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

Post by ab5tract » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 10:33 PM UTC

delichon wrote: post #165

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protection of the water we drink is a legal right. Which is why companies cannot dump waste into the river, no matter what financial impacts it has on them. Protection of user data is a legal right, or increasingly recognized to be. Companies have no right to sell it, or misuse it, no matter what financial impacts it has on them. Rights cannot be contracted away or sold. They are rights.

I rent my rights via a contract to certain defined aspects of my autonomy for about forty hours per week. In exchange for that I get tokens that I can exchange for food. If I couldn't contract away those rights I'd get hungry. I'm also willing to rent my right to determine the contents of advertisements inserted into my daily news feed, for the right price. These things feel equivalent in kind to me.

Post by amelius » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #180

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…

Post by johnthewise » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 10:35 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #123

multimoon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whet…

Protection of the water we drink is a legal right. Which is why companies cannot dump waste into the river, no matter what financial impacts it has on them. Protection of user data is a legal right, or increasingly recognized to be. Companies have no right to sell it, or misuse it, no matter what financial impacts it has on them. Rights cannot be contracted away or sold. They are rights.

Post by kube-system » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

KaiserPro wrote: post #88

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 t…

Post by t1hrowaway » Fri, Jul 26, 2024, 10:38 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #176

buzzert wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Did you actually read the article? I don't know how you square this kobayashi maru situation, unless you think Meta is outright lying about it: > Europe recently…

For what is worth, I think Meta is lying about it, or at least playing the victim card too strongly. > They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users. Meta is being sued because their paid plan is not honest - they are currently asking for 10€/month which is disproportionate - for comparison, a Business Standard Google Workspace account with 2Tb and Gemini c…