A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
but they have been trying desperately to stop all competition.
They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
Nobody is against regulation that disfavors large incumbents to support competition instead.
You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
However, virtually every other piece of regulation does the opposite.
Regulation usually gets trotted out after the downside of doing [new innovation] is experienced. This always happens, because doing something new always involves unknown risk. Most people aren't entrepreneurs and hate risk, so they pass regulation, and the market gets locked down so nothing new happens again. Incumbents and their army of lawyers can easily comply or are grandfathered in, and challengers are permanently disadvantaged. That market is officially dead until the next fundamental leap forward in technology.
What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all.
Combine this with a rapidly aging demography in Europe, and I only see this trend increasing. If there's one thing old people hate, it's risk and doing new things. Meanwhile, those same old folks are expecting massive payouts (social benefits) via taxation of the same private sector they're currently kneecapping with red tape. While ironic, those two trends converging aren't great for Europe.
Specifically with AI I don’t want to experience the downside of innovation before we regulate because of how wide spread its use already is, and it’s problems have already become apparent.
For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias. Companies don’t disclose how their models are trained to negate bias or anything like that either and that’s one example I remember off the top of my head
That's the point though. It's illegal for humans to do things during hiring that are not illegal for AI to do as it stands now (all sorts of discrimination). We want to at least level the playing field.
There’s no exemption from prosecution for racial bias because it was done by an algorithm. If a company uses such an algorithm, AI or not, they will be open to prosecution for it.
Humans can be asked to explain their decissions and personally take accountability for them. Even if AI processes were less biased, using them introduces the opacity of relying on models that simply can't be fully intuited or explained. For life-altering decisions, merely performing better than a human is not the benchmark.
there maybe better examples of why AI biases provide deep systemic problems but: CV screening? are contemporary LLM really worse that previous screening tech and processes?
I think a worse feature for them to have is consistency. Imagine being someone that has fallen through the cracks of software a significant number of employers are using... Basically soft-locked out of employment with no recourse.
Discrimination in this sense is a statistical property. If Jimbob gets rejected everywhere as an individual it isn't really discrimination but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue.
Isn't not knowing that bias exists just the same problem that the average HR department has? You solve that by educating people about biases. If anything that should be easier with LLMs because you're not asking people to alter their sense of self ("I wouldn't do that!"), you're just informing them of technical limitations.
I don’t understand your argument. The whole purpose of AI-driven recruitment is to reduce human effort by doing some work for them. If AI due to existing bias reduces diversity in your pool of candidates, what can you do with it? You either do not notice the bias and just think that those people are indeed the best fit, you willingly accept the bias („But it reduces our hiring costs! We deal with diversity later, when this technology matures!“), or you go to see the unfiltered stream and put such an amount of work into it that makes AI useless. HR departments are not the people who will build their own solution, they will buy it from a third party and they won’t have control over or the budget for the fine-tuning.
How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantity?
> This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem.
I feel like it's really the opposite.
There is a major problem with using AI to screen CVs, which is that AI is bad at screening CVs. It excludes good candidates and offers mediocre ones, and opens up a bunch of hacks the equivalent of black hat SEO, which gives an undesired advantage to people inclined to dirty tricks.
But "it's racist" is a political hot button, so before people can start to point that out, someone scrambles to push the hot button and suck all the oxygen out of the room. Then the purveyors of snake oil can munge the algorithm until it passes the naive oversimplified racial bias test someone made up (probably making it even worse at its intended purpose), and then claim "the problem" is solved, as if that was the main and only problem.
How do you get an unbiased evaluation of someone with an accent that differs from your training set? It took about a decade for my friends with Indian English accents to be able to use voice controls in luxury cars. And honestly young people from India have a much more American accent than my generation.
There are still plenty of proxies that can amount to the same thing. Not a lot of white graduates of HBCUs, for instance. Are we removing the names of all schools, too?
It‘s 2024. There are decades or research with a lot of data, there exist best practices and products that help combating the bias. The toolkit available to HRs is rich and there’s plenty of things that work. E.g. I have absolutely no problem hiring women in tech roles, because I simply adjusted my process. I heard complaints from other engineering leaders that they want to increase diversity but struggle to find candidates: they do not realize that they have bias in job descriptions, they apply same screening criteria and do the post-interview evaluation the same way regardless of candidate gender or background. Many people can do the job, but they communicate it differently and it is important to account for that when you see the CV or talk to them.
You do not understand how HR works then. They are not LLM researchers and just apply the available toolkit, e.g. organizing regular training for hiring managers. When they buy AI-driven solution from a third party, they have no tools neither to detect if it’s just a statistical fluctuation or there’s a bias they need to find a workaround for, nor to act on this information in a cost-efficient way. Most likely they won‘t even have enough data to reach any statistical significance. The vendor in theory could do it, but most of them are startups now and they do not have diversity in their OKRs, at least not now. It’s not the UVP of their product.
It's almost guaranteed there are people trying to sell an AI version of Robodebt right now to the Australian government, even though the last (non-AI) version of it was an absolute cluster fuck:
Other governments around the world have done similar (non-AI) things in the past with similar terrible results. They'll likely try an AI version of things too in the near future, just because "AI" apparently solves all the problems. Ugh.
Of course they could be. A company that doesn't want a racial bias won't intentionally filter on names, but might accidentally deploy an LLM that can discern race from name.
The humans will do it unconsciously if they can see the names.
It is like orchestras used to use auditions where the judges could see the people; when they went to auditions where they couldn't see the people, the number of women being hired went right up.
See, this is the problem with just deciding to invent your own facts.
There is a famous study on this topic, usually presented in much the way you describe. But usually people are more careful not to lie about the results. The rate of women being hired went down, not up. The "success" for women was contained to advancement through particular audition rounds.
The original paper is not exactly a model of investigative integrity:
>> Women are about 5 percentage points more likely to be hired than are men in a completely blind audition, although the effect is not statistically significant. The effect is nil, however, when there is a semifinal round, perhaps as a result of the unusual effects of the semifinal round.
Are you citing a weird racist blogger on medium that disagrees with the stated conclusion of the paper? Is that how science works now?
Abstract from the original paper:
> A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras--adoption of "blind" auditions with a "screen" to conceal the candidate's identity from the jury--provides a test for sex-biased hiring. Using data from actual auditions, in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired. Although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction, the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras.
You'll get more accurate results if you look at the paper's conclusion, not the abstract.
The whole point is that the paper doesn't actually support any of the claims, which it's fairly open about -- that's those "large standard errors".
They did not in fact find that the screen increases the probability of a woman being hired. They found that it increased the probability of a woman passing the final round of auditions. There's more than one round.
It's up to you, I guess, whether you want to follow the original authors to their conclusion that the semifinal round is fundamentally unlike the final and quarterfinal audition rounds. I wouldn't.
> This is not very impressive at all. Some fine words but the punchline seems to be that the data are too noisy to form any strong conclusions.
> Huh? Nothing’s statistically significant but the estimates “show that the existence of any blind round makes a difference”? I might well be missing something here. In any case, you shouldn’t be running around making a big deal about point estimates when the standard errors are so large. I don’t hold it against the authors—this was 2000, after all, the stone age in our understanding of statistical errors. But from a modern perspective we can see the problem.
> Anyway, where’s the damn “50 percent” and the “increases by severalfold”? I can’t find it. It’s gotta be somewhere in that paper, I just can’t figure out where.
> Pallesen’s objections are strongly stated but they’re not new. Indeed, the authors of the original paper were pretty clear about its limitations. The evidence was all in plain sight.
> For example, here’s a careful take posted by BS King in 2017:
>> Okay, so first up, the most often reported findings: blind auditions appear to account for about 25% of the increase in women in major orchestras. . . . [But] One of the more interesting findings of the study that I have not often seen reported: overall, women did worse in the blinded auditions. . . .
If you read the paper, you'd notice the problems.
But you might not want to run the risk of, um, "racism" that seems to be inherent in reading a paper on the impact of blind auditions on women.
The racism was more the guy having very strong opinions about black people's IQs and immigrants destroying western civilization on twitter (plus being against COVID vaccines and human rights and other stuff that suggest you are not a level-headed truth seeker).
Quote from your second, more respectable, link:
> Pallesen’s objections are strongly stated but they’re not new. Indeed, the authors of the original paper were pretty clear about its limitations.
When I read the original papers, like your second link, I find a level headed paper working with limited data they had available.
I would suggest that the annoyance is with pop science retelling at best, or just a quack selling anger online to fuel his weird obsessions at worst.
You realize this is a huge problem right? Even if that was my only complaint (it’s not!) that is 100% not acceptable. If it’s doing it with CVs it’s doing it with other things in other scenarios.
Another is that a health insurance company was caught using AI to determine if a claim should be denied or not which lead to a scandal as a whistleblower leaked the practice, as it was wrought with errors and ethical concerns
> For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias.
Can't we just say racism is illegal, and if a company uses an AI to be racist, they get fined the same way they would if they were racist the old fashioned way?
Look up the Dutch tax return scandal where the Dutch tax arm of the government (‘IRS’) used machine learning to identify fraud but it turned out to be very racially biased and it uprooted thousands of families with years of financial struggles and legal battles.
Fence at the top of a cliff (make sure the AI is unbiased and can be fixed when it turns out it is) vs. Ambulance at the bottom (letting people sue if they think the machine is wrong).
When you make specific methods illegal, it tends to lead to loopholes. If you just make the result illegal then nobody can try and get around it by using a slightly different system design.
But which way around does that apply? Racism is a concrete example of what AI may incorrectly automate, it's not the only bias that AI can have — any correlation in the training data will be learned, but not necessarily causation — and the goal of these laws is to require the machines to be accurate, unbiased, up to date, respectful of privacy etc., with "not racist" as merely one example of why that matters.
(Also the existing laws on racial equality were not removed by GDPR; to the previous metaphor, the fence being better doesn't mean you can fire the ambulance service).
I would argue that we already have experienced enough of the downsides of "AI" that there is reasonable cause for concern.
The implications of deepfakes and similar frauds alone are potentially devastating to informed political debate in democracies, safe and effective dissemination of public health information in emergencies, and plenty of other realistic and important trust scenarios.
The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such. Again it is not hard to imagine a near future where chat-based systems have essentially displaced search engines and social media as the default ways to find information online but then provide bad advice on legal, financial, or health matters.
There is a second serious concern with LLMs and related technologies, which is that they could very rapidly shift the balance from compensating those who produce useful creative content to compensating those who run the summary service. It's never healthy when your economics don't line up with rewarding the people doing the real work and we've already seen plenty of relevant stories about the AI training data gold rush.
Next we get to computer vision and its applications in fields like self-driving vehicles. Again we've already seen plenty of examples where cars have been tricked into stopping suddenly or otherwise misbehaving when for example someone projected a fake road sign onto the road in front of them.
Again there is a second serious concern with systems like computer vision, audio classification, and natural language processing and that is privacy. It's bad enough that we all carry devices with cameras and microphones around with us almost 24/7 these days and the people whose software runs on those devices seem quite willing to spy on us and upload data to the mothership with little or any warning. That alone has unprecedented implications for privacy and associated risks. With the increased ability to automatically interpret raw video and audio footage - with varying degrees of accuracy and bias of course - that amplifies the potential dangers of these systems greatly.
There is enormous potential in modern AI/ML techniques for everything from helping everyday personal research to saving lives through commoditising sophisticated analysis of medical scans. But that doesn't mean there aren't also risks we already know about at the same kind of scale - even without all the doomsday hypotheticals where suddenly a malicious AGI emerges that takes over the universe.
Let’s stipulate that all you said was true. How is EU regulation suppose to prevent that? Are they going to stop open source models from being used in Europe? Are they going to stop foreign adversaries from using deep fakes?
It’s just like trying to restrict DVD encryption keys from being published or 128 bit encryption from being “exported” in browsers back in the car.
> The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such. Again it is not hard to imagine a near future where chat-based systems have essentially displaced search engines and social media as the default ways to find information online but then provide bad advice on legal, financial, or health matters.
I think a bigger concern is LLMs providing deliberately biased results and stating them as fact.
