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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

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331–340 of 348 posts

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wouldn‘t. Instead European Brands like Nokia, Fairphone, Gigaset and Nothing would grow.iMessage and other Apple specific services are not really popular, even if the iPhone sells good.

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.

Maybe you haven‘t heard about threema?

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#332

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

You underestimate the European Market. All safe systems are from Europe

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. The purpose of a parliament is to make decisions about what the law says. Something that cannot decide what the law is, is therefore not a parliament. The EU Parliament isn't really a parliament.

At first it was "making decisions", then it was "initiate legislation", and now it's "decide what the law is". It's tiring to argue against moving goal posts and bad faith. Besides, the first sentence of a Wikipedia article is not the ultimate, complete and exhaustive definition of what something is. > Something that cannot decide what the law is Good thing the EU parliament decides what the law is, then.

That's not a moving goal post. In the context of a parliament all three phrases mean (are supposed to mean) the same thing. "Initiating legislation" for example, is just another way to say "decide what the law is". The EU Parliament cannot make that decision, that's the point that keeps getting repeated. It can only acquiesce to or slow down the Commission's decisions.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#334
post #321
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/S…

If all of that is true, I don't see why you would bother keeping in contact with them. At some point if someone makes it so hard to be contacted it sends a message that he doesn't want to be contacted. On top of that, I know some people like that and I think there is an ambivalence about them, a form of intellectual dishonesty that makes it not very worthwhile to frequent them. You can have fun at parties with them b…

> If all of that is true, I don't see why you would bother keeping in contact with them. At some point if someone makes it so hard to be contacted it sends a message that he doesn't want to be contacted.

Because FB messenger isn't that painful. Facebook the news-feed is, and if they only used that then I would indeed not bother, but the messenger app isn't.

Well, not yet, anyway. Ads creeping in, a "stories" tab I can't get rid of. I may drop it eventually, but today it has a monopoly on my connection with them, and I'm using it because it's less painful than losing touch.

> But we all know that's not the actual reason you keep a Facebook account, because that's technically bullshit in the first place. If you don't change your stuff, they have a way to contact you and that's all that's needed.

Just because I'm technically apt, doesn't mean everyone else is, or cares. Back when they were still around, I had to turn on "parental controls" to stop my dad from accidentally moving apps out of the dock and losing them (as in couldn't find, not deleted), and he needed me to write down instructions for him to be able to use webmail (and he forgot that his password was "XXXX", so complained that the instructions had a placeholder and I had to explain no, that's what your password actually is). One time my mum asked me to change her password by sending me a postcard with the desired new one written on it. My gran held the mouse rotated 90° and didn't know why it wasn't working.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first it was "making decisions", then it was "initiate legislation", and now it's "decide what the law is". It's tiring to argue against moving goal posts and bad faith. Besides, the first sentence of a Wikipedia article is not the ultimate, complete and exhaustive definition of what something is. > Something that cannot decide what the law is Good thing the EU parliament decides what the law is, then.

That's not a moving goal post. In the context of a parliament all three phrases mean (are supposed to mean) the same thing. "Initiating legislation" for example, is just another way to say "decide what the law is". The EU Parliament cannot make that decision, that's the point that keeps getting repeated. It can only acquiesce to or slow down the Commission's decisions.

> "Initiating legislation" for example, is just another way to say "decide what the law is".

It's not.

> It can only acquiesce to or slow down the Commission's decisions.

That's not all it can do.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#336

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…

There is a growing movement of disarming the power of large companies. If the EU can do it, India and other countries also want it.

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#337

I always scratch my head about articles that lump Meta, Apple, and Google together when it comes to regulations. They all have different problems that require different solutions. Apple - consumers give the company for hardware which is locked into a closed ecosystem. Apple extracts extra revenue by enforcing this closed ecosystem. There can be no competition other than not purchasing their hardware in the first plac…

> However, it would be interesting to see what the EU's position would be if Meta started as an EU company

People have been saying that EU regulations are restricting EU companies forever, in fact it was one of the big arguments for Brexit to cut out piles of EU regulations that were "stifling innovation".

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#338
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?

Game consoles are luxury toys. I'm not required to get a game console controlled by one of 2 companies to interact with my bank.

(personally I'd totally support regulation opening up game consoles, but they are fairly insignificant compared to mobiles)

Re: Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

#339
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And they have been rather uncompetitive lately. Nowadays, the only thing they do better than others is their own silicon but since it's not that relevant for phones anymore they need to do better. The worst is that because of greed they find a way to purposefully limit the phone usefulness to artificially force higher price poing (RAM/storage). Just as an example, you gotta be really into the ecosystem to choose an i…

Idk, iPhone 15 is faster, more private, and has better software. It’ll also last much longer, speaking from experience.
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