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Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#81

Post by cheptsov »

kredd wrote: post #67
cheptsov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m living in Europe, I'm deeply disappointed by the current situation. The problems run much deeper than just regulations; they extend far beyond politics. 1. VCs outright avoid investing in deep tech, with only rare exceptions. 2. Founders overwhelmingly choose to build small, sustainable companies, steering clear of big tech. 3. Employees consistently prefer consulting jobs and value vacation days over equity. 4.…

Fair enough. Unless I misunderstood your point it sounds like, what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives. Isn't that the entire point of life? I can see why general population might support it, while us techies would be pushing for deregulation and less of work-life balance. So my understanding of these articles is "it might be bad in a long term!", but Europe is still big enough market for all…

Europe is an amazing place, which is why I moved here in the first place. But for techies, it can be pretty challenging. The issue isn't with the techies themselves, though. The problem is that the environment here holds back big tech, making Europe heavily dependent on the US.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#82

Post by ryandrake »

kredd wrote: post #67
cheptsov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m living in Europe, I'm deeply disappointed by the current situation. The problems run much deeper than just regulations; they extend far beyond politics. 1. VCs outright avoid investing in deep tech, with only rare exceptions. 2. Founders overwhelmingly choose to build small, sustainable companies, steering clear of big tech. 3. Employees consistently prefer consulting jobs and value vacation days over equity. 4.…

Fair enough. Unless I misunderstood your point it sounds like, what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives. Isn't that the entire point of life? I can see why general population might support it, while us techies would be pushing for deregulation and less of work-life balance. So my understanding of these articles is "it might be bad in a long term!", but Europe is still big enough market for all…

I think a lot of the complaining on HN comes from the engineers themselves. "Ugh," they say, "We have to write all of this boring code to comply with regulations, rather than writing exciting features!" I see it a little differently. As someone who's spent a good part of the last 6-8 years working on GDPR and DMA compliance projects, the way I look at it is: "We are finally making our product better for users, working on privacy improvements that our companies have opposed until it was forced on them." EU-led regulation has been a great engineering opportunity and a product forcing-function.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#83

Post by wmf »

kranke155 wrote: post #71
Vinnl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to hinge on extrapolating from Apple not doing AI in the EU that NVidia might leave the market, harming Mistral.

Why would Nvidia leave the market?

Unspecified future boogeyman AI regulations. Or antitrust which Nvidia is already being investigated for.

Realistically Nvidia did not leave China and they will not leave Europe.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#84

Post by belorn »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #17

The real problem is that the requirements for a social platform are getting very onerous, to the point that it takes at least several engineers working full time on the problem. That really hurts a startup's ability to initially launch in the market, especially one with less VC money. (Certain BigCo new products can be thought of as a startup too, with limited budgets.) This doesn't just affect social media companies…

Most, if not all this kind of EU regulation has size limits, usually several steps between small startups with a small number of users, up to the size of gatekeeper platforms. There aren't many startups that start off as a gatekeeper since there is only six companies in the world that has that definition (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft).

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#86

Post by nrr »

cheptsov wrote: post #34
kredd wrote: post #10

I might be talking out of my depth, as I don’t live in Europe, but I’ve heard the same paraphrased headlines like these since at least 2016. Has status quo been swayed one way or another since then? Theoretically speaking, wouldn’t legislating away the top US players open the market to the local companies a la Naver in SK, WeChat in China or Line in Japan? I understand I’m dumbing it down, but assuming such legislati…

I’m living in Europe, I'm deeply disappointed by the current situation. The problems run much deeper than just regulations; they extend far beyond politics. 1. VCs outright avoid investing in deep tech, with only rare exceptions. 2. Founders overwhelmingly choose to build small, sustainable companies, steering clear of big tech. 3. Employees consistently prefer consulting jobs and value vacation days over equity. 4.…

Germany's position in context is at least understandable: the Mittelstand is a force to be reckoned with, and that entire segment of Germany's trade system is extremely averse to risk. (It's also a lot of other things, part of which can be witnessed by hopping the border to Switzerland and reading through the platform for their self-proclaimed "Partei des Mittelstandes.")

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#87

Post by multimoon »

Sakos wrote: post #79
multimoon wrote: post #75

I think we can debate regulations being productive or not all day and either side of the camp will never agree, however my biggest personal issue is that the government is removing the choice from anyone involved. As an adult you should be able to chose for yourself - if everyone chose no, then nobody would use these services and the companies wouldn’t do it. I think the effort needs to be focused on awareness and ed…

Companies circumvent real choice all the time. Regulations prevent them from doing so. There's no equivalency here. EU has repeatedly made legislation that does something or anything to counteract the power these tech companies have over the lives of billions. The EU has an interest in serving the needs of EU citizens. Tech companies do not. Tech companies only care about their bottom line, regardless of the human or…

Then it sounds like what you’re saying is there’s a financial market for users like you and I who would rather pay a subscription fee than our data be sold? Or an ad supported tier?

The problem with your argument is you’re removing any revenue source the company has. If you won’t pay a subscription, and you block all the ads, and they can’t sell data, how do they make money? Money is required to run the service, whether that leaves a sour taste or not.

If you think you have a financially viable model that protects data, then you should start a company on that premise, I’d genuinely love to see someone make it work.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#88

Post by KaiserPro »

A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.

Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)

but they have been trying desperately to stop all competition.

They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#89

Post by threatofrain »

TheChaplain wrote: post #74

Not only the tech market, they're on a pace in destroying the agricultural market as well. Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.

For agriculture at large I wonder if that's not going to be the final economic state everywhere in the world, regardless of government. That's just more efficient. Is there anywhere in the world where this trend is reversing and looking healthy?

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#90

Post by brigadier132 »

kredd wrote: post #67
cheptsov wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m living in Europe, I'm deeply disappointed by the current situation. The problems run much deeper than just regulations; they extend far beyond politics. 1. VCs outright avoid investing in deep tech, with only rare exceptions. 2. Founders overwhelmingly choose to build small, sustainable companies, steering clear of big tech. 3. Employees consistently prefer consulting jobs and value vacation days over equity. 4.…

Fair enough. Unless I misunderstood your point it sounds like, what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives. Isn't that the entire point of life? I can see why general population might support it, while us techies would be pushing for deregulation and less of work-life balance. So my understanding of these articles is "it might be bad in a long term!", but Europe is still big enough market for all…

> what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives

Let's see how long it lasts, Europe's economy is terrible and their people are significantly poorer. I don't think their current welfare state is sustainable without tax revenue from large businesses. Eventually every European citizen will be a waiter, hotel staff, or a tour guide.

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