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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

#341

Post by Larrikin »

fallingknife wrote: post #317
ivan_gammel wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can combat bias in a team of people, but in LLM you may not even know it exists.

How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantity?

This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem.

Just because you graduated from a CS program doesn't mean you will always write bug free code using the ideal algorithm and design pattern.

But you know what you should be striving for, can more readily identify issues, and maybe sometimes you actually are perfect.

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

#342

Post by ADeerAppeared »

Someone wrote: post #234
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…

> They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users Where are they demanding that? Reading https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_24_... , their complaints seem to be that Facebook - cannot call the ‘with adverts’ version ‘free’ - makes it too difficult for consumers to find out what exactly they give to facebook in exchange for this ‘free’ se…

> Am I reading the wrong page?

Yes. That's a separate investigation; "Today's action focuses specifically on the assessment of Meta's practices under EU consumer law and is distinct from the ongoing ... , and the assessment by the Irish Data Protection Commission under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."

The illegality of "Pay or Consent" is a GDPR thing. The EDPB ruling on that issue is here: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion...

But it's an extremely settled matter. The GDPR says explicitly that consent is not "freely given" if the provision of a service is dependent on said consent. (Where the service does not absolutely require the data processing in question; See Article 7, recital 43)

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

#343

Post by pitaj »

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…

Comfortable stagnation is not a stable state for a society.

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

#344

Post by littlecosmic »

lolinder wrote: post #132
pembrook wrote: post #124

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…

> 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…

I reckon the peaceful existence of macOS is a counterpoint to this argument.

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

#346

Post by merrywhether »

fallingknife wrote: post #173
lolinder wrote: post #132

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…

If Apple was required to provide root access to all customers this would not prevent anyone from choosing to stay inside their walled garden.

You need app Foo on your phone for work (like Slack, maybe). Foo is in the App Store and worked great on your iPhone but decides they want to install via their own store so they can monetize employees’ data (location, whatever) to make more money. The new store launches, the new app version abuses private APIs, and the App Store version stops working. Your company announces that all employees need to download from the new source. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Sure, neither your company nor Foo should suck, but we all know plenty of companies that don’t care about employees or users.

Game company Bar decides to launch their own store and pull their game - we’ll call it Nortfite - from the App Store so they can add something shady like crypto features. Nortfite is a massive social game that all your friends play and it’s a huge part of your teenage social life. Your only device capable of playing it is your second-hand iPad. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Who needs friends anyway, amirite?

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

#347

Post by ryan93 »

ADeerAppeared wrote: post #340
okanat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars. EU usually doesn't let companies to grow uncontrollable sizes that the government is completely controlled by them not the citizens. The existence of Big Tech means that the government did a very poor job in protecting the consumers and the free and fair market

> EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars. This is the thing that so many Americans in tech don't seem to understand. VC Twitter is full of smugposting about how the US has "$5 trillion market-cap of startups" and the EU doesn't. And what they miss is that the EU doesn't want Silicon Valley. It doesn't want…

The five trillion market cap is from very profitable companies

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

#348

Post by galangalalgol »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #337
theshackleford wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consumer needs to have the final say, not Apple. And consumers spoke, and now other consumers unhappy with those consumers choices, are demanding the deal be changed.

Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority. But it doesn't have to be, you can simply NOT regulate every damn little thing, especially when there are no victims and you are forbidding a simple trade between two entities who are both willing to engage. No, developers who want to make money on the Apple Store are not victims. They can develop for Linux and sell apps there if they don't want to pay what Apple wants.…

I agree, mostly. It is worth noting that until the forced opening of the market occurred, safari was conspicuously lacking in PWA support, especially wasm support. I am a recovering libertarian, and I now see the need for regulation in more places. Largely because of regulatory capture, true, but I don't think anarcho-capitalism works. It just makes lawyers top of the heap instead of warriors (in pure anarchy). Which, when the lawyers command the soldiers, isn't any better.

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by merrywhether »

dingnuts wrote: post #283
bamboozled wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That’s a pretty glib stance. Plenty of people have difficulty finding a friend group and not everyone can be an island until they do (see the loneliness epidemic). Perhaps consider that there are other people with different life situations than yours for whom demanding individualized treatment does not work, and they may have much less choice about what technologies they have to use as a result.
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