 of 348 posts

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#221

Imagine a world in which the EU instead funded research & implementation of public protocols to undermine US big tech? IE, they mention chat clients in the text, why not create something in the spirit of XMPP (or even revive it if the technical merits remain relevant?) I can almost feel it in my bones that there's a protocol behind "feed" websites like twitter & linkedin. Break the walled garden with open standards.…

The irony of your statement is that many of the core tech, protocol and software systems underpinning these big tech companies were developed in the EU.

In the EU != by the EU. By EU I'm referring to the governing bodies, ie my reference to the EU regulating things.

If you re-read what I said with that in mind, does it make more sense to you?

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when local US companies with zero EU presence were geo-blocking EU visitors in-case they were found to be in-violation of the GDPR? Presumably the fear was a crack team of EU secret service agents would kidnap and illegally extradite them to stand trial in Brussels.

Oh dear you're going to trigger the pro EU crowd who don't like being told EU law doesn't apply in the US

They'll send in Jean Claude van Damme

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#223
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of is the EU single market That's also a misconception. The EU single market is an important project, but there is a constant failure to understand the actual reason why the EU exists or also a purposeful misinterpretation. Countries joining the EU are requested not to join because of the single market, but because they want to join the political project of a more peaceful and an improving Europe. At it…

> UK politicians also mislead the public about that. It's worth noting that they didn't just do that in 2016. They were doing it for the entire history of Britain's membership of the EU. During the referendum campaign I talked to quite a few older people (my mother included) who remembered the original Brexit referendum in the 1970s, one that most people outside the UK aren't aware ever existed. It happened just a co…

Sovereignty was part of it, another, pretty big, part was "to get rid of the bloody immigrants"

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is certainly the case, but seems to be perfectly legal. This scheme is implemented by a number of companies, but most charge only €2/mo or so.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#225
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The purpose of is the EU single market That's also a misconception. The EU single market is an important project, but there is a constant failure to understand the actual reason why the EU exists or also a purposeful misinterpretation. Countries joining the EU are requested not to join because of the single market, but because they want to join the political project of a more peaceful and an improving Europe. At it…

> UK politicians also mislead the public about that. It's worth noting that they didn't just do that in 2016. They were doing it for the entire history of Britain's membership of the EU. During the referendum campaign I talked to quite a few older people (my mother included) who remembered the original Brexit referendum in the 1970s, one that most people outside the UK aren't aware ever existed. It happened just a co…

"abolish European governments by merging them together into one superstate"

That wasn't the goal of the EU. Even now it isn't the goal. Nations and governments still exist.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#226
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's governments vs corporations; the 500 million people aren't actually being represented in either camp. Being a subject is little better than being a consumer, and in some ways much worse.

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 luck getting the personal phone number of an EU Commissioner. You can't vote for who decides things in the EU. You can vote for MEPs but they don't decide things. The DMA represents the desires and priorities of the European Commission, a body carefully placed well beyond any form of democracy and whose membership isn't even close to representative of the actual continent.

If the EU Commission were influenced by voters, their priorities would follow what people say they care about in the EU's own opinion polls:

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/3218

"Europeans tend to think that the most important issues facing their region at the moment are the cost of living (31%), the economic situation and unemployment (26%), and health (26%)."

No surprises there. People are feeling poor. They want more jobs and more money. A normal democratic government response would be trying to woo companies to Europe to create jobs, train locals and create economic success. It would also be lowering taxes and encouraging the creation of local startups in any way possible. That's a standard recipe that's been used many times throughout the world in response to economic discontent. But the EU isn't a normal democratic government so it spends its time on fiddling with iOS, something that doesn't even show up on polls at all because nobody cares.

It's for this kind of reason that French voters are likely to send the RN to the European Parliament in large numbers in the next election, mirroring the same pattern seen all over Europe:

https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/france/

The RN is an explicitly Eurosceptic party whose only specific policy on the EU is to oppose it. Sending it to Brussels will change nothing because the European Parliament doesn't matter, but it does send a strong message of discontentment and a desire to use whatever meagre powers the Parliament has to slow the Commission down.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ghouls in Brussels do not represent us all, they do not represent anyone, if we’re talking democracy. It’s a battle over clout and economic resources between whoever is backing these technocrats and some of the biggest corporations in the world, most of us EU citizens have a lot of more important worries on our minds.

> they do not represent anyone As a european citizen, I really wonder what allows you to speak in my name. How arrogant can you get?

> How arrogant can you get?

Could be that some of the people in here are fine with a "Parliament" that is not really a parliament and that they are fine with the unelected European Commission taking decisions that affect us all, but that has nothing to do with "arrogance", it's just them wanting to live under a non-democratic regime.

And facts speak for themselves, the technocrats in Brussels do not represent anyone because it was not the people of the EU who have put them there. Some of you may agree with their fiat decisions, but that is not "representation", it's just "sharing of interests".

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#228
post #176
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".

What makes you so sure there isn't one already? The FBI's whining?

It's like that scene at the end of Sneakers: "they just don't want to share with the other children..."

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#229

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.

I would like this to be true - that the big US tech companies leaving Europe would prompt Europeans to realise they never needed them in the first place, and either turn to local, privacy-respecting (maybe even open source) alternatives or just get their heads out of their phones altogether. But a lot of Europeans are obsessed with these platforms and would probably be extremely pissed off if they lost access to them…

Well, so maybe /you/ do not need those companies, but “certain demographics” which could even be much more than 50% of the population, /do/ need them.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#230
post #78

Does anyone know if the DMA would apply to Playstation? Shouldn't I be allowed to boot whatever software I want (Linux) on my PS5?

Consoles aren't generally seen by people as general-purpose computers, neither are they marketed as such by their manufacturers. They're seen by most people as appliances for playing video games.

I don't see cellphones as general purpose computers either. For exactly the same reason why I don't see game consoles as general purpose computers: neither one will run arbitrary programs. They only run programs that are blessed by their manufacturer. Both are appliances.

I'm really failing to see the distinction here.

Big tech will simply declare that phones aren't "general purpose computers". There is no reasonable endgame here in which: (a) this is enforced against cellphones and (b) this is not enforced against game consoles and (c) the EU doesn't end up looking completely ridiculous and arbitrary.

I'm betting that they cave on (b). It's the least painful option. The EU is going to have to enforce this against game consoles in order to be taken seriously.

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