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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

#451

Post by lolinder »

mikem170 wrote: post #390
lolinder wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify: I don't use Apple. I chose their competitors instead because I like the features offered by the competition better. > If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you? Because people won't be able to stick with the defaults. One of the first dominoes to fall if the EU gets its wishlist will be Facebook, which will put a version of its app that wouldn't pass Apple's review out through unofficial…

Interesting. I had thought of the garden walls as being in the way of users, based on my personal experience, but you bring up the point that the walls can also be in the way of nefarious companies. I assume both can be true. And perhaps the legal system sees some of these garden wall as protecting Apple, falling under anti-trust, like the 30% markups on all financial transactions? You mentioned malicious versions of…

> Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?

If I thought the EU could actually execute on that? Maybe. But I know that Apple executes on it, and the fallout from the gdpr doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the EU knows how to regulate tech in a way that achieves desired outcomes and doesn't just lead to the same behavior as before with malicious compliance stamped on top.

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

#452

Post by pyrale »

pembrook wrote: post #264
monksy wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that most people hate risk. It's that individuals whom are harmed by sociopathic individuals that exploit methodologies, techniques, and products to enrich, steal, and harm the population. (When I say that I mean financially, emotionally, socially, physically, etc). To add further insult to injury, defending ones self against these individuals is disproportionately impossible. Socially: Creating and cultivat…

I'm not insulting people who hate risk. For the stability and health of society, it's good that most people are that way. We need people who shake their fist at anything new or different to keep us sane (people like you it seems, from your laundry list of frustrations). But we also need the people who do like risk taking and new stuff, and there's less of them. So innovation is much more of a fragile thing than stasi…

> But we also need the people who do like risk taking and new stuff

The issue with that is that risk is usually not borne by the people getting rewards.

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

#453

Post by voiceblue »

solenoid0937 wrote: post #374
hintymad wrote: post #315

I'm curious on why European people allow such heavy regulation. They really think that the Europe can enjoy their prosperity with little innovation for years to come?

I agree -- these comments are bizarre to me. Technology is the single biggest predictor of QoL in human history. You can only miss out on so many Industrial Revolutions before you begin to lose power (economic, military, financial, social) and fade into irrelevancy. That will certainly hurt QoL more than any short-term gain from preventing Memoji AI from existing in your region, or strangling your next AI startup in…

The comments here seem ignorant of how regulations in the EU have become and what the dynamic is. Regulation is being lionized [0] as a political badge of honor, and as TFA shows, things are getting ridiculous: it is not enough that you can a) not use facebook, b) pay for it, or c) consent to let them use your data -- you MUST have d) use facebook for free without letting them use your data. In other words, socialist values must be upheld by corporations, now everyone must be able to avail of your product at no cost, to be subsidized by the wealthy, which in this case is the corporation itself! Of course businesses are just going to stop operating in this environment!

The comments here seem blind to this simple calculus. Then they will say, "nothing of value was lost": then think who is the arbitrator of value here? It is clearly not the consumer*, but the consumer's nanny. Was something of value lost in that philosophy? No? Perhaps China and North Korea are not so bad, then.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-iphone-15-usb-c-eu-malta-4240...

* Consumers vote with their wallet and their feet when it comes to products and establishments

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

#454

Post by tivert »

runday198 wrote: post #444
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #420

"Europeans could end up living in an online backwater with out-of-date phones, cut off from the rest of the world's search engines and social media sites, unable to even access high-performance computer chips." Sounds like a paradise. More healthy lifestyle. For most people much of this stuff is unnecessary. If one wants to live life "online", glued a screen digesting garbage and propaganda 24/7, then one can relocat…

What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate. They will probably move to those whacked out societies.

> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.

You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?

I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if you try to kill it).

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

#455

Post by thaumasiotes »

lanstin wrote: post #356
dudinax wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they could be. A company that doesn't want a racial bias won't intentionally filter on names, but might accidentally deploy an LLM that can discern race from name.

The humans will do it unconsciously if they can see the names. It is like orchestras used to use auditions where the judges could see the people; when they went to auditions where they couldn't see the people, the number of women being hired went right up.

See, this is the problem with just deciding to invent your own facts.

There is a famous study on this topic, usually presented in much the way you describe. But usually people are more careful not to lie about the results. The rate of women being hired went down, not up. The "success" for women was contained to advancement through particular audition rounds.

https://archive.is/xmvp2

The original paper is not exactly a model of investigative integrity:

>> Women are about 5 percentage points more likely to be hired than are men in a completely blind audition, although the effect is not statistically significant. The effect is nil, however, when there is a semifinal round, perhaps as a result of the unusual effects of the semifinal round.

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

#457

Post by Qwertious »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #252
autoexec wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Vision Pro was innovative but risky and, so far, unprofitable. I hope Apple does more Vision Pro-like things, it beats yet another iPhone model.

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

#458

Post by roenxi »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #429
roenxi wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an issue with that perspective though. The Europeans sell out. Ok. Maybe they are bad at valuation and don't realise that their companies are worth more than they are being paid for. Or maybe an EU company can't capture as much value as a US/Chinese company. And those are really the only two options - either the decision is rational or irrational. If it is an irrational decision then there isn't much to talk…

> Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0]. No, Nokia was blown out of the market via the exclusive deal with Microsoft, which in turn made the dumbest management decisions ever. Nokia bled under the horrible management of Steve Ballmer and their own ignorance with regards to Android. They also proved later on that you don't need any expertise to produce decent Android pho…

Pretty telling though. When dijit was talking about Tencent, Microsoft or Google a few comments ago they were being presented as these huge incumbent behemoths that scoop up everything in their path. And, fair enough, they are.

But when Nokia starts with an overwhelming incumbents advantage, their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone! They couldn't defend themselves from multiple companies in completely different industries with no prior competence in the mobile phone world. That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.

The issue here isn't company size, it is something specific to the EU. I'm not sure what, but since it is a geographic thing I'd start with regulation and branch out from there.

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

#459

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Works where archive.ph is blocked:

    x=https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/26/europe-tech-regulation-apple-meta-google-competition/
    tnftp -4o"|(echo '';grep -o '
.*
')" $x > 1.htm
    firefox ./1.htm
    links -force-html 1.htm
or

    links $x
It's interesting to me how the article looks great in a browser that does not auto-load resources or process CSS. But in a so-called "modern" browser, the kind worshipped by developers, the annoyance is so bad, the article is so difficult to read, that the forum moderator directs readers to use a different website. Others might not find it interesting but I do.

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

#460

Post by Moldoteck »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #327
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 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. Apple is also free to lobby the US government and people to take action against the EU. Especially if Trump gets elected, Apple complaining about Europe taking advantage of American companies would resonate with a…

Eu has lots of leverage too against US. Lobbying for actions against eu may have absolutely bad consequences and it's totally bonkers to think/prise that an us company has this much power proving once again that maybe it's a good think eu doesn't have such big corpos
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