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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

#251

Post by jsnell »

> But politicians such as Vestager don’t get to then act shocked and outraged when tech companies choose to leave.

Much as I dislike Vestager, that is not an accurate description. This appears to be the original source:

https://www.youtube.com/live/GmQ5SsMFbsU?si=IgTi-ezhulsCl6Gp...

That is not someone "shocked" or "outraged" at Apple not bringing the AI features to EU markets. Vestager doesn't give a fuck about whether iOS ships with AI features or not. She is just saying that by citing the DMA as the reason, Apple are pretty much admitting that the features as implemented are anti-competitive. And she is stunned that Apple would be stupid enough to make that admission.

Like, you'd at least expect the Apple C-suite to pretend it's because of some technical reason, or because the cost structure isn't viable to support in Europe, or something other than that it's breaking competition laws.

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

#252

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

autoexec wrote: post #211
cheptsov wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except EU doesn’t have big tech.

Not on Apple's scale, but with apple pulling products from the market, this opens the door for someone else to step up and fill that highly profitable gap in the market apple abandoned. I really hope that they do. The more players there are in the game from other countries the better off we'll all be.

But Apple also fumbled with the Vision Pro. They won't remain on the top for much longer I think.

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

#253

Post by sensanaty »

TekMol wrote: post #40

I think it already did. I am an avid reader of Show HNs. And I remember many that became successful businesses. But not a single European one. All the "startups" that I see here in Europe are very classical businesses. They build software tools for local enterprises. It seems nobody in Europe is building something for the open web. Maybe because nobody here understands all the regulations that come with it. The GDPR…

Most show HNs are just some shitty wrapper around OpenAI APIs these days, from what I've noticed. "Searching for papers with AI!" Doesn't exactly sound like the next Google to me, but maybe I'm just out of touch.

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

#254

Post by shermantanktop »

bamboozled wrote: post #217
cheptsov wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except EU doesn’t have big tech.

How important “big tech” though? Honestly ? It’s even an insidious sounding name. Big tech has caused a lot of problems for society. Echo chambers on social media, monopolistic behaviour, teen depression and addiction. We want the tech, without the grifting.

Are they separable? Teens in particular appear to be bad for each other's mental health. Connectivity increases that effect, anonymity makes it worse, likes and other status features makes it worse still. Not sure where you draw a line between not quite bad enough and too bad.

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

#255

Post by rpbiwer2 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #246
thrance wrote: post #77

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

This would kill the free internet tomorrow, and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it. Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do.

The Internet existed before Internet ads (and particularly targeted ads) did. Personally, while I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're making, I'm curious to see what a pendulum swing in the opposite direction might look like.

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

#256

Post by abdullahkhalids »

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…

> large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people

Facebook's and Twitter's recommended feed algorithms and blocking procedures, have to a significant extent determined the outcome of elections, coup attempts, protest movements. These companies have custom tuned their algorithms for particular countries at particular times, during such events. Many people have died, or their lives negatively affected because of the decisions by these companies.

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

#257

Post by sensanaty »

monksy wrote: post #245
llm_trw wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI was smart enough to build a moat for itself in Europe. The EU was dumb enough to dig it for them.

What is the value that OpenAI is bringing to the US right now? Mostly its being used to generate text that fit a query.

That's not true, it's also very useful when trying to defraud and scam people en-masse!

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

#258

Post by tzs »

thrance wrote: post #77

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

What exactly do you mean by "targeted advertising"? I'm guessing you probably mean "behavioral advertising", which is a subset of "targeted advertising".

Targeted advertising includes contextual advertising (e.g., a company putting an ad for their bird watching binoculars on a bird watching blog) and I'm having trouble thinking of any reason to ban that.

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

#259

Post by p_j_w »

johnthewise wrote: post #222
LorenPechtel wrote: post #43

They have some valid gripes but then they get to: Or consider the recent charges the EU levied against X. Under Elon Musk’s ownership, anyone can now purchase a blue check with a paid subscription, whereas blue checks were previously reserved for notable figures. EU regulators singled out the new system for blue checks as a deceptive business practice that violates the bloc’s Digital Services Act. What are they think…

It's not a certificate, it's a blue mark on a site that tell's you user is verified through payment. It should never be a symbol of trust, as twitter or anyone can't assess the trustworthiness of individuals :)

>as twitter or anyone can't assess the trustworthiness of individuals

You need to rethink what was being implied. Twitter CAN assess whether or not you can trust that the person that owns the account is who they say they are. That's what the blue checkmark was. It was NOT implying that the person was trustworthy.

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

#260

Post by AceJohnny2 »

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…

> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers

I'm intentionally taking this out of context to point out that laws can act as gatekeepers and help preserve incumbent's positions.

Stuff like "minimum service requirement" which require new entrants to front a massive initial investment, preventing them from getting a foothold (see: France telecom landscape in the 90s-'10s). GDPR was crafted by the likes of Google & Meta that were strong enough to weather the transition, but kill off smaller competition.

There are always tradeoffs, but those aren't talked about as much.

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