The issue is, the regulations are tailored to address any of those concerns, some of which may not even be solvable through regulation at all:
> The implications of deepfakes and similar frauds alone are potentially devastating to informed political debate in democracies, safe and effective dissemination of public health information in emergencies, and plenty of other realistic and important trust scenarios.
The horse is out of the barn on this one. You can't stop this by regulating anything because the models necessary to do it have already been released, would continue to be released from other countries, and one of the primary purveyors of this sort of thing will be adversarial nation states, who obviously aren't going to comply with any laws you pass.
> The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such.
Which is why AI summaries are largely a gimmick and people are figuring that out.
> they could very rapidly shift the balance from compensating those who produce useful creative content to compensating those who run the summary service.
This already happened quite some time ago with search engines. People want the answer, not a paywall, so the search engine gives them an unpaywalled site with the answer (and gets an ad impression from it) and the paywalled sites lose to the ad-supported ones. But then the operations that can't survive on ad impressions lose out, and even the ad-supported ones doing original research lose out because you can't copyright facts so anyone paying to do original reporting will see their stories covered by every other outlet that doesn't. Then the most popular news sites become scummy lowest-common-denominator partisan hacks beholden to advertisers with spam-laden websites to match.
Fixing this would require something along the lines of the old model NPR used to use, i.e. "free" yet listener-supported reporting, but they stopped doing that and became a partisan outlet supported by advertising. The closest contemporary thing seems to be the Substacks where most of the stories are free to read but you're encouraged to subscribe and the subscriptions are enough to sustain the content creation.
The AI thing doesn't change this much if at all. A cheap AI summary isn't going to displace original content any more than a cheap rephrasing by a competing outlet does already.
> Next we get to computer vision and its applications in fields like self-driving vehicles. Again we've already seen plenty of examples where cars have been tricked into stopping suddenly or otherwise misbehaving when for example someone projected a fake road sign onto the road in front of them.
But where does the regulation come in here? When it does that it's obviously a bug and the manufacturers already have the incentive to want to fix it because their customers won't like it. And there are already laws specifying what happens when a carmaker sells a car that doesn't behave right.
> Again there is a second serious concern with systems like computer vision, audio classification, and natural language processing and that is privacy.
Which is really almost nothing to do with AI and the main solutions to it are giving people alternatives to the existing systems that invade their privacy. Indeed, the hard problem there is replacing existing "free" systems with something that doesn't put more costs on people, when the existing systems are "free" specifically because of that privacy invasion.
If a government wants to do something about this, fund the development of real free software that replaces the proprietary services hoovering up everyone's data.
> What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass potential market killing regulation
This is entirely because the experts and fundraisers in the field promoted the technology as existentially and societally dangerous before they even got it to do anything commercially viable. "This has so much potential that it could destroy us all!" was the sales pitch!
Of course regulators are going to take that seriously, as there's nobody of influence vested in trying to show them otherwise.
It quickly generates BS text that costs billions of man hours to generate by people doing BS jobs, which could be doing something more useful, such as childcare.
I'm using it to quickly localize our application into different languages, such as Arabic. German took like a few hours to get from non existing to 100% functional. Arabic was sketchy with Arabic mixed with French text, now it's 100% Arabic.
> which could be doing something more useful, such as childcare.
Ok but what is your plan for letting people who lost their jobs to AI to do more meaningful things? Because unless there are bigger societal changes all it means those people will not have to find jobs that are even more bullshit.
I think they're going to do the same jobs they are doing now, but using AI instead which should probably reduce the amount of BS they have to deal with everyday. For instance some of the low pay work companies would use freelancers for, like processing huge amounts of data, manually transcribing text from documents, or content moderation.
The experts did that specifically so we would regulate barriers to entry into existence. It isn't a mew trick. Regulatory capture takes many guises, "think of the":
Children,
Consumers,
...
Under booked hotels we could put you in.
>> Most people aren't entrepreneurs and hate risk, so they pass regulation, and the market gets locked down so nothing new happens again
I think that the bigger issue is that the people who suffer when the risk goes bad and the people who benefit when the risk goes well usually aren't the same people.
"before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all."
----
Let me laugh out loud. Those, who govern these companies know 10 years ahead how and what will happen. Bigdiks higher up has 10-20 year plans. And people talk about "before we had a chance to experience the upsides and the downsides". Get a grip on reality.
Yea, so wildly out of touch with reality. The governing elite are wizards of prediction!
Sundar at Google knew LLMs were going to be huge after Google invented them, so that’s why they were first to market and…
Oops. Maybe not?
While it might make risk-averse types feel good to imagine the people in charge are all-knowing (see religion), the truth is the world is a chaotic and reflexive system of unpredictability. Scary, I know!
I think you're the one who needs to get a grip on reality. There's no cabal of businessmen playing the world like a puppet. They don't have some secret knowledge of the future. They're often just as stupid as the rest of us, and prone to the same biases. If they were as prescient as you think, I assume companies would simply never fail - as others point out, they often miss things or make mistakes.
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
I'm against the way it's being applied to Apple. I don't think that the government should dictate that consumers aren't allowed to choose a platform that's a locked down walled garden if that's what they want.
We have platforms that aren't walled gardens (Android) that many of us happily use (myself included), and Apple shouldn't have to become something that it didn't set out to be just because a few other big tech companies feel stifled by Apple's rules.
> Not to mention the simple freedom of choosing what you want to install yourself, and not just what Apple allows you to...
I have the freedom to install whatever I want. I get that freedom by using Linux and Android. I choose to have that freedom by selecting platforms that provide it.
Many HN users seem to want all the benefits of Apple's approach with none of the downsides, and it doesn't work that way. Apple is what it is because it has a tight, coherent strategy, and forcing Apple to change that strategy will have knock-on effects that most Apple users won't like.
If you value freedom to install whatever you want, you chose the wrong ecosystem, and hijacking the ecosystem to satisfy your values is unfair to the vast majority of customers whose values already align with the ecosystem's.
Apple is providing an entry into the free smartphone market that is a closed system with a highly controlled and curated software ecosystem. That is their product, that's what they offer.
It's no different than Nintendo's entry into the game console market being what it is—some people will choose that experience because what it offers is valuable for them.
For myself, I'm an Android phone user and a PC gamer, but just because I wouldn't choose those experiences for myself doesn't mean I begrudge their existence.
The DMA does not allow you to install what you want.
It does not apply to consoles.
It does make it possible for companies to keep some more money, but most importantly it allows them to sidestep the protections for my privacy that I pay a premium to Apple for.
A real DMA would force facebook, twitter, etc to open up for alternative clients. That would bring competition in and benefit the end user.
Not that whatever digital slot machnine company is allowed to keep a higher percentage of the diamonds they sell you in their free to pay game.
it’s not 30%— in almost all cases it’s 15%. and by all means, if you think all the services and support for payments and returns and refunds and customer support are doable in 3%, you can have apple not do that too.
Apple needs to get out of the infrastructure business if they want to play by their own rules. They aren't selling Gameboys and washing machines, they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices. That needs to be regulated and the consumer needs to have the final say, not Apple.
> they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices.
To be clear, I think privacy laws like GDPR absolutely have a place for consumer protection.
I just don't think the DMA does. Watching how the DMA applies to Apple, it feels far less about consumer protection than it does about businesses, and that's what makes me uncomfortable. The EU is in this case listening to complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart and ignoring the very real damage that their actions could do to consumer protection.
The Apple App Store protects users from myriad abuses by myriad bad companies. The EU wants Apple to build a blessed, paved off-ramp that companies can strongly encourage prospective customers to use that brings them deeper into the manipulative control of those companies.
> complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart
Apple (and other big tech companies) locking the competition out of the market, or buying them, hurts consumers. It robs them of other innovative choices.
Having more choices and interoperability is generally good for consumers.
If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you?
To clarify: I don't use Apple. I chose their competitors instead because I like the features offered by the competition better.
> If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you?
Because people won't be able to stick with the defaults. One of the first dominoes to fall if the EU gets its wishlist will be Facebook, which will put a version of its app that wouldn't pass Apple's review out through unofficial channels and strongly encourage or force users to switch to it. Once Facebook has paved the way many other companies that are similarly inclined to abuse their users will follow.
A walled garden with a wide-open back door is no walled garden at all, and the many Apple users who liked the garden are going to be cranky when they realize what tech lobbyists have done in the EU.
Interesting. I had thought of the garden walls as being in the way of users, based on my personal experience, but you bring up the point that the walls can also be in the way of nefarious companies. I assume both can be true.
And perhaps the legal system sees some of these garden wall as protecting Apple, falling under anti-trust, like the 30% markups on all financial transactions?
You mentioned malicious versions of the Facebook app that do an end-run around Apple's review. Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?
> Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?
If I thought the EU could actually execute on that? Maybe. But I know that Apple executes on it, and the fallout from the gdpr doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the EU knows how to regulate tech in a way that achieves desired outcomes and doesn't just lead to the same behavior as before with malicious compliance stamped on top.
> Think of all those evil hackers waiting around the corner for the poor unsuspecting iPhone users.
I'm not talking "evil hackers". I'm talking about Facebook just for a start. Once they pave the way and teach users how to use the off-ramp (or else not be able to use Facebook!) they'll be followed by dozens of smaller abusive companies that are eager to pass by Apple's review requirements.
I'm far less concerned about software vulnerabilities than I am about the companies that Apple's business policies currently keep in check.
Crypto comments aside, that could have happened on a Windows desktop too. Yet when MS tried to go walled garden with their store everyone complained. I don't see why Apple should get a free pass.
I guess with the iPhone it was walled from the start so anyone buying one knew what they were getting. I'd be pissed off if they walled gardened my mac. I've got an iPhone and have mixed feelings about the restrictions on it. They can be annoying but on the other hand I have significant investments and more and more banks are insisting you access them via an app and for that I'd probably prioritize security.
On the other hand, an example i've posted before: i want DaisyDisk for my iPhone. It will never be available as long as Apple can censor what's released for their phones.
But it doesn't have to be, you can simply NOT regulate every damn little thing, especially when there are no victims and you are forbidding a simple trade between two entities who are both willing to engage.
No, developers who want to make money on the Apple Store are not victims. They can develop for Linux and sell apps there if they don't want to pay what Apple wants.
I'm one of them, I'm not supporting Apple or Google and I build everything on the web paying nothing.
I agree, mostly. It is worth noting that until the forced opening of the market occurred, safari was conspicuously lacking in PWA support, especially wasm support. I am a recovering libertarian, and I now see the need for regulation in more places. Largely because of regulatory capture, true, but I don't think anarcho-capitalism works. It just makes lawyers top of the heap instead of warriors (in pure anarchy). Which, when the lawyers command the soldiers, isn't any better.
Because they can collect more data with a native app. A native app is far better from their perspective, but not from the user's, unless it is something computationally bound that can't handle overhead (mostly games?). The last exception is banking apps. They do a lot of weird stuff to fingerprint your phone too, but in this case the user definitely wants them to.
Web apps have ways to track users, but users have ways to mitigate this via adblockers and privacy features in their browser. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ exists to help users check their own browser fingerprint.
Full apps on the other hand have many more ways to fingerprint users which aren’t as well known, such as “your free storage, your current volume level (to 3 decimal points) and even your battery level (to 15 decimal points)”. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/23/iphone-...)
Is one conclusively better than the other? I’m not sure, but web tracking and fingerprinting is still much more studied and users have more countermeasures, including using a different device where the user has more control.
I think flash and actionscript might be a counterexample? People have different standards too. In thebearly days of win3.1 I liked apps that had different widget sets, now anything that doesn't look native is considered garbage. And some people seem to consider rastered fonts equivalent to baby-eating in a professional context. I don't think I have any common axioms or value systems to carry on conversations with them, but I believe they do care, so it is probably just that PWAs are my preference, but no one elses. I prefer the web mattermost to the app for instance.
Flash is actually an example of how bad cross platform frameworks are compared to native.
Despite what Adobe said when the iPhone first came out, there was no way that Flash was ever going to run on the first generation iPhone. It had only 128MB RAM and 400 MHz processor. When Flash finally came to Mobile in late 2010 on Android, it required 1GB RAM and 1Ghz processor. An iPhone with those specs didn’t come out until 2011.
