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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#291

Post by bee_rider »

dachworker wrote: post #44
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.

The cynical part of me says they are just complaining that they are not being offered juicy enough bribes compared to their American counterparts.

Elsewhere in the thread, someone linked this blog post, I think it describes the position of the EU well.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-e...

The conclusion they come to is: the EU will protect the single market even if it makes things harder for their own businesses, the single market is a totally existential issue for the EU, it is the reason it exists.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#292

Post by bee_rider »

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.

Comparing the EU to an authoritarian communist or Juche county doesn’t really seem like good faith engagement, but just in case — the EU is a wildly capitalist/liberal organization, their whole theory is that they can avoid another world war by having the countries that kept causing them totally entangled in a big heavily inter-dependent market. They aren’t going to make a government EuroPhone, they are going to publish standards and let private companies come up with compatible implementations.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#293

Post by ben_w »

ryandrake wrote: post #288
ben_w wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be clear, these multi billion/trillion dollar companies don't need anyone defending them. However, it would be interesting to see what the EU's position would be if Meta started as an EU company. I absolutely agree on this point. I do have the… bias, that in my formative years Apple was very much the plucky underdog in danger of bankruptcy. This may be why I am less concerned about what Apple does. I am aware th…

> Facebook Messenger is my only way to remain in contact with some people. This is always an exaggeration. You mean to tell me there are people out there for whom the only way to get in touch with them is through Facebook? They don't have a phone number, SMS, an E-mail address (note you need an E-mail address to sign up for Facebook in the first place), a postal address, and ears for word of mouth conversation? I fou…

> This is always an exaggeration. You mean to tell me there are people out there for whom the only way to get in touch with them is through Facebook? They don't have a phone number, SMS, an E-mail address (note you need an E-mail address to sign up for Facebook in the first place), a postal address, and ears for word of mouth conversation?

Yup.

Three people in particular come to mind. For them, with regard to phone/SMS/e-mail, even though they necessarily have those things, they never bothered to give them to me, and/or they change them often, and/or they don't check those modes.

For postal address… these three regularly (and from my perspective randomly) change continents, not merely street or city. One of the countries they often go to is Kenya, where the addresses of the places they live in seem to often be something of the form "third on the left in the gated community next to the Blue Sky Petrol Station".

This also makes "ears and mouth" rather challenging.

Extra irony points, they all self-identify as somewhere between socialist and communist. And still insist on using Facebook.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#294

Post by bee_rider »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #201
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.

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…

How do you measure this obsession? I only get these stories about regulators mostly—they seem obsessed with making the platforms work for Europeans, but then, that’s sort of their job.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#295

Post by whazor »

addicted wrote: post #118
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.

The other problem for big tech is that most countries are modeling their tech legislation based on the EU. At this point the GDPR is something you have to consider whether you’re in the EU or not because several non EU countries have similar laws and many more are thinking of implementing them, and to the extent many haven’t already it’s because it’s unnecessary since tech companies are following GDPR already. Essent…

Countries with similar laws: Isreal, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, and more.

Though it would be wise for countries to also implement these laws. For example, companies could ignore your data deletion request if you were in a state without.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#296

Post by bee_rider »

martimarkov wrote: post #150
llm_trw wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU started as the European Coal and Steel Community which explains most of the beurocracy its saddled with.

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.

I mean, the fact that part of the country was started as a resource extraction colony, and another part was started as an experiment in puritanical religious extremism seems in retrospect to have been a bad sign.

Of course, lots of things seem portentous in retrospect, if we look back on the path we took, of course it turns out we passed lots of signposts pointing in our current direction.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#297

Post by Eavolution »

mike_hearn wrote: post #220
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that's the basic flaw of democracy; what alternative are you suggesting? Dissolution of the EU and back to how it was? Have a look at the UK nowadays to see how that worked out. It's not perfect, but it's the best we've come up with so far.

The UK is largely unchanged from before Brexit. Its economic performance is similar to the rest of Europe. It continues to trade with and cooperate with other European countries, whilst also building stronger links with the rest of the world too (see Aukus for an example). The predictions of all the bad things that'd happen on leaving were all incorrect. There was no 800k job losses, closed airspaces, trade wars etc.

I'm guessing you live in GB. In NI tensions are higher due to it (unionist opposition to the protocol), shipping's often more expensive, or items won't be shipped to us (try putting a BT postcode into displate, or ordering batteries online), and it's more difficult for companies to operate on an all Ireland basis. We also have "only for Northern Ireland" items in shops which are items that can't legally be sold in Ireland or GB despite being identical, in a shop like Tesco that operates in all 3 areas, causing more difficulty to shops than necessary. Here we've only seen negatives, in an area with a complicated relationship with borders, where the single most effective thing we had to deal with that was a set of common laws and trade area (europe), and none of this was even considered by Westminster before the referendum.

Edit: forgot to mention this. Someone in my family has a vehicle in Ireland and in NI, we sort of live between the two countries, pre-brexit that was completely fine as their drivers licence was european so there was no issues, but post-brexit they cannot get insured in Ireland due to insurance companies refusing to give insurance to someone with a non-EU licence.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#298

Post by riffraff »

Kwpolska wrote: post #119
riffraff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU commission and EU parliament are somewhat removed from public backlash, it's one of the reasons people complain about the EU being "undemocratic". So the commission or random EU MEP would be affected after 5 years or so. Tim Cook would get backlash from stockholders the moment he announced he wanted to stop getting EU revenue rather than comply with regulations.

There's an EU parliament election in a few weeks or so, how is that undemocratic?

it's not, that's why I put it in quotes, but it is removed from people's everyday lives which is why some people feel it like that.

I know the names of the leaders of all parliamentary groups in my country, and how the groups stand on all positions. I have no idea who such leaders are in the EU parliament, or how they stand in e.g. the upcoming changes to GMO regulations.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#300

Post by riffraff »

pjerem wrote: post #120
riffraff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU commission and EU parliament are somewhat removed from public backlash, it's one of the reasons people complain about the EU being "undemocratic". So the commission or random EU MEP would be affected after 5 years or so. Tim Cook would get backlash from stockholders the moment he announced he wanted to stop getting EU revenue rather than comply with regulations.

While the Commission have mostly free hands to govern, European Parliament, elected by Europeans can veto their laws and can even veto the commission itself. European Commission is nothing else than an unelected government controlled by a parliament like it happens in most countries. Also, ultimately, the commission is nominated by elected representatives of each country so, depending on how you see the thing, we cou…

note I put "undemocratic" in quotes, I do not think it is actually undemocratic, but I do think it feels that way.

This is because the main difference between the EU parliament and a country parliament is that the average European has only a vague inkling of who their MEP is, what groups or parties exist in the EU parliament, and how they stand on issues.

People do not (generally) change their vote for a MEP because they did good/bad in their last term, they change their vote because they agree/disagree with the national party they represent.

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