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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

#251

Post by avianlyric »

jariel wrote: post #229
dmitriid wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend an undemocratic system that their ancestors literally fought for 2000 years to overcome, with literally millions dead. It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend a Union they grew up in with no wars, with relative economic stability, with open borders and unencumbered travel. Compared to their ancestors who literally sacrificed millions of peopl…

"It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend a Union they grew up in with no wars, with relative economic stability, with open borders and unencumbered travel." A little bit like a Chinese citizen, defending their lack of democracy 'because 7% growth every year and stability!'. Not only are things things 1) possible without the EU, 2) they were mostly put in place long before the body politic existed (th…

> How does Australia function?

By mining huge amounts of raw resources and selling to their near by neighbours as well as the rest of the world.

The U.K. doesn’t have access to any useful raw materials apart from perhaps coal.

> How does Japan function?

Through massive government borrowing. Their debt is 223% of GDP. Now it hasn’t really bitten them yet, but it’s increasingly looking like it’s gonna be a serious problem for them.

I’m not either of those options is something I would pick for the U.K.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#252

Post by creato »

nr2x wrote: post #250
mrtksn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe didn’t miss the internet bus because of regulations, there were no regulations until the dust settled. The thing is, there’s no US style capital in EU. The American capitalist bankrolled all the internet when there was no clear path to make money from it. I remember when YouTube was burning billions per year, Facebook being labeled as “would never be profitable”. Is there the kind of money in Europe that would…

CERN invented the web on public money, Google at al came a lot later.

CERN invented the text format of a webpage. I think that is roughly 0% of the R&D required to make the internet work as we know it today.

This is like me developing a text rendering app on my laptop and claiming credit for the work of hardware engineering companies like Intel, Apple, etc.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#253

Post by LudwigNagasena »

Grimm1 wrote: post #247
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against/for what? Do you think people who call for new legislation think it is already illegal? This would make no sense.

The argument that since they're a private platform they should be able to do what they want. I don't think it's ever been a blanket argument globally because the concept of a private entity is very different from nation to nation.

I am not sure anyone aside from a tiny minority of hardcore libertarians believes that "since they're a private platform they should be able to do what they want" is a valid argument.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#254

Post by Aerroon »

Tarsul wrote: post #167
frankfrankfrank wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the details, but I'm surprised not only by the tiers, but that the measure would be something like "reach". How do you accurately and consistently measure "reach" with the internet? Language adapted sites as a ratio of the population that is possibly able or actively accesses the internet? Accounts? Active accounts? Also, my first thought is to simply then start breaking up into smaller social media co…

the free speech in the usa is also something out of a dystopian terror novel. Writers (e.g. in the atlantic) like to say that our time is less like 1984 and more like brave new world in that all the noise that is allowed through free speech leads to bad results (trump, brexit, anti-social media etc.) that are not necessarily better than what the EU is trying to avert with its free speech agenda. I'd argue some regula…

I don't see the connection at all. Neither the UK nor the US are dystopian or anywhere close to it. You can call Trump and Brexit bad results, but the people voted for that. It was their choice. Saying that we need limits on speech so that people wouldn't vote for them sounds dystopian instead.

On top of that, I'd argue that while the US and the UK aren't doing great as a result of those choices people made, you can't really know that they were disastrous choices. For one, the US and UK haven't gotten themselves into another war, which sounds like a major upside to me.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#255

Post by bonoboTP »

SllX wrote: post #245
nisa wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Now there are some new regulations for bigger entities. What's the problem? "Size" of business is an arbitrary and meritless distinction.

Size matters a lot.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25419085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25432581

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#256

Post by frongpik »

mbo wrote: post #217
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…

Elon is South African, not Australian

I can see how he says on some TV interview: "well, as an african myself, I ..."

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#257

Post by emteycz »

alacombe wrote: post #236
Mijka wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

That's your nationality, that's different from citizenship. The EU uses the term a lot officially

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#258

Post by judge2020 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #182
an_opabinia wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Small fries" and 24%... Anyway you're right but it's like, how would any of this concretely improve competition? In my experience, the problem is that giant companies steal your stuff, whether it's your code or your users, and that even when you want to enforce something like that, they can afford better lawyers than you. Like nobody here is working on social networks, cellphones or web browsers. I bet you interact…

> And then a giant company sues you for IP violations and you go bankrupt Is this an issue with the FAANG giants? My sense is initiating IP litigation is more the province of legacy tech companies like IBM and Oracle. (Who aren’t being targeted by these EU laws) I’ve seen very little examples of Apple, Google, or Amazon initiating patent lawsuits. Especially against small players. If anything most of their lobbying a…

They like the current IP law landscape almost solely because it's the monster they know rather than the monster they don't. Moving the needle to either of the extremes (more ip control vs less) would have some positives but a load of unknown negatives.

Re: EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech

#260

Post by AntiImperialist »

themacguffinman wrote: post #239
AntiImperialist wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not how international trade works. You can regulate your competitors differently.
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