Heck Safari could barely run on the first iPhone, it would do checkerboards until rendering could catch up with the scrolling.
And if you remember Apple’s cross platform Windows apps - iTunes, QuickTime and the short lived Safari, they also looked very bad on Windows.
Both Google and Facebook at different times said they are moving away from cross platform frameworks and web based technologies for iOS to more native software. Google has all but abandoned their cross platform mobile framework.
this argument doesn't work, because you could always argue that the consumer chose this product, and thus its features and practices should be allowed. Apple had it coming for a long time already, one way or another. And Microsoft also will again the way they are going.
Yeah, sure, you could always argue that about anything, but that's not a refutation of this particular argument in this particular situation. Apple's walled garden produces a lot of real benefits for its customers that are part of what make it successful, and dismantling their walled garden is going to harm consumers.
I would never pick an Apple device for myself. I would also never recommend an Android phone to my mother-in-law. I, myself, know to avoid the many Android security holes that exist because it's a relaxed platform. But for my non-technical loved ones, Apple provides a much better experience in large part because it's a walled garden that makes it very difficult to install garbage.
> Apple's walled garden produces a lot of real benefits for its customers that are part of what make it successful, and dismantling their walled garden is going to harm consumers.
What are those benefits, and why would they evaporate if Apple adds an "Install from other sources" toggle? If you want to exclusively benefit from Apple's discernment, keep that toggle off and stay in the walled garden.If the benefits are so great, then surely everyone will choose to stay in the walled garden.
> If the benefits are so great, then surely everyone will choose to stay in the walled garden.
Surely you've seen enough of the free market to know that this is baloney. The instant that the walled garden is gone abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install. And once the big abusive apps have started the trend, the walled garden is effectively gone. Businesses don't choose regulation if they can help it.
The only reason we don't see this with Android and Google Play is because Google hardly has any rules at all about what can go on the Play Store.
> Surely you've seen enough of the free market to know that this is baloney. The instant that the walled garden is gone abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install.
Nah. Users don't grok sideloading.
Even on android where it's always been possible, it's a fringe phenomenon. And every app is on Google Play. In fact it basically killed Huawei in the West not being able to offer it anymore.
The only exception is the epic store but they do it to make a point. Not because it actually works.
First and most importantly: you're imagining a sideloading method that is much less first-class than that the EU wants to impose.
Even aside from that, you can't compare the Play Store to Apple's because the Play Store is a thousand times less restrictive. There's a reason why people are constantly complaining about the App Store and (aside from Epic) never the Play Store. Apple has a lot of restrictions, and while some of them are there to extract more money most are there to protect their customers.
> First and most importantly: you're imagining a sideloading method that is much less first-class than that the EU wants to impose.
I'm not "imagining" anything. This is the status quo on Android and even setting one switch to "allow installations from this source" (one that already pops up automatically no less!) already freaks users out.
And the EU is fine with this. They didn't specify any technical implementation to Apple so I'm sure they will make it as scary as they can.
> Even aside from that, you can't compare the Play Store to Apple's because the Play Store is a thousand times less restrictive.
Apple has seen a lot of stuff slip by the reviewers too, and it's pretty much a hit and miss based on who you get. Just like with Google.
I'm sure a lot more app providers would love to get out from under Apple's heavy hand but in practice this is just wishful thinking. The tiny amount of friction there is on Android is more than enough for people not to bother.
> There's a reason why people are constantly complaining about the App Store and (aside from Epic) never the Play Store. Apple has a lot of restrictions, and while some of them are there to extract more money most are there to protect their customers.
We'll have to differ in opinion on that. I feel like most of the restrictions are there to protect their cash cow which is the app store.
Does that change the garden for you? Can't users such as yourself remain in the Apple ecosystem? Do other users leaving affect you? Or Apple? Maybe they won't have as much cash?
Does Apple deserve the extra cash in perpetuity for being the first with the network effect? There might be a lot of better ideas out there, if they were given a chance, like Apple had back before them and Google took over the market.
> abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install
> Do other users leaving affect you?
To clarify, I'm not an Apple user. I use their competitors in all categories because they're not really my style. (Yes, choosing something other than Apple is a choice you can make!)
I'm just someone who feels the need to represent normal Apple users inside the HN bubble.
Facebook will leave the AppStore. Grandma can’t find Facebook anymore on her new iPhone, and will google “how to install Facebook on iPhone”. Thousands of websites will SEO for that, and give instructions (“There will be a popup that says ‘You might install dangerous software. Are you sure?’ Press YES.”) on how to install their AppStore with some Facebook clone/spyware/VPN MITM attack/keyloggers. They will have complete control of grandma’s phone, collect all the data they want. Soon she’ll have a new default browser with 7 toolbars, a new search engine, and be mining crypto on the side.
Still seems more of a "we need the mafia because they prevent you from buying hard drugs" kind of argument. If Facebook is so harmful then we should deal with it directly instead of giving another private company control over what individuals can install and what businesses can or cannot reach half of the population. More to the point whe should require Facebook to allow alternative applications which don't violate your privacy and thus could be on the app store so grandma never has to go searching for the "real" facebook to interact with her friends unless that's something she specifically wants.
The App Store review provides protections which are not a technical protections. Earlier someone talked about the failing of allowing a $50 subscription flashlight app into the store (dunno if they’d be able to find a citation). This was a failing of the expected business controls. There’s nothing technical to even be done to prevent these sorts of abuses.
One example from a while back was banning an internal Facebook enterprise developer account because they were using it to install a VPN onto users devices for the purpose of monitoring user behavior for competitive market analysis. This is not anything that can be prevented by technical controls, and was only able to be published because enterprise profiles can deploy apps outside the store.
Apple wants their customers to be safe. Third party marketplaces take that responsibility and control out of their hands. Apple stopped that VPN abuse immediately upon finding out about it. How long would it take for European regulators to force Facebook to turn off such a self published app of their own accord?
> Earlier someone talked about the failing of allowing a $50 subscription flashlight app into the store (dunno if they’d be able to find a citation). This was a failing of the expected business controls.
How about LassPass, then? That made it onto the AppStore despite being designed to make money and steal credentials.
Maybe not $50/month, though. I love one Apple apologist's remarks on that aspect:
> Instead, the scam LassPass app tries to steer you to creating a “pro” account subscription for $2/month, $10/year, or a $50 lifetime purchase. Those are actually low prices for a scam app — a lot of scammy apps try to charge like $10/week.
Emphasis mine. "Look, I know you got your credentials stolen, but at least you didn't also get scammed out of as much money as some other scammy apps!"
I am unsure your point - are you saying since the business controls are fallible, we should abandon them and have an internet's worth of potential side-loaded LastPass scam apps?
The problem is that having the option of exiting the walled garden kills the garden. As soon as the most important apps aren’t available on the apple App Store any more, everyone will have to exit the garden. You can argue about the pros and cons of that, but you can’t deny that this has an effect on every apple user, not just the ones that choose to exit.
When the tech support scammer calls your mother, there’s a decent chance it convinces to check that box and install who knows what that backdoors the phone.
You need app Foo on your phone for work (like Slack, maybe). Foo is in the App Store and worked great on your iPhone but decides they want to install via their own store so they can monetize employees’ data (location, whatever) to make more money. The new store launches, the new app version abuses private APIs, and the App Store version stops working. Your company announces that all employees need to download from the new source. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Sure, neither your company nor Foo should suck, but we all know plenty of companies that don’t care about employees or users.
Game company Bar decides to launch their own store and pull their game - we’ll call it Nortfite - from the App Store so they can add something shady like crypto features. Nortfite is a massive social game that all your friends play and it’s a huge part of your teenage social life. Your only device capable of playing it is your second-hand iPad. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Who needs friends anyway, amirite?
Those examples all sound like issues that should be dealth with by appropriate laws instead of hoping that the maffia ends up protecting you from worse criminals.
The question isn't whether anyone could choose to stay inside if they want to, the question is whether I can trust that {insert older relative here} will stay inside the garden and not get tricked by a sketchy website into installing something through the back doors the EU is mandating.
If the opening up of Apple were as difficult to use as getting root on Android is I wouldn't have a problem. But that's not what's being proposed, and any attempts by Apple to make it less than perfectly smooth for someone to exit the walled garden are most likely going to be shot down.
Are you also for workers being able to choose to live in company towns where they have to spend their incomes at the company store? When lock in and network effects come into play then yes the government should make sure that people have real and not only theoretical choices.
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason
You missed most of the discussions about DMA on HN, I guess. There's always someone ready to say how EU will kill all innovation and make Google/Apple exit the market because they dare to question anything.
> Nobody is against regulation that disfavors large incumbents to support competition instead.
Actually pretty much all EU regulations and especially enforcement of those regulations gets pundits shouting that the EU is only trying to milk US megacorporations.
> However, virtually every other piece of regulation does the opposite.
Not true but even if so not all regulation concerns itself with monopolies. GDPR in particular is about user rights and should therefore apply to everyone, same for similar kinds of regulations. If corporations cannot survive without violating you in every way possible then they should not be allowed to live. If anything is lacking it's enforcement against incumbents.
> What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all.
Good. Not all "innovation" should happen.
> Combine this with a rapidly aging demography in Europe, and I only see this trend increasing. If there's one thing old people hate, it's risk and doing new things.
Again, good. Moving fast and breaking things at societal scale is not a good idea.
It's not that most people hate risk. It's that individuals whom are harmed by sociopathic individuals that exploit methodologies, techniques, and products to enrich, steal, and harm the population. (When I say that I mean financially, emotionally, socially, physically, etc). To add further insult to injury, defending ones self against these individuals is disproportionately impossible.
Socially: Creating and cultivating a culture that screws up dating.
Emotionally: Filter bubbles, and data analyitics to push proganda and motivate people in directions (cambridge). Additionally subjecting people to material to manipulate.
Stealing: Scooter companies are actively stealing the public space to operate their business (sidewalks), endorsing their users to run over people on the sidewalk (also making it difficult to identify the individual), etc.
Privacy wise: Companies are forcing you to give up your private info to live. (Retail tracking to individuals.. even accross multiple companies [see "The Retail Equation"])
I'm not insulting people who hate risk. For the stability and health of society, it's good that most people are that way. We need people who shake their fist at anything new or different to keep us sane (people like you it seems, from your laundry list of frustrations).
But we also need the people who do like risk taking and new stuff, and there's less of them. So innovation is much more of a fragile thing than stasis.
Even if you think society and human life in general can't be improved in any way, to just maintain the way things are now...will require many new innovations and people taking risk on new stuff. Your welfare, lifestyle, and security depends on the risk taking of others. So we should probably be careful about making it too hard for the folks taking risk (it's already hard enough).
Trust me, the risk-averse folks will still be the dominant voice either way. Even this forum--which started as a community of risk-taking entrepreneurial types--is now dominated by the risk-averse majority.
In theory I agree with your argument, but in practice I find it’s very often the AI and other dominant companies — often tech — that are at the root of the risk averse landscape you observe. To put it simply, major tech companies are among the greatest driving forces of that landscape because they would prefer to operate without any competition.
My point being “letting the risk adverse take risks” is not the same thing as “don’t rein in VC backed attempted monopolies”. You can do the latter without doing the former (theoretically of course; in practice doing the latter is impossible without a substantive change in the underlying incentive structure of current global society).
> Stealing: Scooter companies are actively stealing the public space to operate their business (sidewalks), endorsing their users to run over people on the sidewalk (also making it difficult to identify the individual), etc.
OMG I cannot wait for these companies to be fined out of existence.
How can you be allowed to have a business model that relies on people leaving your trash wherever they feel like it.
I have no idea. Chicago had a limited period in which the scooters could operate a few years back. I saw someone that had an experience where the scooter wasn't picked up more than a week past the end. I contacted the alderman to get streets and sanitation to remove the vehcile.
What I got was: The alderman employee tried to get this cleared with the scooter company rather than towed.
