Critics say EU risks ceding control of its tech laws under U.S. pressure

Digital Services Act / Digital Markets Act (similar in spirit, but one targets online stores like Google Play, another one online services like Instagram more generally)

More specifically, both are already in effect, outlawing certain things, and designating certain companies as "digital gatekeepers" when they reach a certain threshold of users within the EU.

These regulations don't really specify what every gatekeeper needs to actually do (above the bare minimum), but say that once a company is designated as a gatekeeper, corrective action to prevent their monopolistic behaviour are going to be decided on a case-by-case basis. In practice this means that corrective actions can be something very significant (like iOS having to ask EU users to set a default browser during device setup instead of defaulting to Safari) or nothing, which is why this direct line of conversation shows spinelessness.

It's pretty much an equivalent of a judge having open discussions with a criminal about how the court should interpret the law to suit the criminal better.

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Americans don't either, but the "free" (with ads*) model is so wildly popular with humans that it is unavoidable.

If anything it's more interesting that it has American origins. At it's core, the model provides flat rate access to anyone of any class at no upfront cost. High value users with high ad conversion rates subsiding the platforms for low income low consumer spending users. That's something that is particularly European, and not very American.

After decades of trying and broadly failing to regulate American tech corps, at what point does the EU admit that leveling fines against Meta will never stop Meta from being Meta, that American megacorps are essentially ungovernable in Europe (or elsewhere for that matter) and the best course of action is to ban and block them in Europe?

Just more fines. Bigger fines, surely this will work eventually... It's been 20 years, its not working. A new approach is needed.

> After decades of trying and broadly failing to regulate American tech corps, at what point does the EU...

The crux of the matter is it's a subset of the European Parliament versus a subset of EU member states.

When push comes to shove, EU member states can and already do ignore the EP for anything tangentially related to national security, and national politicans don't and won't give up sovereign power to the EU.

Additonally, the incentives of individual EU states with strong US FDI ties and not as strong domestic champions such as Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Luxembourg, and Romania means they fight tooth and nail to ensure American FDI continues. Member states like Hungary and Spain do this for China and Hungary and Austria for Russia.

There's also the added issue of perception - the EP was historically (and for larger states like France and Germany still is) used as a way to sideline unpopular domestic politicans or as a cushy retirement posting. There's a reason VdL is in Bruxelles and not the Bundeskanzleramt.

Plus, European companies have massive fixed capital investments in the US, especially after the IRA [0], so they don't want to face retaliation from American regulators, and are especially cozy with the Trump admin [1].

Also, European politicos also heavy leverage the revolving door of lobbying like their American peers. The "spend a couple years in Bundestag or Bruxelles and then take a cushy gig at Harvard [2][3]" remains strong. Heck, we'd always organize a fest where the wine would flow and European leaders would network with American and European policymakers studying and working in the US or in Europe [4].

[0] - https://flow.db.com/topics/macro-and-markets/us-german-trade...

[1] - https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/trump-bernard-arnault-lv...

[2] - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/leo-varadkar

[3] - https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/people/ces-alumni/past-policy-fe...

[4] - https://euroconf.eu/speakers/