alt Hacker News> the issue is with specifically US politics and social issues being everywhere. It drowns out all attempts at discourse for anything else
Unfortunately, US politics also drives tech issues elsewhere like the EU. For example, local data control is a big thing that some of us have been screaming about forever but nobody paid attention to--until US politics made it a hot button issue.
And, to be honest, if the EU would get off its ass and at least try to foster some alternatives, even those of us in the US would benefit. EU alternatives would mean that people in the US could finally vote against the megajillionaires with their wallets.
> Americans, including people here, seem uniquely incapable of nuance in their thinking when it comes to politics.
Bullets and beatings don't leave much room for nuance regardless of country.
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>And, to be honest, if the EU would get off its ass and at least try to foster some alternatives, even those of us in the US would benefit.
What exactly do you want the EU, the Brussels based institution, to do here? Because AWS didn't come into existence because Uncle sam came in and twisted Bezo's hand telling him to invent a hyperscaler that will conquer the world.
EU's lack of comparable domestic alternatives is a consequence of the failure of its entrepreneurship and free market in the SW private sector, and nothing that EU institution can do about it to magically fix this since the solution is not MORE regulatory interference form government bureaucrats who don't know how the internet works.
You might be able to force innovation if the governments can throw money at the problem if the VC sector is lacking, but they can't force economies of scale and mass adoption without a China style great firewall, in which case you'd then have even bigger issues.
The EU is trying but these things have to happen bottom–up. The EU Council or EU Parliament isn't a software development shop. They allocate funds to groups like NLNET who allocate them to a selection of the projects they get proposals for. NLNET can only allocate funds to something an individual or small group proposes. If you want to propose something, please go ahead.
Capitalists can also start software businesses and sell their software, but those are all in Silicon Valley because the money is there because the US has a privileged financial position.