I was blown away.. if I parked in front of the Division blue line station my car would be fined, towed, charged with storage fees, potentially vandalized within an hour. Them? Oh the gov employee will do CS for them. I filed a complaint with the city ombudsman and later found out she was removed.
>Regulation usually gets trotted out after the downside of doing [new innovation] is experienced. This always happens, because doing something new always involves unknown risk.
I would challenge "unknown"-- it very well seems like the risks have been known every time, they just don't give a shit
>What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience ...
Sounds good to me? It's sociopathic and opportunistic to want to risk major socioeconomic issues for the mere chance of a corporate "innovation"
"full-self-driving doesn't self drive", "wear a helmet on the bird scooter", and "safety is our first priority at facebook" is the 21st century version of "don't get roundup all over yourself"
I wasn't attempting to express my entire worldview in a comment. Yes, technology often brings both risk and reward. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize/criticize/discuss those risks.
Not all progress is good progress. Adding lead to paint was progress at the time. Same with using asbestos for insulation. We’ve since decided that the costs outweigh the benefits there.
Regulators should and do weigh both the harm and good of restricting the usage of new technology. The fact that they don’t always get it right isn’t a reason to stop regulation altogether.
> Regulators should and do weigh both the harm and good of restricting the usage of new technology. The fact that they don’t always get it right isn’t a reason to stop regulation altogether.
That might or might not be wrong, but is certainly a typically European perspective. The U.S. Bill of Rights is full of clauses specifying things like "Congress shall make no law regarding..." freedom of speech, establishments of religion, etc. because of the notion that the government's inability to reliably get it right is indeed a good reason to stop altogether.
I don't disagree, in general. Roundup also fed many people. But there are certainly poor choices evident in the above examples that weren't necessary for the progress to be made, but were just disregarded by an organization operating without guardrails. They deserve the pressure to course correct.
> Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
It's nearly as bad. Social media causes addiction and mental health problems especially for the youth. PISA scores are going down. It can already be seen now, although not many 20 year olds have had a smartphone for more than 10 years. Here in this country every 7 year old has a smartphone and it will get only worse. Physical health is impacted because of kids are tapping on a screen instead of running and playing. It has impact already to language learning and social development of babies because parents interact with their smartphone several hours a day and instead of interacting with their baby.
Of course there is other tech than social media and smartphones. But at least in these areas equally strong regulation as for tobacco and alcohol would be required.
Large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people in the same way big tobacco haven't killed any people. Nobody smokes a cigarette and immediately die. But one would have to be immensely dense not to see the correlation between smoking habit and lung disease, or Facebook refusing to moderate social media activity in Burma and some of the worst atrocities committed on humans anywhere this century.
Most importantly all this tech is not reducing cost of living, but is increasing it. Tech is reducing prices of compute and memory and software but everyone's monthly bill increases. This is only possible through parasitic behavior. And we know how to kill parasites. The life and times of a parasite are not as fun as the worthies who come up with these unsustainable business models think.
Do increases in suicide rates from social media addiction count?
There are emails unearthed from the early days of Facebook where utilizing addiction feedback loops were discussed to retain and maximize young users.
The Anxious Generation provides a lot of evidence correlating the rise of social media and a major increase in depression and anxiety related disorders.
> large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people
Facebook's and Twitter's recommended feed algorithms and blocking procedures, have to a significant extent determined the outcome of elections, coup attempts, protest movements. These companies have custom tuned their algorithms for particular countries at particular times, during such events. Many people have died, or their lives negatively affected because of the decisions by these companies.
I have a feeling there's a lot of analogies to be had between parenting, regulation and AI alignment.
All three are about trying to persuade an intelligent organism to adopt acceptable, rich and virtuous behaviour. All three seems to have similar failure modes.
Too much red tape and you'll get over fitting, lack of creative and new behaviour.
Except listed companies are sociopathic. They have no empathy. And their only goal is shareholder value. There’s no appealing to their conscience, so carrots and sticks it is
What do they do that would be illegal in physical stores? If I wanted to open a physical store that gave away free stuff but you had to agree to give a bunch of personal info that would be completely legal (but not profitable).
Do companies need onerous regulations that increase costs for consumers or do they need the incentive in form of not having their corporate charter cancelled and corporate officers banned from doing business as a threat to maintain a fair market?
Apple kills migrant workers in China when fires break out or through stress, Samsung kills women working with solvents banned in the US, Exxon kills oil rig workers operating dangerously, etc.
> They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
Did you actually read the article? I don't know how you square this kobayashi maru situation, unless you think Meta is outright lying about it:
> Europe recently charged Meta with breaching EU regulations over its “pay or consent” plan. Meta’s business is built around personalized ads, which are worth far more than non-personalized ads. EU regulators required that Meta provide an option that did not involve tracking user data, so Meta created a paid model that would allow users to pay a fee for an ad-free service.
This was already a significant concession—personalized ads are so valuable that one analyst estimated paid users would bring in 60 percent less revenue. But EU regulators are now insisting this model also breaches the rules, saying that Meta fails to provide a less personalized but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks. They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users. In a very real sense, the EU has ruled that Meta’s core business model is illegal. Non-personalized ads cannot economically sustain Meta’s services, but it’s the only solution EU regulators want to accept.
Also, what about the CUDA situation? I don't see how any consumer is harmed by this, which is quite different from a social media company doing its thing.
- makes it too difficult for consumers to find out what exactly they give to facebook in exchange for this ‘free’ service
- is not clear enough about the fact that paying will not remove all ads
- forces existing users to choose between paid and ‘free’ versions before they can use the service again.
Nowhere do they say on that page that Meta "provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users”. Am I reading the wrong page?
Yes. That's a separate investigation; "Today's action focuses specifically on the assessment of Meta's practices under EU consumer law and is distinct from the ongoing ... , and the assessment by the Irish Data Protection Commission under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."
But it's an extremely settled matter. The GDPR says explicitly that consent is not "freely given" if the provision of a service is dependent on said consent. (Where the service does not absolutely require the data processing in question; See Article 7, recital 43)
Thanks. They avoid saying Meta should have a free option without personalized ads; they only say Meta should consider it. I wonder what other options Meta has, though, apart from leaving the market.
Maybe they’re thinking of Meta making Facebook paid for everybody, but giving users the option of getting paid for getting personalized ads? Apart from the wording, I don’t see how that’s different from “It’s free, but if you don’t want personalized have to pay”, though.
It would be different in that it makes it more explicit that users are selling something, though, so maybe it would be enough in the eyes of the EU?
Meta should've been nuked when Cambridge Analytica happened; the fact that US lawmakers did nothing after that is a complete joke. Zucc should be in jail alongside every other piece of shit who thinks it's their right to mass-harvest every single person's personal data indiscriminately for profit.
You know what they say: Only old people use Facebook.
All the younger people I know are on Instagram (yes Meta owns that). But another social network will take its place like it always has. I’m pretty sure Meta knows this since they also own WhatsApp.
BS. Lot's of companies / entities moved there because of said "millions" so you are unwillingly forced to use them as a mean of contact. And sadly open alternatives are blocked/unavailable...
My sister has kids, and their school exclusively uses whatsapp to broadcast events and other things happening in the school, despite repeated complaints from many parents. There's millions of little things like this out there. Many small businesses like repairmen or such only do Whatsapp. It's quite literally unavoidable in some countries.
Sorry, this is just how technology works. There is going to be a way that the vast majority of people want to communicate and if you don't want to use it, it's going to be a pain in the ass for you. This is always going to be the case, and nobody is under any obligation to accommodate you. If you didn't want to have a home phone in the 90s it would have been the same thing.
So? Just because there are reasons to compromise our freedoms doesn't mean we should stop asking which compromises are worth it and saying no to those that aren't.
No, this is how monopolies build their turf. Individually it is almost impossible to say no to that but as society we can simply outlaw these lock in tactics.
You might have heard of the phone network and email. Both provide you with choices as to which corporations you want to do business with without limiting what contacts you can talk to.
Whatsapp is not Facebook, and it's not social media. It's a messaging application. Different thing. I quit Facebook -- I didn't exit every messaging platform. Yes, if you eschew every messaging platform, nobody can reach you. That's obviously correct.
However, nothing I use could be called a Facebook replacement, either. WhatsApp isn't a Facebook replacement.
That’s a pretty glib stance. Plenty of people have difficulty finding a friend group and not everyone can be an island until they do (see the loneliness epidemic). Perhaps consider that there are other people with different life situations than yours for whom demanding individualized treatment does not work, and they may have much less choice about what technologies they have to use as a result.
I don't use Facebook but for example KLM/AF at least 5-6 years ago pushed hard "means of contact" as "talk to us at whatsapp/facebook". And they weren't the only one. And the track of thinking was probably "If everyone/millions use it then let's move away from this old pesky email"...
There are groups/communities (real ones, for example building or school) that settled on WA/FB group so while you are not necessarily forced to if you don't there is a high chance that you will miss some crucial info…
I don't use it in any manner for personal communication though…
For what is worth, I think Meta is lying about it, or at least playing the victim card too strongly.
> They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users.
Meta is being sued because their paid plan is not honest - they are currently asking for 10€/month which is disproportionate - for comparison, a Business Standard Google Workspace account with 2Tb and Gemini costs 11€. From [1], "EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a 'privacy fee' of up to €250 per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection".
I don't think reasonable prices are based on what the potential maximum profit per user is. Normally it's based on the expense per user plus a percentage for profit.
Reasonable is definitely an opinion, but that doesn't mean it's random.
In legal and economic contexts, reasonable profits are a thing that is routinely calculated. Where industries are more regulated, 'reasonable' profits are often bound by statutory guidelines. In more competitive markets, prices are not fixed in the same way but you can take a look at industry standards to ascertain what might be reasonable.
> Why would you expect a company not to pursue profits?
People keep talking about the obligation to shareholders for a company to maximize profits, but there's a wide list of possibilities between not doing that and seeking to actively, wholesale ruin privacy.
I expect the people in companies to take responsibility for their actions instead of pretending that they're beholden to the company's wants.
I think you're making a mistake confusing the way things are today in terms of market concentration with the way things were in the past. In terms of market concentration in the US at least, things were massively different even 20 years ago.
I read that as saying there's nothing to be done, monopolies are natural, we can't stop the order of things without making everything worse, we must just acquiesce and learn to live with them.
Is that correct? I have a hard time thinking that is true.
> A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
you sweet summer child
no, that's not how the red tape got put in place. the government put the red tape in place to protect the established companies in the space from upstart competitors
The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
There's zero reason to think that this will mean the EU won't have a tech market. It just won't have one that includes Apple products which refuse to follow the law. Seems like a massive win for the EU, and because Apple is the one deciding to pull their products rather than follow the law they can't really complain either, so win/win I guess.
Anything that gets close gets bought or killed by non-european giants.
Tencent buys basically all game companies, microsoft buys basically all communication companies (skype, nokia come to mind), google buys basically everything. Even ARM is owned by Softbank after starting out in the UK.
The Automotive industry and ASML are just about the only things resistant to this because they're so large already; Automotive acts a lot like big tech. (a clear similarity I saw after being in BMW R&D and Googles Zurich and SF campuses)
There is an issue with that perspective though. The Europeans sell out. Ok. Maybe they are bad at valuation and don't realise that their companies are worth more than they are being paid for. Or maybe an EU company can't capture as much value as a US/Chinese company. And those are really the only two options - either the decision is rational or irrational. If it is an irrational decision then there isn't much to talk about. But it is probably the second case - selling out to someone on a different continent generates value. And there is a good chance that is because it helps avoid EU regulators.
For example, you mentioned Nokia. Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0]. It wasn't a close battle, the EU contender was crushed. Apple's motivation for entering the market was that among other things that companies like Nokia were so bad at making phones that Apple reckoned it could break in to a new vertical. That is a very EU-led-industry problem to have. The reason they sold out was because the EU turned out to be incapable of incubating a modern, successful phone manufacturer in the 21st century even with an incredible lead and Nokia was being outmanoeuvred everywhere.
[0] Both looked like regulatory issues to me, we've seen how the EU responds to things like micromanaging the iPhone charging port.
> Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0].
