Is it time for our 'tech companies complaining about EU regulation' article again? Must be a day ending in Y.
Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
281–290 of 761 posts
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#282Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
you know it's possible to get through life without either Facebook or a Facebook alternative, right? I closed my account ten years ago, and I don't have an alternative. After the withdrawal period I stopped caring. My loved ones send me text messages of their kids. Exactly what is the point of Facebook?
He means the network effects of it. Facebook has locked people in via Facebook groups, Instagram messenger and such. So many people are in it’s if you don’t have it, it’s hard to be part of certain communities. I deleted my Facebook like ten years ago, I missed out on a a LOT of party invites.
people just text me to invite me to things. I don't want to be invited to parties where someone just invites everyone they know on Facebook.
if they want me there, they can ask me directly. My social life has not significantly changed since I quit Facebook.
if you have good friends, they will find you. if you don't.. why do you care about losing them?
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
how?
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd need to ban targeted marketing, not just advertising. If I were selling widgets I still greatly care about knowing who buys a billion widgets a year and will pay good money to find out.
Tracking stats of your customers using the data they willingly gave you and making marketing decisions isn't the problem. Neither is making sponsorship agreements with content producers who make relevant content. Creation of global markets with interconnected networks to track and share detailed personal information about mental states, political alignment, sexual life and more is the problem.
Yes, all those things mean I get to find out what _groups_ buy my products.
The plural of anecdote is data after all.
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#286Earlier 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.
What value does a google search provide?
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
you know it's possible to get through life without either Facebook or a Facebook alternative, right? I closed my account ten years ago, and I don't have an alternative. After the withdrawal period I stopped caring. My loved ones send me text messages of their kids. Exactly what is the point of Facebook?
My sister has kids, and their school exclusively uses whatsapp to broadcast events and other things happening in the school, despite repeated complaints from many parents. There's millions of little things like this out there. Many small businesses like repairmen or such only do Whatsapp. It's quite literally unavoidable in some countries.
Whatsapp is not Facebook, and it's not social media. It's a messaging application. Different thing. I quit Facebook -- I didn't exit every messaging platform. Yes, if you eschew every messaging platform, nobody can reach you. That's obviously correct.
However, nothing I use could be called a Facebook replacement, either. WhatsApp isn't a Facebook replacement.
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#288Earlier 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…
Going out of your way on the internet to defend apples right to take 30% of every sale on the app store is insane to me. Just how can you not see there's probably 20% of every purchase sitting on the table if competition was ever allowed to occur. Not to mention the simple freedom of choosing what you want to install yourself, and not just what Apple allows you to...
> Not to mention the simple freedom of choosing what you want to install yourself, and not just what Apple allows you to...
I have the freedom to install whatever I want. I get that freedom by using Linux and Android. I choose to have that freedom by selecting platforms that provide it.
Many HN users seem to want all the benefits of Apple's approach with none of the downsides, and it doesn't work that way. Apple is what it is because it has a tight, coherent strategy, and forcing Apple to change that strategy will have knock-on effects that most Apple users won't like.
If you value freedom to install whatever you want, you chose the wrong ecosystem, and hijacking the ecosystem to satisfy your values is unfair to the vast majority of customers whose values already align with the ecosystem's.
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#289A 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…
I have a feeling there's a lot of analogies to be had between parenting, regulation and AI alignment.
All three are about trying to persuade an intelligent organism to adopt acceptable, rich and virtuous behaviour. All three seems to have similar failure modes.
Too much red tape and you'll get over fitting, lack of creative and new behaviour.
Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
40 years ago Europe (without former Warsaw Pact countries) accounted for 25% of global trade. These days it's ~12% and dropping. Since 2008 there is no meaningful GDP growth (1-2%) whereas US and China exploded in that time. India is on track to surpass EU by 2050. All that will be left is a large open-air museum.
India, a country with 1.4 billion people and growing, overtaking the EU with 0.44 billion people in 26 years (!) isn’t the flex you think it is.
It's not about flexing, it's about the diminishing importance of EU in the world. It doesn't matter if EU still has a better GDP PPP if India ends up with a bigger GDP overall as you are only as important as you have in the bank internationally. Competing for resources would then flip in favor of India; EU burning bridges with Russia sending it to China's orbit will likely accelerate the process as well.