101–110 of 153 posts
And no, the USAans are not in it for the 'free speech' either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, I'm not sure there's much pressure involved. Mass surveillance is a thing "centrist" EU politicians very much want themselves.
> Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg publicly voiced his dissatisfaction and sought support from Trump, while Apple’s Tim Cook reportedly asked the White House to directly intervene against EU fines imposed on his company. https://www.euractiv.com/news/widespread-alarm-over-commissi... Apple even went so far as to demand the EU repeal these laws, and is likely still non-compliant in several ways; for which they should have been…
Maybe cartoonishly large fines levied against powerful entities wasn’t such a great idea. Other incentives may have been better suited to getting the populace what they want in the long term.
The European Commission and Council are becoming increasingly unpopular among my peers. Sentiment towards the Parliament is generally still positive. But it's clear that two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing. Things like Age Verification and Chat Control are going to blow up in their faces. I don't get how blind these institutio…
>"two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing" Every bureaucracy works for themselves eventually. The EU's main task is to make superstate they can control. Since they are trying to eliminate / reduce rights of member countries one can imagine what kind of concerns they have towards individual people and their freedom.
Don't get me wrong, I'm completely against the EC, but I wish they were actually trying to create a superstate
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing" Every bureaucracy works for themselves eventually. The EU's main task is to make superstate they can control. Since they are trying to eliminate / reduce rights of member countries one can imagine what kind of concerns they have towards individual people and their freedom.
I don't buy the superstate argument, since the EC consistently avoids or waters down attempts towards federalisation (full fiscal union, directly elected Commission, Parliament with legislative initiative, yada yada). Making a superstate would constrain the Commission, not empower it. The current ambiguity of having enough integration to override member states, but not enough to be democratically challenged and kept…
Meaning any attempt at making the commission directly elected reduces the national governments powers.
What you see isn’t the commission watering down the proposals, what you see is the natural tug of war between the national governments and the European Parliament.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg publicly voiced his dissatisfaction and sought support from Trump, while Apple’s Tim Cook reportedly asked the White House to directly intervene against EU fines imposed on his company. https://www.euractiv.com/news/widespread-alarm-over-commissi... Apple even went so far as to demand the EU repeal these laws, and is likely still non-compliant in several ways; for which they should have been…
> they should have been fined tens of billions of dollars by now! Maybe cartoonishly large fines levied against powerful entities wasn’t such a great idea. Other incentives may have been better suited to getting the populace what they want in the long term.
The only time they have eagerly complied with anything relating to this is when Judge YGR gave them this ultimatum, they approved Fortnite a full day early once someone had to be personally responsible for defying her order a second time:
https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1924499498513862720/phot...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This talk from Cory Doctorow made the rounds on HN when it happened: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition In it he espouses going a little further. He posits that other countries should repeal their versions of the DMCA and just start jailbreaking American megacorps' app stores, hardware, software, etc. and providing their own, much cheaper (or free) versions. Free trade has already broken down,…
Except it's already possible to install a third-party app store or OS on Android devices. The process isn't trivial, but it's officially supported.
The most amazing thing is with everything I did in the last decade, the consulting of lawyers, member of internet/IT/software specialized user groups, I still don't know how I have managed to be aware _NOT_ for years that those very web technical directives are actually... law.
Only the prime minister, then also the president, have the power to modify/fix those technical directives. The parliaments, or any technical authorities have ZERO power over them.
The EU, via a directive, only requires for the member states to publish those technical directives to the other member states for "discussion" before final approval.
In other words, deciding on those technical directives requires the same power than to decide to build an ICBM submarine or an aircraft carrier, not less. Maybe because they are not that un-important...
The irony, the gov of 2015/2016 which approved those technical directives which would, without any doubt, end up with everything web being big tech exclusive (and this is what actually happened) was... a left-ist gov(!!). I suspect corruption or brain washing grade lobbying (maybe with fraud while consulting experts, or those experts were mostly from big tech).
The bright side, if those technical directives are fixed in order to restore the classic web, the whole gov with its dependencies have 3 years to comply. Just need to tell the president or the prime minister... baw...
Specifically, this is another Parliament vs Commission issue. The Commission loves to have little deals away from the public where everything is quietly smoothed over, while the Parliament is trying to build popular legitimacy.
The European Commission and Council are becoming increasingly unpopular among my peers. Sentiment towards the Parliament is generally still positive. But it's clear that two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing. Things like Age Verification and Chat Control are going to blow up in their faces. I don't get how blind these institutio…
It's not just the age verification and chat control - the list crimes is much longer and doesn't revolve solely around IT sector. The recent Mercosur agreement that just showed how the heads of EU pissed over its own agricultural sector.
Somehow, I'm afraid that we're already for at least 15 years on a path of slow fall - we're once again in the history the peasants and EU politicians has become king and queens, again not listening to vox populi at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This talk from Cory Doctorow made the rounds on HN when it happened: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition In it he espouses going a little further. He posits that other countries should repeal their versions of the DMCA and just start jailbreaking American megacorps' app stores, hardware, software, etc. and providing their own, much cheaper (or free) versions. Free trade has already broken down,…
Or: a guy who is anti-copyright is performing an angle shoot to see if he can get some legislators to bite. The EU taking staunchly anti-American positions and targeting American businesses looking for a way to “legally” rob them blind is probably not going to work out for them in the long run.