No, Nokia was blown out of the market via the exclusive deal with Microsoft, which in turn made the dumbest management decisions ever. Nokia bled under the horrible management of Steve Ballmer and their own ignorance with regards to Android. They also proved later on that you don't need any expertise to produce decent Android phones, as HMD global used their name as a brand and has been thriving.
To add to this: It's not that hard to develop a mobile operating system that's on par or better than Android, despite what Google might want you to think.
Pretty telling though. When dijit was talking about Tencent, Microsoft or Google a few comments ago they were being presented as these huge incumbent behemoths that scoop up everything in their path. And, fair enough, they are.
But when Nokia starts with an overwhelming incumbents advantage, their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone! They couldn't defend themselves from multiple companies in completely different industries with no prior competence in the mobile phone world. That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
The issue here isn't company size, it is something specific to the EU. I'm not sure what, but since it is a geographic thing I'd start with regulation and branch out from there.
> their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone!
I'm sorry but it's honestly pointless discussing this as no one in this thread wants to spend even an ounce of time into researching this. Reading your comment in it's entirety tells me you weren't there when stuff was happening.
> That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
For the record, the Lumia phones had A-Tier hardware in them. They boasted the best low light cameras on phones for a while around ~2012.
Nokia made the Lumia phones, MS provided the operating system. Previously, Nokia had their own Linux based OS, called Maemo, which was originally supposed to run on what became Lumia. It later formed into Sailfish OS, which had it's own device family.
The issue wasn't the hardware platform itself, it was the fact that Nokia decided to go with the MS ecosystem, instead of Android. And honestly, I don't even think that was a bad move. I am at a loss trying to figure out how device manufacturers actually make profits based on what has turned into extremely restrictive licensing deals with Google in order to get GAPPS on their phones.
I used to have a Lumia phone as a teenager and it was very nice. I loved how curved and rounded it was, made it look very sleek and sci-fi, and it felt really good in the hand. Even the panel-style home screen was considered to be pretty cool. I remember at the time that, as you say, the main criticism was that it was isolated from the main android/iOS app store ecosystem and there were hardly any apps for it.
> There is an issue with that perspective though. The Europeans sell out. Ok. Maybe they are bad at valuation and don't realise that their companies are worth more than they are being paid for. Or maybe an EU company can't capture as much value as a US/Chinese company. And those are really the only two options - either the decision is rational or irrational. If it is an irrational decision then there isn't much to talk about. But it is probably the second case - selling out to someone on a different continent generates value. And there is a good chance that is because it helps avoid EU regulators.
I think it comes down to two things:
1) The US is a large, uniform (regulation, language, media, etc.) making it easier to grow quickly. This puts the US competitor in a better place to buy the EU competitor than vice-versa.
2) More significantly, the US capital market is bigger & better. That starts with VC funding but is also the case with IPOs and publicly traded companies. That‘s how the EU tech standouts such as Spotify end up IPOing in the US.
#2 is certainly something the EU can work on improving but it has very little to do with tech regulation.
Vivendi and Tencent attempting to buy Ubisoft via shares might be one thing in living memory that disagrees.
If you are publicly traded there is little you can do to prevent people buying shares - though you are right that people sell privately held companies a little too often.
Ubisoft in particular created many poison pills to prevent companies getting too dug in, however that didn’t prevent anything except a total buyout. Their board is stacked with Microsoft and Tencent which causes weird, extremely harmful, decision making in the org.
> If you are publicly traded there is little you can do to prevent people buying shares
Nobody can force you to sell your shares. Nobody can force you to make your company public. It's all voluntary. You can't have your cake and eat it. Want to get that juicy foreign investor money then cry that the foreigners are taking over?
I have a low tolerance for absurdly stupid comments.
Once you sell a share you don't get to control who it is sold to afterwards, you could give shares to people as stock-options, and they are (rightly) going to sell their shares regardless who the buyer is, only based on the price.
So. Seriously, shut the fuck up, you're suggesting that the only answer is isolationism.
Identification of an issue (people buying up European talent before it gets large enough to be competitive) is not an invitation for absurd and deficiently reasoned victim blaming.
Your anger comes from your frustration, your frustration comes from realizing that you're wrong.
If you want to keep control of a company - or anything - within certain hands, then you can't sell that thing to others. As evident by millions of companies never having their shares publicly listed or sold on any market. If you sell, you have to accept that you don't have any control of who owns in the future. You can't have your cake and eat it. Not even Europeans can do that.
"People buying up European talent" - they can only buy if Europeans are willing to sell. Such victims...
This reminds me of people complaining about foreign investors buying up real estate. But of course, no blame is to be put on the greedy sellers who slurped up that juicy foreign money.
Yes, people sell things voluntarily. (In particular, small companies being bought and killed by monopolies is usually very benefitial to the small companies' owners, even if it's bad for the economy as a whole.) That does not contradict the parent comments.
The parents comments are about foreign companies owning your company.
If you do not want that, do not voluntarily sell your company.
I like my cat. I don't want others owning my cat. I probably shouldn't sell my cat then right? I can't take the money now and complain later the neighbor owns my cat.
EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars.
EU usually doesn't let companies to grow uncontrollable sizes that the government is completely controlled by them not the citizens.
The existence of Big Tech means that the government did a very poor job in protecting the consumers and the free and fair market
> EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars.
This is the thing that so many Americans in tech don't seem to understand. VC Twitter is full of smugposting about how the US has "$5 trillion market-cap of startups" and the EU doesn't.
And what they miss is that the EU doesn't want Silicon Valley. It doesn't want the "trillions in startups". Because essentially none of them turn any profit. Why on earth would anyone want $5 trillion dollars in companies that do not make financial sense yet have awful externalities.
I understand you were rebutting OPs point that not every tech company is a capital furnace, but when framed in this manner, this sounds like something to be solved, not something to be proud of. That’s the difference between the EU and the US, and there is a strong case to be made that life is better in the EU when observing majorities.
Who is benefiting from Apple’s profits being the size of a small country’s GDP? Not most people, therefore, why would this be optimized for?
Assuming that they know better than everyone else how they should be spending their money, and that reality is the one wrong because the numbers are too big when they are selling to the world? That sort of hubris is exactly why they don't have a world tech industry.
> That sort of hubris is exactly why they don't have a world tech industry.
You make this sound like a bad thing. There are diamonds to be found generating genuine value, but quite a bit of activity is simply low value under the guise of innovation.
I would caution against mistaking clarity and understanding for hubris. Europe doesn’t have line go up, but their citizens live better lives by most objective measures. From an optimization and first principles perspective, we should always be mindful of what we are optimizing for, so when I see people come out swinging with “Such profits! Much Tech! Innnnnnnovaaaaaation!” I approach it from a “simmer down now, lets decompose the system and observe” approach. What are the desired outcomes and what is value perspective we can compromise on as “good,” and then work backwards.
Apple makes a lot of profit because their products provide a lot of value.
Do you think that if you compare the profit that Apple makes to the value that that users get that Apple has the larger share of it? To a disturbing degree?
Certainly, if a company’s profits are the size of a small country’s GDP, I find that disturbing regardless of the value they’re delivering. Value is the experience and consumer excess, profits are fiat. Could that same value be delivered with compressed profits leading to greater consumer excess? I believe so. Not all profits are earned, some are inherent once an org achieves a certain maturity or industry position. Visa and Mastercard skimming a non insignificant amount off of US GDP, for example. Is that value?
I thought my comment was clear, I will attempt to be more explicit: I am of the opinion that Apple’s profits are excessive, regardless of the consumer value delivered. I respect that others may have opposing views that profits should have no limits as long as value is delivered.
Well if EU politicians think Apple's profits are excessive what about introducing laws to foster some competition? You can complain about other countries running circles around you all you want but at the end of the day if you can't make a phone, piece of software or a CPU you will be at the mercy of those who can. The way to reduce "excessive profits" is to make it easier to start businesses which could provide the "overpriced" goods and services cheaper.
Easier to reduce their size with regulation versus believing a free market that isn’t truly free will suddenly whisk competition into the space. This is why China gives their domestic companies “unfair” advantages, because the free market is an illusion. It’s only unfair if you believe there is a “free market” or the market is fair, which it is not.
It is easy to forget that the economic system of fiat and capital is a shared delusion, agreed upon rules that can change when needed. The intent is to encourage outcomes, not to be the primary function.
Whatever your views on free market if you want goods cheaper someone needs to make them cheaper. Splitting up Apple won't result in that. You still need someone else to make phones.
> Who is benefiting from Apple’s profits being the size of a small country’s GDP? Not most people, therefore, why would this be optimized for?
Off the top of my head, probably the millions of people who have a pension through one of Apple’s institutional investors like CalPERS. The effects of Apple’s profitability goes far and wide.
> Off the top of my head, probably the millions of people who have a pension through one of Apple’s institutional investors like CalPERS. The effects of Apple’s profitability goes far and wide.
That's like a member of the working poor who owns one share of stock, "benefiting" from company lobbying to keep the minimum wage down.
He's got two-hundredths of a cent more in dividends, and has lost many hundreds of dollars in potential wages.
These numbers are always trotted out like these people have a material majority investment in the equities market (“won’t someone think of the teacher pension”), when per the Federal Reserve, the top 10% of Americans by wealth hold 93% of US equities.
This doesn’t entirely discount that CalPERS holds almost 40M shares (~$8.7B) of Apple (its top holding), just that them doing so is not reason enough to be more judicious about governing corporate profits. Still profits, but less. Those profits have to come from somewhere.
(CalPERS has $502.9B AUM ending June 2024, making APPL ~1.72% of their total assets)
That seems all quite orthogonal. You asked who benefits and I’ve given you an example. Some benefit directly and some indirectly. But millions in the economy benefit and not just through institutions such as CalPERS.
American culture in a nutshell is to be in awe of large numbers without thinking very hard about whether you’re measuring the right things in the first place.
Not on Apple's scale, but with apple pulling products from the market, this opens the door for someone else to step up and fill that highly profitable gap in the market apple abandoned. I really hope that they do. The more players there are in the game from other countries the better off we'll all be.
This is the first product miss. And I don't know where Apple goes from here. Others will also leapfrog them is my instinct. Basically they are too big now and startups have a chance of beating both Google and Apple.
Apple has had other misses. They themselves cancelled the iPhone mini. There was the newton, quite similarly a product that the technology level was not quite ready for but they had great success with later. They constantly screw up with the Mac pro, introducing one version and then letting it whither away for many years.
Nah, the first iPhone was too expensive, slow, and limited in capabilities (no App Store). They quickly iterated to improve on all of that. The first watch also kind of sucked. The initial iPod wasn’t a blockbuster, either - didn’t work well on Windows, required FireWire. I’m sure there are other initial misses. I think there’s something there with Vision Pro, they just need to iterate and get the cost down.
It was a good product, but it took a lot of iteration to make it the juggernaut it is today. Add bad battery life to the list of flaws, along with slow web browsing, slow processor, etc. With all of those, and the high price, it was relatively niche. The 3G lowered the price substantially, and iirc that plus the faster modem gave it a big popularity boost. And the 4 was substantially more popular than that.
My point is, don’t write off this whole product category because people balked at the price of the first iteration, it happened with the first iPhone, too. Apple grinds its way to excellent products.
I dunno if you were alive at the time but that's not really what happened. The first iPhone was really expensive but people bought it anyway because it was sooo far ahead of the competition. Until the iPhone most people didn't even bother with smart phones because they were so bad (Blackberry was a partial exception).
The web browsing wasn't slow - part of what made it so compelling was that you could browse the real web without going insane. No WAP nonsense.
Yes, it was rough compared to the later versions, but even the first one was insanely better than anything else. It was pretty clear what the issues were (battery life and lack of 3G as you said).
I don't think the Vision Pro is like that at all. It's big issues aren't missing features or lack of polish. It fundamentally makes no sense as a product even if they improve the resolution, speed, battery life, etc.
>I dunno if you were alive at the time but that's not really what happened.
