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EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

bbc.com

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Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#231

Post by coliveira »

renewiltord wrote: post #223
Tainnor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that Apple is not a government Yes, and this is a key difference between Europeans and (at least the libertarian/SV type of) Americans. We trust governments more than corporations because governments were elected by us. It's really a difference in culture.

Interesting. It is possible that German-style proportional representation would yield more faith in US government institutions than FPTP. You can rapidly substitute one corp for another in America which is probably preferable to being permanently ruled by 51% of the people.

Trust me, the problem is not being ruled by 51% of the people, but being ruled by < 1%, which is the case with American oligarchy (or at least their final goal).

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#232

Post by buisi »

Sargos wrote: post #208
buisi wrote: post #97

It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and Mastercard. They too can pick and choose who they do business with (freedom of expression). There are a lot of middle-men with a lot of power who get ignored in favor of chasing the most popular target of the day.

> It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and Mastercard These are two of the most heavily regulated corporations in the world. I don't even understand the premise of your comment. Banking and money is extremely regulated and they have to ask for permission to do pretty much anything.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/visa-and-mastercard-ar... Not the most sympathetic target, but it goes to show how much power they have. If they can do it against such a big target, can't they do it against anyone?

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#233

Post by coliveira »

Grimm1 wrote: post #194
ksec wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' : Now the EU is saying the same thing to Apple. It is their market, and they dictate the rules. Which is perhaps a taste of Apple's own medicine? I wonder what those people who keep saying it is Apple's platform they can do what ever they want had to say? I sometimes wonder had Apple not b…

This is weird to me, the argument is not just that company X is a private platform so they should be able to do what they want it is that they're a private US platform and in the US they can do what they want because that's generally the law and social understanding of companies in the US. At least for me it was never that company X can do what they want globally. That's silly they're subject to the laws of the juris…

Corporations cannot do "what they want" in the US, they're subject to regulations and to anti-trust laws. The problem is that the government (both parties) has been very lax about anti-trust enforcement. So now we have companies that are virtual monopolies and oligopolies trying to remove whatever regulations still remain in the books.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#234

Post by croes »

nickpp wrote: post #144
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It seems that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just do anything to protect the status quo. Innovation is forbidden here. But hey! It’s for our own good. Yeah, this. Europe is an old continent that's mostly old money. The Europeans of today are rich mostly due to inherited wealth and former imperialism, not wealth they created themselves through innovation, with some families tracing their wealth back for cent…

And further: don’t bother starting that business dear citizen. Don’t worry your pretty little head with entrepreneurship, it’s too complicated for you. Just take one of these comfy government jobs we’re providing and you’ll be fine. We'll even take care of your pension and give you "free" health care.

Yeah, let's be like the US in the corona pandemic, not. That adored business mostly exploited either their users or their employees. Facebook, Amazon, Uber, etc.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#235

Post by buisi »

avianlyric wrote: post #130
buisi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us say the internet was created 50 years ago, and Facebook decided to eradicate all homosexual content. Perhaps, not even maliciously but as collateral damage for another goal. Would it have been as shocking or obviously bad?

The internet is not the only place the social changes happens. Equally the EU isn't applying the same regulation to every company, the most significant ones only apply to companies with 10% market share. It would be quite plausible for gay friendly social networks to spring up to fill that gap, and I would entirely expect it to happen. Apps like Grindr basically proves it would happen.

Don't gay people make up at least 5% of the population?

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#236

Post by alacombe »

Mijka wrote: post #139
alacombe wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as "EU citizenship". I am a French citizen, my passport says I am a French citizen, and I do not have a SINGLE legal document mentioning "European citizen".

Just checked the cover and first page of my french passport (made in 2013). There's 3 lines written in different languages in this order : - Union européenne - République française - Passeport It doesn't says "French citizen" either, just "French Republic" and "European Union" multiple times.

> It doesn't says "French citizen" either, just "French Republic" and "European Union" multiple times.

Yes it does, it's clearly written:

"Nationalite: Francaise"

NOT:

"Nationalite: Francaise, Europeenne"

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#237

Post by jariel »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #171
corty wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a very uncharitable and weak interpretation of the grandparent. For the parliamentary elections, the bigger parties agreed to try to fix democracy deficits by promising to elect a nominated candidate (Frans Timmmermans and Manfred Weber) as president of the commission depending on which block won in parliament. Yet, after the election, in a typical EU backroom deal, von der Leyen was elected. So it is quite f…

The UK has exactly the same opacity. People vote for parties, and the winning party can replace its leader at any time. Voters have exactly zero input into who is chosen. That choice is down to the party hierarchy, with some token show-voting from party members once a shortlist has been selected.

This is not true, and the most recent election in the UK is strong evidence of this.

UK voters know which parties they are voting for, their platforms, and their leaders, turnout is high, and there is general awareness of the issues.

In mostly the same way in other 'good' EU nations.

Parliament can fall if there's a lack of confidence in leadership, particularly on an important issue, in which case, there's an election. This happen with Johnson in the UK wherein there was an 'issue election' called and people were well aware of the issues.

This was actually a pretty strong and democratic process: Johnson had not been elected, so he went to the polls and people had material, meaningful input.

In proportional representation systems, leaders can change without elections as well (see: Sweden, Finland etc.) and it's not exactly perfect but it works well enough.

The 'good' European nations have pretty good democracy at the national level.

It's at the EU level that it's all Byzantine. Pun intended.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#238

Post by alacombe »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #187
alacombe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be tempted to think the concept of "corporations" pre-dates "government" as we know them today, and these secular traditions were merely enshrined in Law.

you know what sort of corporations you get without governments? without schools and universities that educate their employers? or the research that has supported ALL the technologies that these companies have exploited? or build ALL the infrastructure (roads, electricity, water...)

That wasn't the point.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#239

Post by themacguffinman »

AntiImperialist wrote: post #218
baxtr wrote: post #75

Ok, I will probably get downvoted for this. But I will still speak my mind: I am an EU citizen and I don’t think that’s the right approach because it’s distracting from what really happened: We missed the big Internet bus because we were so much focused on keeping things the way they were. Now we try to regulate us out. It makes me unbelievably sad. And it continues. The car was invented here but it takes an Australi…

Why would you be downvoted? You're speaking in favor of your enemies, which are the tech companies in the U.S. the employees of which comprises most of the HN crowd. It is in the best interest of the E.U. to regulate Big Tech, if only because they are all from the U.S. But with massive amount of economic muscle that tech companies can muster, specially if they work together, not to mention most of EU still "protected…

Perhaps in the short term, but regulating Big Tech to the ground is not really in the EU's long term interest. I suspect it will actually setback its own tech industry relative to global players for the meagre benefit of temporarily slowing down Big Tech in the EU market.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#240

Post by nisa »

SllX wrote: post #228
mcv wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The difference is that Apple is not a government." That means they are not an organization that is accountable to the public. That means they are an organization that cares more about profit and market share, than about human/civil rights.

You could say the same thing about your local coffee shop. What's the problem?

No problem - the local coffee shop is also subject to regulations and needs to pay tax, need to respect hard fought worker laws (at least in most countries) and needs to respect the law.

Now there are some new regulations for bigger entities. What's the problem?

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