EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants • Hacker News Board

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#191

Post by mschuster91 » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:03 PM UTC

drumhead wrote: post #92

mschuster91 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier to invest into something if you only have a short car drive to the company you're investing in; additionally everything cross-border involves a lot more effort with coordinating taxes. In any case at least YC does invest into European companies [1] - the key thing is you have to get far enough to have a meaningful product that VC funds can invest in, and unlike the US we don't have a lot of billionaire former…

Are you saying they'll miss out on a multi billion dollar profit opportunity because "it's not a short drive". Many VC firms have European offices, there's Zoom or a plane flight. Cross border investment is not a new or alien thing so dealing with taxes or regulation isn't something they can't cope with. So money not being available isn't a convincing reason.

> Are you saying they'll miss out on a multi billion dollar profit opportunity because "it's not a short drive".

Not "miss out" per se, rather a "prioritize companies in close proximity". There's a reason why a lot of the former startup turned unicorns are all concentrated around the Silicon Valley.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#192

Post by nonrandomstring » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:04 PM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #110

nonrandomstring wrote: post #86

This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need. You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle: - Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobby…

> You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. that's naive. the problem is that we moved away as an industry from that model for 2 specific reasons: - widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email) - interoperability means either lowest common denominator or a huge cost to keep things interoper…

You do realise that Microsoft Teams, Meet and Zoom Browser clients are all basically WebRTC underneath right? (Sometimes changed to make them deliberately incompatible with everything else).

Zoom illegally sold users' personal data [1] and Teams unsurprisingly turned out yo have all the security features we'd expect from Microsoft [2]. Jit.si comes out looking pretty good.

It's hard to hold up as paragons of good tech products that required a global pandemic to do their marketing and still couldn't deliver the goods without getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zoom-app-personal-data-selling-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/04/27/your-...

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#193

Post by chockchocschoir » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:06 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #155

chockchocschoir wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out. Take email (SMTP, IMAP, etc) as an example, where no major progress has been made in 25+ years, despite the platform being hopelessly insecure. A more successful example of open standards would be the various standards that browsers use. Would you say that browser innovation has sl…

> Would you say that browser innovation has slowed down? For a long time it was, everyone was stuck on HTML4 while W3C was playing with XHTML. That only really changed when browser vendors came together and collectively decided to ignore start ignoring W3C and made WhatWG. Although IE6 was also a major factor here.

Entirely my point. It shifted from the flow of "Come up with standards > Software implements that" to "Software implements something > Standardize > Adjust software", the second flow works much better for innovation. Something we can do with chat apps too.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#194

Post by can16358p » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

Vespasian wrote: post #161

can16358p wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can, but why they should be forced? I mean its their own platform, they shouldn't be used to offer interop. They _could_, if they wanted to, but it's their platform after all, and forcing a private company to open their own pripriatery platform to 3rd parties is plain wrong and against the rights of the company. It's theirs after all. The right thing here would be making a standard, modern way of communication t…

I (and apparently the EU law makers) think they should be. When elected officials decide that a Plattform/network is now part of the public space the owners loose out. It happened to railways, telephone grids and all in all was an improvement.

If government thinks access to a commonground chat platform is a necessity for the public, then they should either provide it themselves or buy/outsource a state-operated private service instead of messing up with private companies' private platforms. What they are doing is equivalent of trespassing private property, such laws shouldn't exist in 2022.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#195

Post by dzink » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

If only they’d apply those rule to grocery store chains as well. The model for the big ones is to charge stocking fees for any shelf space (250k per item at times) and then replace the best sellers with proprietary generic brands. So soda giants who don’t want competition can just buy out the shelf space to keep smaller players out and then lower the quality of ingredients of their mass stocked products and boost the marketing to keep the shelf space monopoly. The best new products try out and then fizzle out in that environment in exchange if more generic tastes or artificially tasting junk. This model needs to be stopped in more than just online marketplaces. It is the original sin of chain retail.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#196

Post by bobajeff » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

postingawayonhn wrote: post #150

ckastner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose. The EU is choosing to favor acting on behalf of their people, rather than some sector. If that sector can't make money in ways that are not immoral with regards to the people, so be it. For example: Why shouldn't a 30%-fee walled garden be destroyed?

I don't feel like I need protecting by the EU. Overall I'm very happy with the products produced by the US tech sector.

As someone in the US I wish this sort of thing happened here and sooner. Maybe we wouldn't be stuck with Windows and Office if MS had been forced to interoperate.

Free market isn't really free if you have no competition due to network effects and lock-in.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#197

Post by Mindwipe » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #177

m101010 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to understand how this is affecting you. Do you think that the existence of other App-Stores is reducing the quality of the apps in the Apple-Store?

Yes it will once it happens on iOS. Large companies like Facebook (not picking on Meta, just an easy example) really don’t want to follow Apple’s privacy guidelines, don’t want to ask users for permission to track their location, and don’t want to tell users what info they gather and how it’s used. Once Apple has to allow third-party app stores, many major software companies will either create their own App Store (gr…

> It’ll also long-term enable more dark patterns. Oh you signed up for this $14.99/month app? Well gotta call if you want to unsubscribe. Hell maybe even have to send a letter!

The same EU legislation explicitly bans this.

> Any third-party App Store that’s not a complete scam will be forced to comply with any exact rules that Apple has to. There’s no difference.

This is a misrepresentation. China's worst fear is the lack of choke points for application distribution. Once peer to peer distribution of applications happens without central distributors then their ability to lock down protests will take a significant hit.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#198

Post by Mindwipe » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

postingawayonhn wrote: post #150

ckastner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose. The EU is choosing to favor acting on behalf of their people, rather than some sector. If that sector can't make money in ways that are not immoral with regards to the people, so be it. For example: Why shouldn't a 30%-fee walled garden be destroyed?

I don't feel like I need protecting by the EU. Overall I'm very happy with the products produced by the US tech sector.

> I don't feel like I need protecting by the EU. Overall I'm very happy with the products produced by the US tech sector.

I do. Apple repeatedly discriminates against sexual minorities in the App Store, and it's appropriate for a government to step in and stop that.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#199

Post by skywal_l » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

giorgioz wrote: post #85

blue1 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Marquis

Both Marquess and Marquis are correct so I guess I merged them into Marquees XD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess In Italian, which is my native language, it would be MARCHESE. Fun fact, there is a whole Italian region called Marche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche

Yep, that's where the term 'Marquis' comes from. He's the one supposed to guard the 'marche' (stair in french) which in latin used to mean frontier.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#200

Post by arunkant » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #167

ckastner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say 30% fees are immoral, I said 30% fee walled gardens are immoral. Especially when you make it all but impossible for third parties to operate outside of that walled garden.

Yea but you except and promote them in other areas of your life. Even countries are walled gardens. I don’t think third parties really add value either. It’s just going to result in a bunch of spam and scams, with us losing out on privacy features and convenience.

Don't use third parties then. Problem solved!!