alt Hacker NewsCritics say EU risks ceding control of its tech laws under U.S. pressure
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The European Commission and Council are becoming increasingly unpopular among my peers. Sentiment towards the Parliament is generally still positive. But it's clear that two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing. Things like Age Verification and Chat Control are going to blow up in their faces.
I don't get how blind these institutions are.
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.
All this so Meta and X can sell politically divisive and hateful advertising with zero transparency.
Ceding? Any legal control the EU has over tech has been slowly drawn out of the US’s grasp. It was just that the US dominance over legal control of all these networked interconnections wasn’t so actively and visibly utilized until more recently.
As a European I have been deeply disappointed with how toothless the EC has been on enforcing the Digital Markets Act. I have exactly one submission to Hacker News from 20 July 2022 when the DMA was approved (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163704). I was incredibly hopeful, given the indicated timelines, that Apple would be forced to open up iOS and iPadOS. Meaning install an application from the internet without restriction, like with any other operating system. The wording clearly requires this (with some wiggle room for security). Apple has dragged this legal process out longer than even my most cynical prediction. I can only surmise that someone in the Commission or senior leadership has decided that enforcing the DMA is not politically expedient right now.
I don't know how to force this issue as a European. There are just too many levels of abstraction between me and Brussels. It looks like many layers of bureaucracy and a lot of opaque backroom deals and discussions. I don't like it at all. Especially given that the EU moves so much faster when it comes to regulations like forcing all of us in Denmark to use timesheets, annoying lids on our bottles, and invasive surveillance laws. All I see is my life getting worse with their actions. I am not alone. Sentiment towards the EU internally is not good right now. Either they start creating regulations which benefit ordinary people, or we're going to get a pretty radical rightward shift in leadership soon, and there are many risks associated with this.
Those same Europeans so fond of their DSA would scream bloody murder if a Trump like administration would do the same. They have created this monster, and there will be tears and the gnashing of theeth should their factions ever lose control and their opponents get to wield those same weapons.
And no, the USAans are not in it for the 'free speech' either.
European countries should try to get off those training wheels and learn to live their own lives.
Isn't it strange how Washington makes laws in the EU?
I wonder if these lobbyists get paid a lot.
Why no ban like china? Weak
I continue to find it bizarre that some Americans are offended that Europeans do not want to be dragged into the American corporate surveillance, advertising, and consumption cult. Will nothing be sovereign until Europe is also littered with personal injury attorney billboards, broadcasting pharmaceutical ads, and other pox marks of a degraded culture? Why search for a better way when you can normalize awful (because it's more profitable).
What are we witnessesing is the beginning of the end of the post-WW2 rules-based international order. What's truly bizarre is that the US designed this order to benefit themselves and they're the ones destroying it now. NATO is a protection racket to outsource European security but really to sell arms to Europe and give the US effetive control over the European militaries.
Over the years the control has grown ever-more pervasive, such as with the control over banking and international payments. One anecdote of the extent of this influence is that if one European Venmos another European and puts "Cuba" or "Syria" in the memo field, they can have their account flagged or permanently banned [1]. The US gets to decide who can use credit cards and what for, which is something the EU has finally picked up on as an issue [2].
What's clear in all this is that China was completely correct to maintain sovereignty over their tech companies, platforms and data. What the US risks is that the EU is going to follow the China model. That means EU versions of cloud platforms, computing platforms, networking infrastructure and so on. And they'll do it similar to how China did by creating demand. Specifically, the EU will mandate the use of European platforms with all their contracts, the European parliament will pass laws as such for national governments and generally the pressure will increase to wean off of US tech companies.
IMHO this shift is as big a change as the post-1945 world order.
[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_n_571f80...
[2]:https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/business/europes-24-tri...
Is it just me or is there not actual meat to this article? Like what specifically are the rules at issue here?
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Specifically, this is another Parliament vs Commission issue. The Commission loves to have little deals away from the public where everything is quietly smoothed over, while the Parliament is trying to build popular legitimacy.