I was pretty alive at the time, I was an intern on the iPhone team at Apple when it launched and the run-up, so I was using the first gen phone/touch all day every day, and I was paying pretty close attention to its launch (but just watching what was said in the press/by the people I knew, nothing privileged on the sales side). Looking around at sales figures, it looks like the first gen sold low single digit million units total, 1.4M in 2007. The 3G sold 1M on the first weekend (the press release tagline was "Twice as Fast at Half the Price", and that lower price is a big part of what brought it mainstream). Now they’re up to a couple hundred million phones per year.
I wouldn't say it was a "miss", it was very good compared to the status quo trash on the market, but it also wasn't the company defining success it turned into until the following gens, it made much less revenue than Macs at the time, and the Mac was pretty niche. My point was that it took a bit to really dial it in, and Apples first gen products don’t usually reflect their eventual success very well.
I don’t think Vision Pro is at 1M sold yet, and Apple products definitely have more sales reach now, but again, I wouldn’t count it out. I was pretty impressed when I tried it, they really nailed a lot of the hard technical problems, especially around text rendering, and if it was 1/3 the cost, I’d definitely have one now, maybe at 1/2. Which means that unless they really dilute the capabilities or drop the cost less than I expect, I’ll probably have one within the next couple of iterations (I'm also assuming they'll sub out the metal for cheaper/lighter materials to improve long-term comfort). But yeah, maybe it’ll end up being a modern day Newton, we’ll see.
I don't think so. You are confusing the absolute and the relative. The iPhone when it launched had die hard fans. The sheer excitement was palpable. The Vision Pro has nothing like it.
In my opinion, nothing is lost here. They will either put out new improved and cheaper versions until they get the interest they want, or wait for someone else to innovate and then copy it better, the apple way (TM). I don’t see a way where this is apples downfall until they continue to f it up again and again.
The only other OS option being Android (on mobile) and Windows (on desktop) I don't think Apple is going anywhere anytime soon. A lot of Apple's moat is in its OS (however degrading in has been in last decade). It's the perfect duopoly in both segments. Do you see that changing? If not then all other OEMs will keep fighting among themselves for loose change.
Did they? It really felt to me like they weren't trying for a moonshot with it: their sales projection of ca. 1M units falls under the single-digit percentage range of their annual revenue.
Yeah, they've actually sold less than that, but in context, it's still very much a "let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks" kind of thing. It also nonetheless fits how Apple communicates their product vision in new areas.
Yes. Everyone has set targets and expectations, which imply a certain product strategy, that are all completely at odds with everything Apple has indicated. Then, they call AVP a failure for. It meeting those set expectations. It’s not all that impressive to win an argument when you get that much freedom over framing things without much regard for the realities.
What's the product strategy? How's it at odds with what Apple has indicated?
The accusatory use of the second person implies that you're in my head enough to know that I'm trying to win an argument. It's patently untrue; I want to be loudly wrong so that I have more than merely a snowball's chance in hell of garnering understanding here.
If you have corrections to offer, I'm receptive to them.
How important is technological industry? Pretty damn important I'd say if you're interested in economic growth and hence supporting your social safety net.
The technological industry is indeed very important, the mistake is thinking VR goggles and chatbots are somehow the only or even particularly relevant form of technology. Europe is of course full of high technology firms, (the awkwardly named https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana) contains a non trivial amount of high value added industry in the world.
What we need more of these days is 155 mm shells, chip fabs, nuclear power plants, solar cells and rail, not Facebook and Apple equivalents complaining about regulations.
Big tech is not inherent in the concept of a tech industry. Big tech is like 6 companies that want to swallow the world. Not being able to separate these two concepts is grade school level literacy and critical thinking. It’s not acceptable to conflate them. It’s completely ridiculous.
Accenture, Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Capgemini, Atos, Dassault Systems, Bosch, Ahold Delhaize, Dassault Systèmes? maybe little known outside the EU, but the EU has something like 20% of the world's software developers.
GP will have to explain to me, at a grade school level, how they want to differentiate big tech and BIG tech.
1. Accenture, Capgemini and Atos are consulting companies that don't produce anything, they just rent out their code monkeys to the customers. And you know what those code monkeys are trained in? Software stacks that were created mostly in the US.
2. The rest of the companies you mention do not employ that many software developers.
3. They also do not deliver terribly popular, or important products. I mean, Bosch produces commodities like dishwashers, vaccuum cleaners and power tools, hard to call it "tech company".
If so, Apple and Nvidia won‘t qualify. They‘re more of a hardware company.
BTW Bosch‘s main business is automotive supplies. They‘re doing everything down to having their own fabs for automotive chips. It‘s just completely invisible to us as consumers that‘s why you consider it a dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and power tools company.
Nvidia’s moat is almost entirely software though, not just cuda but all the other bits of drivers required to bitbang a gpu into showing stuff on a screen (see: intel arc for how important this is)
Are they separable? Teens in particular appear to be bad for each other's mental health. Connectivity increases that effect, anonymity makes it worse, likes and other status features makes it worse still. Not sure where you draw a line between not quite bad enough and too bad.
It doesn’t help there are algorithms designed to keep them looking at things that aren’t great for them to be looking at though does it. Can you provide an example in the past wheee this has existed before outside of big tech ?
I wasn’t arguing that this was just as bad before. It’s clearly all made worse and accelerated by social media calling engagement and ad dollars above all.
Historically the victims of contagion have been oldsters in a moral panic. This time I think it is actually true - there’s a mind virus loose.
> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers
I'm intentionally taking this out of context to point out that laws can act as gatekeepers and help preserve incumbent's positions.
Stuff like "minimum service requirement" which require new entrants to front a massive initial investment, preventing them from getting a foothold (see: France telecom landscape in the 90s-'10s). GDPR was crafted by the likes of Google & Meta that were strong enough to weather the transition, but kill off smaller competition.
There are always tradeoffs, but those aren't talked about as much.
It's absolutely true that regulations can be written by corporations to keep out competitors. Regulations are just tools. They can be used to protect and benefit the majority or to further enrich a small number of wealthy and powerful individuals. I haven't seen anything to convince me that the Digital Markets Act was written to hurt competition at the expense of the public.
> Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
Currently Apple has been complying with the letter of EU law (opening their devices to alternative app stores, etc) but not the spirit of the law (leaving the EU market).
> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
Apple is also free to lobby the US government and people to take action against the EU. Especially if Trump gets elected, Apple complaining about Europe taking advantage of American companies would resonate with a lot of the officials likely to staff such an administration.
Given Russia, it is likely that the US has far more leverage on the EU than the EU has on the US.
Why should the US government care if Apple chooses not to sell some of their products in the EU because they don't want to abide by the EU's laws? The EU isn't taking advantage of US companies, or looking to pressure the US. The EU has every right to set their own laws and businesses can decide for themselves if they want to sell their products there. The fact that Russia exists doesn't change that.
Because even without public ownership of Apple stock China style or even any lobbing from Apple, the US government are effectively "invested" in their gains via taxation. Apple's interests are the US's interests to some small extent (technically so is that small coffee shop down the block). Geopolitical interest implies they'd care enough to at least nudge the EU a little.
Eu has lots of leverage too against US. Lobbying for actions against eu may have absolutely bad consequences and it's totally bonkers to think/prise that an us company has this much power proving once again that maybe it's a good think eu doesn't have such big corpos
Both us and eu are heavily relying on China. Even Nvidia sells lots of gpus with small limitations to china that in the end will not change things that much. Or ASML sells non covered by sanctions chip production utilities. All this trade war is just scratching the surface, in reality heavy money are made by all parts
This clever geopolitical analysis notably ignores China, and the fact that Trump pushing the EU to China would be the greatest geopolitical victory for China in history.
"Europeans could end up living in an online backwater with out-of-date phones, cut off from the rest of the world's search engines and social media sites, unable to even access high-performance computer chips."
Sounds like a paradise. More healthy lifestyle. For most people much of this stuff is unnecessary. If one wants to live life "online", glued a screen digesting garbage and propaganda 24/7, then one can relocate to some country where that's what people do. Chances are, tourists from such countries will want to visit Europe even more.
We are all living in an "online backwater" in case the author hasn't noticed. The web is a sewer of surveillance, marketing and ads. Despite the information access possibilities the internet presents, the distribution of factual information seems to be at an all-time low, at least in the lifetime I am living. I have never seen people who were so detached from commonly shared reality as a result of "search engines and social media sites". To access facual information, cf. marketing and propaganda, worthless opinions, and "AI" generated garbage, one did not and does not need the latest "phone" or "high-performance computer chips". This stuff is not making people smarter. Is it is not making society better.
I would be willing to bet the countries that have the populations that are most reliant on "search engines and social media sites" and "high performance computer chips" are going to have the highest rates of mental illness and other complications that arise from too much screen time, and the lowest test scores. These will be dumbed down, whacked out societies. They will have the worst quality of life.
I was listening to an interview with Jonathan Kanter recently and the interviewer tried to get him to comment on Europe's approach to regulation of "Big Tech". He was hesitant to accept any comparison. But I am confident there are plenty of folks, generally _not people who comment on HN_, who are envious of the direction Europe is taking.
The idea that regulating Apple and Meta, companies that exploit people commercially as they use computers, e.g., as data collection sources and ad targets, is going to contribute to cause "poverty" or deprive Europe of useful networking and computer technology, e.g., the type used for national defense, is absurd.
What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.
They will probably move to those whacked out societies.
> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.
You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?
I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if you try to kill it).
A lot of “crap” is innovation too. In the past some considered video games to be crap, rotting children’s brains, promoting violence, etc. Look what happened when we figured out that add on cards for projective rendering could also multiply matrices really quickly.
Whether or not an innovation is crap can only be judged in hindsight.
> You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?
Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow. In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.
> Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow.
It sounds like "spaghetti code" is not actually the competitive disadvantage software engineers imagine it to be.
I say that as a software engineer.
Pretty sure there's a lot more to those machines than software.
> In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.
Not because of "spaghetti code," but because of US-led sanctions. China has technical talent, a lot of money, and now motivation to enter that space.
A (very hypothetical) war is not going to be won by AI chips and quadcopters.
Furthermore all of this applies to consumer tech, not military tech. Consumers are not allowed to have military drones, attack fighters, and tanks either.
It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.
> It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.
I think you're failing to make important distinctions. Being "less advanced" in algorithmic addiction machines, ad targeting, personal privacy invasion, or monopoly is not going to cause any of those things.
As an American, a good chunk of American consumer technology is more akin to a parasitic burden than any advantage.
Things like Facebook, Meta, Uber and whatnot are not really innovative technology. Almost none of the tech the DMA regulates is innovative as such, other than some "innovation" to deal with the scaling, and the only reason they need to scale is due to the dubious business activities that allowed them to grow to this size.
The DMA is really about regulating basic common sense free market rules, not regulating technology as such.
It's also naive in that they somehow think they wouldn't get invaded the second some dictator decides they want some lebensraum. You can't have an entire continent (save Poland, Finland, Britain, France, and a handful of others) more or less ignore defense (via technological advancement) and hope to keep pax liberalism
There is no equivalence between (a) "internet" or "high end computer chips" (much less "technology" or "innovation") and (b) "search engines" or "social media sites". Except if one is Silicon Valley VC, Big Tech employee, "tech" journalist, payola recipient or other supporter of "Big Tech". This is false quivalence, a flawed premise. Arguments relying on a flawed premise are, of course, inherently flawed.
I don't live in Europe, but wish we had these sorts of regulations in the US.
If tech companies cannot provide us a means to control our personal information, and require us to be locked into their gatekeep-y, nanny-state, walled gardens and submit to using locked-down devices that don't actually obey what we want them to do, then those tech companies should not exist.
I've gotten a little bit of a taste of some of this stuff in the form of the CCPA/CPRA, and it's delightful. Getting to tell companies they're not allowed to sell any of my information to third parties is wonderful. I just wish that was the default and I didn't have to opt out.
Big tech is far, far under-regulated, even in Europe, too, and that needs to change.
IMHO the problem has been that FAANG has not been regulated enough. The sheer size of these companies and their market share means there's little chance of competition from anywhere.
Though TBF when it comes to poorly thought out regulation, the amount of human time lost to clicking cookie consent/reject screens surely has to be a net loss to society.
