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

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

#181
post #77

I wish targeted advertising was made completely illegal here, I am sure our society would greatly benefit from that.

Why would it benefit society to get less targeted ads as opposed to more targeted ones?

Because there would be no incentive to commodify user activity, bundle it up, and resell it to ever more dubious information brokers?

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

#183
post #77

I wish targeted advertising was made completely illegal here, I am sure our society would greatly benefit from that.

I'd just say all advertising. It's effectively money time and effort we just light on fire.

Extremely limited, focused, designed to deliver facts rather than entertainment or flashy catchy content 'ads' could be informative and beneficial. The structure of the ad should be as close to sanitized textbook as possible, maybe even follow a regulated formula. Something like, "This is a thing that exists. Here's the benefit without dramatizing or 'selling' someone something they don't need. X brand can be found at Y location for Z cost."

It's easy to agree with all advertising. I think that's the quickest, easiest measure to cut that yields an outcome beneficial to society, and that more ads are nearly always worse.

I also think that sales are worse for society than every day prices that deliver value; sales do make sense for things like seasonal items which are in abundance due to just being harvested.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real fundamental issue is VCs, which as you pointed out, are far more adventurous in America.

On the contrary, I see the VC influence on American tech has been incredibly destructive. No one builds companies or products or services to last. Everyone is only in it for the quick buck. Basically every service provided by big tech has turned into a chase to cover it with ads and seek as much rent as possible while never actually improving anything. The state of software has gone downhill precipitously in the past…

"... seek as much rent as possible ..." I think this is sorely understated in the context of understanding Europe's regulatory environment vis-à-vis American big tech companies or targeted advertising-supported (read: personal data mining) software startups.

We need to remember that Europe is the continent that gave us extractive colonialism. A player always knows their own game.

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists. I'm against the way it's being applied to Apple. I don't think that the government should dictate that consumers aren't allowed to choose a platform that's a locked down walled garden if that's what they want. We have platforms that aren't walled gardens (Android) that many of…

Apple needs to get out of the infrastructure business if they want to play by their own rules. They aren't selling Gameboys and washing machines, they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices. That needs to be regulated and the consumer needs to have the final say, not Apple.

> they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices.

To be clear, I think privacy laws like GDPR absolutely have a place for consumer protection.

I just don't think the DMA does. Watching how the DMA applies to Apple, it feels far less about consumer protection than it does about businesses, and that's what makes me uncomfortable. The EU is in this case listening to complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart and ignoring the very real damage that their actions could do to consumer protection.

The Apple App Store protects users from myriad abuses by myriad bad companies. The EU wants Apple to build a blessed, paved off-ramp that companies can strongly encourage prospective customers to use that brings them deeper into the manipulative control of those companies.

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

#186
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is very interconnected though, and the article points out an example where what you state is very much not true: "How would Mistral, a leading AI firm, survive if Nvidia exits the French market due to regulatory concerns?"

Would've been good if they had been able to come up with a realistic example that could be problematic, but they have not made the case at all while Nvidia would forego the EU market.

Theoretically it would just be the French market, due to: https://www.reuters.com/technology/french-antitrust-regulato...

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is against regulation that disfavors large incumbents to support competition instead. You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists. However, virtually every other piece of regulation does the opposite. Regulation usually gets trotted out after the downside of doing [new innovation] is experienced. This always happens…

> What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass potential market killing regulation This is entirely because the experts and fundraisers in the field promoted the technology as existentially and societally dangerous before they even got it to do anything commercially viable. "This has so much potential that it could destroy us all!" was the sales pitch! Of course regulators are go…

OpenAI was smart enough to build a moat for itself in Europe.

The EU was dumb enough to dig it for them.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a weird definition of “terrible”. How much EU taxes are being paid by Apple, Meta, Google, etc?

We pay more than enough taxes in Europe.

We do, but Apple, Meta, and Google don't.

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

#189

The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU. There's zero reason to think that this will mean the EU won't have a tech market. It just won't have one that includes Apple products which refuse to follow the law. Seems like a massive win for the EU, and because…

Except EU doesn’t have big tech.

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

#190
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this article. Title is "Europe Is in Danger of Regulating Its Tech Market Out of Existence". But then the subtitle says "Poorly designed laws are forcing *global firms* to leave." (emphasis mine) Then you see a picture of an Apple Vision Pro. I've only skimmed through the article and there are 11 mentions of Apple and 12 mentions of Meta, then some mentions of X and such. These aren't even "global" firms,…

A more practical example is that Facebook cannot promote its marketplace anymore. In Europe there are local alternatives for market places that get disadvantaged. Spotify, an EU company, has to compete with Apple Music and YouTube Music. Both of which have their own mobile operating systems and markets. Now we get a lot of backlash from these big tech firms as for years they have been integrating services into their…

This is not always good for the end user. Now I have to go to google maps manually because it’s most of the time no longer integrated with google search
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