Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

foreignpolicy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 761 posts

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

#621

Post by ProZsolt »

lolinder wrote: post #447
cynicalsecurity wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple are trying to hijack the ecosystem of free competition and open market.

Apple is providing an entry into the free smartphone market that is a closed system with a highly controlled and curated software ecosystem. That is their product, that's what they offer. It's no different than Nintendo's entry into the game console market being what it is—some people will choose that experience because what it offers is valuable for them. For myself, I'm an Android phone user and a PC gamer, but jus…

There is a strong difference here: Smartphones are kind of essential to our modern life, game consoles aren't.

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

#622

Post by LorenPechtel »

nradov wrote: post #151
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…

Don't be naive. It was never a symbol of trust. At most it was a symbol of prominence or notability as decided by a biased, unaccountable group of Twitter employees. Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies. The new X Community Notes system is far superior for establishing trust. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/biden-clai... https://www.bloomb…

It was a symbol of trust in identity, not trust in veracity. Same as SSL certificates.

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

#623

Post by ttepasse »

hcfman wrote: post #614
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?

Well. The laws are made up by a non elected commission. And these people don’t give a shit about what the people think. Governments that don’t toe the line to what the commission want get pressured into ultimately complying.

The bills are voted in the law by the democratically elected Members of the European Parliament and the democratically elected governments in the Council of the European Union.

(And the Commission itself often gets its mandate for writing bills from the European Parliament, the Council of the EU or the European Council.)

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

#624

Post by IshKebab »

ericd wrote: post #589
IshKebab wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really saying the original iPhone was a "product miss"???

It was a good product, but it took a lot of iteration to make it the juggernaut it is today. Add bad battery life to the list of flaws, along with slow web browsing, slow processor, etc. With all of those, and the high price, it was relatively niche. The 3G lowered the price substantially, and iirc that plus the faster modem gave it a big popularity boost. And the 4 was substantially more popular than that. My point…

I dunno if you were alive at the time but that's not really what happened. The first iPhone was really expensive but people bought it anyway because it was sooo far ahead of the competition. Until the iPhone most people didn't even bother with smart phones because they were so bad (Blackberry was a partial exception).

The web browsing wasn't slow - part of what made it so compelling was that you could browse the real web without going insane. No WAP nonsense.

Yes, it was rough compared to the later versions, but even the first one was insanely better than anything else. It was pretty clear what the issues were (battery life and lack of 3G as you said).

I don't think the Vision Pro is like that at all. It's big issues aren't missing features or lack of polish. It fundamentally makes no sense as a product even if they improve the resolution, speed, battery life, etc.

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

#625

Post by ameister14 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #609
ameister14 wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think reasonable prices are based on what the potential maximum profit per user is. Normally it's based on the expense per user plus a percentage for profit.

Your mistake is assuming that "reasonable" exists as something concretely defined. Reasonable is an opinion.

Reasonable is definitely an opinion, but that doesn't mean it's random.

In legal and economic contexts, reasonable profits are a thing that is routinely calculated. Where industries are more regulated, 'reasonable' profits are often bound by statutory guidelines. In more competitive markets, prices are not fixed in the same way but you can take a look at industry standards to ascertain what might be reasonable.

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

#626

Post by XCSme »

tcfhgj wrote: post #563
XCSme wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to constantly buy stuff for the economy to keep growing, this is how the economy is designed.

At some point we have to deal with the limits to growth, indeed. The economy should serve the people, not the way around.

This goes against the idea of capitalism. It expects infinite growth. If growth stops, we need a different economic model.

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

#627

Post by chfalck »

nottorp wrote: post #229
no_wizard wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically with AI I don’t want to experience the downside of innovation before we regulate because of how wide spread its use already is, and it’s problems have already become apparent. For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias. Companies don’t disclose how their models are trained to negate bias or anything like that ei…

> it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias I bet they also suffer from other biases that are harder to detect and maybe some biases we can't even imagine and thus control for.

Kind of like humans in that regard

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

#628

Post by nradov »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #622
nradov wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be naive. It was never a symbol of trust. At most it was a symbol of prominence or notability as decided by a biased, unaccountable group of Twitter employees. Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies. The new X Community Notes system is far superior for establishing trust. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/biden-clai... https://www.bloomb…

It was a symbol of trust in identity, not trust in veracity. Same as SSL certificates.

Nah, it was never a symbol of trust in identity. A lot of those accounts were actually managed by social media staff, not by the "verified" people themselves. It was always just a meaningless vanity mark.

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

#629

Post by ahartmetz »

dijit wrote: post #209
cheptsov wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except EU doesn’t have big tech.

Anything that gets close gets bought or killed by non-european giants. Tencent buys basically all game companies, microsoft buys basically all communication companies (skype, nokia come to mind), google buys basically everything. Even ARM is owned by Softbank after starting out in the UK. The Automotive industry and ASML are just about the only things resistant to this because they're so large already; Automotive act…

SAP, too.

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

#630

Post by ein0p »

I wonder if Silicon Valley lobbyists are deliberately sabotaging the Eurozone regulatory environment. Technically there’s no reason why almost all huge Western tech companies have to be located in the US. European cost of labor in this space is much lower, and access to markets is much better, since they’re on the same continent. Their ineptitude in high tech can’t be coincidental
Post reply on HN