The regulations don't require a banner. Just don't gather or share unnecessarily. No banner or notice required. Companies would rather hound users than stop selling them down the river, even their directly paying customers.
And if people are better informed of how far and wide their data will be prostituted, then I'd call it a win.
If you spent real money on something, you're far more likely to buy it again or buy it for someone or send that link to someone than a completely new product.
The great thing about them selling you something made to be as crappy as you will stand, is that then you'll then have to refund it all the time, making their re-targeting ads even more "effective" :)) What a virtuous cycle!
What exactly do you mean by "targeted advertising"? I'm guessing you probably mean "behavioral advertising", which is a subset of "targeted advertising".
Targeted advertising includes contextual advertising (e.g., a company putting an ad for their bird watching binoculars on a bird watching blog) and I'm having trouble thinking of any reason to ban that.
I'd even go to banning all commercial ads, like several cities have done offline.
Reasons?
Click bait, boosts consumerism, ads imply essentially a tax for everyone (remember that ads have to be paid by the consumers), CEO spam, annoying, environmental costs
Making everything rely on subscription (consider European TV license fees as such) and word-of-mouth is what you end up with. Except in the case of former, over-subscription is getting into a problem too.
Oh no, companies can't manipulate people as easily and some will go bankrupt, because they can't give people as much FOMO and there will be less trash in the internet
I have some excellent news for you about the legality of targeted advertising under the GDPR.
The GDPR is very clear about this. Advertising is not a legitimate interest or a functionally-required data processing, ergo, it may only be done with user consent. And that user consent may not be coerced in any way at all, you may not even refuse access to services if users reject their data being used.
It's taking a while to go up and down the courts, but the days of ad-tech are numbered.
Good intentions but how well is that working out so far?
Only thing we got was annoying cookie popups everywhere, where consent is one click away and reject is three layers behind a small “learn more” button.
That just shows us that the companies don't give a shit and are implementing every dark pattern under the sun to keep harvesting data. The ePrivacy bill, GDPR and the EU cookie laws say nothing about cookie banners or anything of the sort, companies just make it as annoying as possible so that people get tired by it and mindlessly click reject.
Guess what, the whole hidden reject thing? That's not legal. Opting out should be equally as easy (or easier) than opting in, which a lot of EU companies realize.
every meeting I have been in wrt PII collection had some provvisions for 1) how will this be protected enough 2) how can we easily delete this if needed; so I would say decently.
> Why would it benefit society to get less targeted ads as opposed to more targeted ones?
Because more targeted ads require a dangerous and abusive system of pervasive surveillance while less targeted ads can still be targeted without hurting as many people in the process.
If I am Tylor Swift fan I should get her merch advertising only when I am visiting swifties forum or group - but not when I am checking my fishing forum where I expect fishing gear ads. But nowadays I get adsg
Tracking stats of your customers using the data they willingly gave you and making marketing decisions isn't the problem. Neither is making sponsorship agreements with content producers who make relevant content.
Creation of global markets with interconnected networks to track and share detailed personal information about mental states, political alignment, sexual life and more is the problem.
All advertising is a step too far, I think. But banning accepting any remuneration to deliver, display, or cause to be viewed any advertisement, and limiting physical ads in places viewable from public areas seems like it would improve things. Buildings shouldn't be covered in ads, and the internet shouldn't be largely based around scamming as much information out of people as possible to jam ads down their throat, but a business should be allowed to put up flyers on their own storefront. I mean, if you're really pedantic about banning all ads, that probably precludes restaurants posting menus out front.
Extremely limited, focused, designed to deliver facts rather than entertainment or flashy catchy content 'ads' could be informative and beneficial. The structure of the ad should be as close to sanitized textbook as possible, maybe even follow a regulated formula. Something like, "This is a thing that exists. Here's the benefit without dramatizing or 'selling' someone something they don't need. X brand can be found at Y location for Z cost."
It's easy to agree with all advertising. I think that's the quickest, easiest measure to cut that yields an outcome beneficial to society, and that more ads are nearly always worse.
I also think that sales are worse for society than every day prices that deliver value; sales do make sense for things like seasonal items which are in abundance due to just being harvested.
I’ve wondered the same thing. How much does a company have to spend on ads just to keep up with their competitors’ ad spend? I don’t know but if I had to guess I’d say most of the ad budget. Not to mention that ads are a cancer that infest and overrun anything they touch.
Would be a dream. Then a more-or-less independent entity paid by our tax money could be used to test stuff according to objective and scientific standards. I mean, stuff like TÜV certification already exists, doing a bit more work to get a reliable measure of performance, repairability, etc... like some review websites do wouldn't be that difficult.
Instead, we're forced to turn to third-party testers with dubious manufacturer relations - even when the results aren't freely available! - or technical knowledge (e.g. Consumer Reports using 1/3 octave smoothed power response for loudspeakers)...
> Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do.
Even assuming that is true, companies are bidding for user's attention and against each other. What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?
> and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it
Great example. Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.
> What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?
It's quite obvious, isn't it? They will stop buying ads altogether.
The entire reason targeted ads pay better is because they have a higher conversion rate, so advertisers can afford to pay more.
> Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.
And that's why shovel-ware "personal finance" crap YouTube channels make mega-bux, while actually interesting creators earn pennies. If you want more "junk food content", have at it: Ban all the targeted ads!
Just don't come crying in five years when there's nothing good to watch or read.
The Internet existed before Internet ads (and particularly targeted ads) did. Personally, while I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're making, I'm curious to see what a pendulum swing in the opposite direction might look like.
I might be talking out of my depth, as I don’t live in Europe, but I’ve heard the same paraphrased headlines like these since at least 2016. Has status quo been swayed one way or another since then? Theoretically speaking, wouldn’t legislating away the top US players open the market to the local companies a la Naver in SK, WeChat in China or Line in Japan? I understand I’m dumbing it down, but assuming such legislations are supported by the local residents. I don’t think I would support it, personally, but I can see their point as well.
Title is "Europe Is in Danger of Regulating Its Tech Market Out of Existence".
But then the subtitle says "Poorly designed laws are forcing *global firms* to leave." (emphasis mine)
Then you see a picture of an Apple Vision Pro. I've only skimmed through the article and there are 11 mentions of Apple and 12 mentions of Meta, then some mentions of X and such. These aren't even "global" firms, they are all American ones.
If anything, it sounds like they may be regulating away US products from the European market, and that's a big "maybe", which is different from what I understood from the title they chose.
A more practical example is that Facebook cannot promote its marketplace anymore. In Europe there are local alternatives for market places that get disadvantaged.
Spotify, an EU company, has to compete with Apple Music and YouTube Music. Both of which have their own mobile operating systems and markets.
Now we get a lot of backlash from these big tech firms as for years they have been integrating services into their walled gardens. Which now is hard to decouple from their platform.
This is not always good for the end user. Now I have to go to google maps manually because it’s most of the time no longer integrated with google search
what exactly prevents them from giving me a dropdown with links to apple maps, kagi maps, bing maps and google maps and my choice gets saved to my google account as the default? Instead all they show me is a useless javascript map which is still google maps but I cant do anything useful on it and it's super frustrating trying to get to a map for a place search
To play devils advocate - it costs money to integrate with all the competing map providers and to display them properly on the site. You could think of a plug in approach where map providers integrate themselves, still someone needs to maintain that plug in infra. Nothing is free.
And it’s the same story for any kind of service that’s subject to DMA.
Yes but this is a multi billion dollar company and the base integration could be as simple as opening the link and it doesn't even have to link to the correct place. They can have the ui make clear that it's a generic link to another map site. Although I just figured out how to link to something with a query text on bing in a minute: https://www.bing.com/maps?q=USA
The exact same thing works on kagi.com/maps btw. So I don't think that this is too much to ask for, I rather think that they are trying to create pressure on the EU.
> it doesn't even have to link to the correct place.
That's an obvious DMA violation. You can't preference your own service over others, like when you link to the exact pin on your service but just the general area on another.
They already commit a DMA violation by showing any google map at all then. It's not rocket science to conform to the spirit of the law, if they offer a simple API for other map providers to provide their own strings to google it will be solved in a day. They clearly just don't want to actually advertise other mapping providers for free which is something I understand fully btw. But the way they are currently doing it is actively hurting them because I hate how I can't jump to any map from the searc results now.
They don't want to link to their competition, so they'd rather not link to their own service and if users complain they tell them to complain to the EU.
Some people are calling for GPUs to be nerfed but that's fringe at this point. If you wanted to create the most extreme strawman of EU regulation possible... maybe that's one example you'd come up with.
CUDA is also viewed as anticompetitive by HN. Lots and lots of discussion about Nvidia's moat and how AMD could or can't break in. It's just here in the thread about regulation that some people suddenly forget.
Same. I didn't see any explanation or example about "poorly designed" or "leave". And yes Vision Pro is completely irrelevant and very confusing. To me the entire article is just a well-formatted rant adapted from a random reddit post.
I’m living in Europe, I'm deeply disappointed by the current situation. The problems run much deeper than just regulations; they extend far beyond politics.
1. VCs outright avoid investing in deep tech, with only rare exceptions.
2. Founders overwhelmingly choose to build small, sustainable companies, steering clear of big tech.
3. Employees consistently prefer consulting jobs and value vacation days over equity.
4. The bureaucracy startups face when incorporating or raising funds is staggering (Germany, I'm looking at you).
While this may seem beneficial from a social perspective, it creates the worst possible environment for tech startups. I have immense respect for the few European startups that manage to survive and thrive despite these obstacles.
Fair enough. Unless I misunderstood your point it sounds like, what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives. Isn't that the entire point of life? I can see why general population might support it, while us techies would be pushing for deregulation and less of work-life balance. So my understanding of these articles is "it might be bad in a long term!", but Europe is still big enough market for all these companies eventually bend over backwards to get access to it.
Again, really no skin in the game, as I don't live there and I only have limited amount of perspective, which comes from my European resident non-techie friends.
I think a lot of the complaining on HN comes from the engineers themselves. "Ugh," they say, "We have to write all of this boring code to comply with regulations, rather than writing exciting features!" I see it a little differently. As someone who's spent a good part of the last 6-8 years working on GDPR and DMA compliance projects, the way I look at it is: "We are finally making our product better for users, working on privacy improvements that our companies have opposed until it was forced on them." EU-led regulation has been a great engineering opportunity and a product forcing-function.
Europe is an amazing place, which is why I moved here in the first place. But for techies, it can be pretty challenging. The issue isn't with the techies themselves, though. The problem is that the environment here holds back big tech, making Europe heavily dependent on the US.
> what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives
Let's see how long it lasts, Europe's economy is terrible and their people are significantly poorer. I don't think their current welfare state is sustainable without tax revenue from large businesses. Eventually every European citizen will be a waiter, hotel staff, or a tour guide.
how is europe's economy terrible? by what metric?
considering that the EU still has a very large part of the global economy, especially compared to its population and size.
Also, the tech industry is not the only part of the economy. large parts of the EU are absolutely massive in terms of industrial machinery and scientific companies.
People on HN always seem to forget that a lot of money can be made by making something very high end which solves a specific problem, no matter if it is sexy or not.
40 years ago Europe (without former Warsaw Pact countries) accounted for 25% of global trade. These days it's ~12% and dropping. Since 2008 there is no meaningful GDP growth (1-2%) whereas US and China exploded in that time. India is on track to surpass EU by 2050. All that will be left is a large open-air museum.
It's not about flexing, it's about the diminishing importance of EU in the world. It doesn't matter if EU still has a better GDP PPP if India ends up with a bigger GDP overall as you are only as important as you have in the bank internationally. Competing for resources would then flip in favor of India; EU burning bridges with Russia sending it to China's orbit will likely accelerate the process as well.
Of course the influence of the EU will diminish over time, because they are currently very strong. It would be very weird if the Asian countries wouldn’t catch up, which automatically lets the EU have a smaller proportion of global trade.
Guess what, at some point, India and china will also overtake the US. Is that shocking to you? That’s just what happens when absolutely massive countries catch up to everyone else.
In what way was the US able to keep up with china? The GDP chart google shows has a factor of 3.2 for 2008 and 1.4 for 2022 when comparing the US to china. If you seriously think the EU falling back behind china is a EU problem, I don’t know what to tell you. It might happen at a different speed but it’s only a matter of time before china takes over the US.
Now imagine we are talking about companies: "We grew just our competitors grew 4x as much as we did." - that would be a prime candidate for an acquisition or being labeled a "zombie company" in a few years due to exponential growth effects.
That’s exactly what happens to every large company. At some point, growth is limited. You think google grows as fast as Kagi? Should google be concerned because kagi managed to 10x their users in the past year (made up figure, you get the point) and they didn’t?
Poorer is debatable. Ppl in eu usually can afford going to a hospital or going to school/uni- for us it isn't that straightforward
And saying eventually everyone will cater to tourism is peak us ignorance. The tourism sector in eu is fairly small, even in the (over) touristic italy. Just the fact you mentioned this leads me to think you are an ignorant american that likes how people suffer from being poor and being exploited by big corpos...
from a personal and social perspective, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, even in the EU we still ahve a lot of BS startups. We imo need more sustainable businesses, that value actual societal value/value to consumers or businesses over growth and shareholder value.
Regulation can be good. For example car sector and expanding car centric infra including erasing old towns killed a lot more ppl and had a huge environmental impact in us compared to eu where this sector was more regulated. So long term the suffering got bigger in us compared to eu because us had poor regulation and poor decision makers
This seems like a very socialistic perspective to me, which might not align well with big tech and innovation. I suggest re-reading "Atlas Shrugged" for this topic.
A working base that values vacation days over equity doesn’t sound like a place I’d want to start a business.
And I’m not the only one. Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.
> Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.
That's what trial periods are for, within the first 1-12 months (depending on position and sector) you can very easily get rid of employees. That's when you're supposed to evaluate their performance and fit.
And if they don't do their job afterwards you reprimand them and they can then be fired for cause if you have actual causes.
I find it the other way- lots of contracting roles in europe coming from US/Switzerland. There are also many roles coming from different eu countries to other eu countries. In other words it doesn't seem to have such a big impact
Germany's position in context is at least understandable: the Mittelstand is a force to be reckoned with, and that entire segment of Germany's trade system is extremely averse to risk. (It's also a lot of other things, part of which can be witnessed by hopping the border to Switzerland and reading through the platform for their self-proclaimed "Partei des Mittelstandes.")
On the contrary, I see the VC influence on American tech has been incredibly destructive. No one builds companies or products or services to last. Everyone is only in it for the quick buck. Basically every service provided by big tech has turned into a chase to cover it with ads and seek as much rent as possible while never actually improving anything. The state of software has gone downhill precipitously in the past decade and it’s only getting worse as VCs gain more and more control over the entire economy from housing to education to financial services to insurance.
"... seek as much rent as possible ..." I think this is sorely understated in the context of understanding Europe's regulatory environment vis-à-vis American big tech companies or targeted advertising-supported (read: personal data mining) software startups.
We need to remember that Europe is the continent that gave us extractive colonialism. A player always knows their own game.
Unfortunately true, but one can also think that it’s a consequence and not the root cause. Why VC should invest if the environment isn’t supportive? A vicious circle :)
why are VC's somehow the cause of "tech industry"? this seems like a very US perspective on tech in general.
Also, VC's in the US have another large advantage. Very, very cheap money because the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency compared to the euro and other currencies.
> why are VC's somehow the cause of "tech industry"
Who else will give private capital for what is purely an idea?
Not Banks giving a business loan - they will demand interest at the current interest rate.
Not Private Equity - they only move private capital into public companies or late stage private companies
Not Hedge Funds - they only deploy capital into public markets
Not Growth Funds - they only deploy capital into late stage companies
The only funds that will deploy private capital into early stage companies are Angel Investors and VC Funds.
> this seems like a very US perspective on tech in general
Israel, India, China, UK, Russia (pre-2022), Ukraine (pre-2022), and ASEAN all developed a VC scene similar to the American scene.
Yet mainland West European investors are nowhere near as dynamic.
If the Western European market was more dynamic, Spotify would not have moved to NYC, Ghodsi would have founded Databricks in Stockholm instead of San Francisco, and Datadog would have remained a purely French company instead of moving most of hiring from Product Leadership to HR to the US a decade ago.
While you can mention ASML, the only reason ASML/Phillips even has EUV IP is because the US Government gave it to them instead of Canon or Nikon due to anti-trust reasons in the early 2000s and can very easily revoke IP access if prodded.
> Very, very cheap money because the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency compared to the euro and other currencies
Then why do high interest rate Israel, India, and China continue to have fairly robust VC scenes despite having high interest rates and currency controls and/or relatively illiquid currency markets?
The reality is "cheap money" as in interest rates don't really matter for early stage funding. Indtutional investors always leave some money on the side for VC funding as a diversification tool.
The difference is American, Israeli, Indian, Chinese, and ASEAN institutional investors will try to fund local VCs to build a local ecosystem, but Western European ones will just hand that money to an American, Israeli, Indian, or Chinese VC instead.
UK tried to have a "silicon roundabout" and attract VC investment, but then Brexit happened and the allure of English-speaking entry point into the EU market has disappeared.
Europe has missed out on the craze of getting millions to build an Uber for Cats.
We have no tech sector in europe. As soon as a company has more than 6 developers it gets bought by a USA company (that's a slight exaggeration, not by much).
How would this change what I've said and you've said? Instead of providing real stats you just throw random affirmations and expect people to believe them
I don't think big-tech companies exiting is a bad thing. They're so used to getting their own way and making the rules that it's probably signal that Europe is on the right track.
Pretty much these articles from FP are notorious for their poor journalism and just a mouthpiece for billionaires
In fact a huge chunk of American MSM is turning out to be unreliable and quick to deceive its readers who are still stuck in the "why would they lie to us".
Europe is doing a good job and as are more sovereign countries waking up to the techno-colonialism at play.
If Google or Facebook is in your country, they do not share your country's interest and instead pushing their own American ideologies.
More and more countries should reject American tech companies that seek to interfere and spread their fcked up ideologies in the host country.
> If Google or Facebook is in your country, they do not share your country's interest and instead pushing their own American ideologies.
> More and more countries should reject American tech companies that seek to interfere and spread their fcked up ideologies in the host country.
I'd go father: even in America they don't share their country's interest and instead are pushing their own Silicon Valley ideologies (e.g. they're all for solving problems, only so long as the solution means using more of their products, making them even more money, etc.).
> to be exact, San Francisco ideology shaped by the images of their limitless compassion now spreading world wide and raising questions.
Are you talking about the homeless encampments? I suppose that's another part of it.
But I was thinking about the ideology that says that more computerization (and less friction) is always more better. Basically, "We care about teen mental health, just as long as those teens are still glued all day to Instagram, even if Instagram itself is the problem."
I don't think (orphan grinding machines) exiting is a bad thing. They're so used to getting their own way and making the rules that it's probably signal that Europe is on the right track.
Tech sector pretending that the regulations that worked in all the other sectors don't and won't apply to them or they will upend the human civilization.
The real problem is that the requirements for a social platform are getting very onerous, to the point that it takes at least several engineers working full time on the problem.
That really hurts a startup's ability to initially launch in the market, especially one with less VC money. (Certain BigCo new products can be thought of as a startup too, with limited budgets.)
This doesn't just affect social media companies, it affects almost any product where a user can upload data, or any product with a social feature, no matter how peripheral the feature is.
Turns out that's a wide swathe of technology, and that social features are fairly valuable.
Of course the big companies will eventually get around to launching in Europe anyway, it will just trail behind the rest of the world.
This can be said about any regulation that makes it more difficult to deliver a product. Are food safety regulations "onerous" because the food company has to hire several people to ensure their food is safe? A food startup who can't afford to hire those people might argue that they are at a disadvantage and therefore the regulations are onerous and favor large companies.
>A food startup who can't afford to hire those people might argue that they are at a disadvantage and therefore the regulations are onerous and favor large companies.
That is literally the point of food regulations.
They are not prescriptive but descriptive.
No regulation says 'make food with >100 E-coli per KG' it always says 'use stainless steel table, no smaller than 2mx1m, in a well ventilated room of size...'.
> The real problem is that the requirements for a social platform are getting very onerous, to the point that it takes at least several engineers working full time on the problem.
There are only 19 companies in the world that are required to comply with the strict rules. I think they can pay those "several engineers" from the money they make in EU. This is not about startups, and this is not about launching.
Most, if not all this kind of EU regulation has size limits, usually several steps between small startups with a small number of users, up to the size of gatekeeper platforms. There aren't many startups that start off as a gatekeeper since there is only six companies in the world that has that definition (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft).
That data point is very hard to provide any evidence for, and not sufficient to draw any conclusions from. For example, what if the company was never started? What if they pivoted after speaking to a lawyer?
> Criteria relating to the size of the companies: (a) a turnover of the company of at least 7.5 billion euro in the European Economic Area for three years at least or (b) a market capitalization or equivalent of at least 75 billion euro;
> Criteria relating to the place of the company in controlling access of other businesses to final customers: the company needs to have (a) more than 45 million monthly active end users in the EU and (b) more than 10,000 yearly active business in the EU;
> "An entrenched durable position" which is a qualitative criterion which the regulator considers met if the numbers of active users in the second criterion are met for three years in a row.
It is indeed very hard to find evidence that DMA does not affect startups, if you don't want to find that evidence.
You're seriously arguing that a startup founder would think "well, when I get to a 75 billion euro valuation, there will be some cumbersome rules, so I might as well not start anything"???
Sure, but those quantitative criterion were not met by iPadOS, and the EC just said "nah, we gots the feelz" and declared it a gatekeeper platform anyway.
Who is to say they won't decide that a 6 person startup with 10 users doesn't qualify?
Frankly I'm not very convinced by that -- it seems that most social networks are already killed by winner-takes-all SV companies buying-out any possible threat.
The situation in America is an absolute nightmare with data being sold through all sorts of mechanisms with zero oversight (your ISP, your car, most apps on your phone, whoever does your credit scores) -- I'm sure there's some way to make successful tech that isn't the hellscape America has.
Which regulations are you referring to? Do those not apply just to those that have managed to obtain a dominant role, ie not startups entering the market?
The requirements for social platforms are just becoming more inline with all other industries. The period of special treatment is over. The era of, “If it’s on social media then no one is liable for this content or the harm it may cause, but also I can still monetize it,” is over.
It is a welcome change, but not for those who mean to exploit the special status that “social media” and “apps” have been given all these years.
The EU commission (made of elected statesmen from all over the EU) is free to propose as many laws as it wants, but these things never have broad appeal and do not pass parliament (the MEPs we directly elect).
Chat control keeps being proposed by the same Swedish politician, and she will continue to do so and she will continue to fail- because politicians in the EU are already aware its stupid.
You are wrong, most MEPs know that this will break encryption and are more than happy to go for the ride because they have exempted themselves from such regulation. Surveillance for thee not for me.
Chat control is not just the love child from the Swedish politician, it is being pushed by US surveillance companies that convinced the commission members that CP can be detected and stopped only if Europol has access to all your messages, emails, photos and videos until the end of time without having any recourse as to what it will be used for or by whom it will be viewed.
Then there is also Chat Control V1 which is currently extended each year despite being a temporary measure supposedly. Then there is also the data retention directive which everyone knows was illegal to start with and took 10 years to be overturned.
The fact that people still associate EU with privacy is a joke. The EU wants your data just like Meta and Apple or Google. At least Meta is not trying to gaslight me into thinking that giving my data is to save the children or some other complete BS reason.
How do you reason your thinking with the fact that the EU created GDPR?
The EU laws typically fall on the side of promoting privacy and protecting citizens against large multinational organisations (criminal and legitimate).
There is a need for greater powers to prevent crime, but nobody is going to weaken privacy for it. The most likely outcome is a centralised interpol-esque database to track and track suspects more quickly. Right now its very easy for criminals to just change hosting region and the investigating national police have no jurisdiction to do anything. It’s a large issue.
That is not what Chat control is. Chat Control is live analysis of all your messages/emails/photos and videos.
Chat Control breaks encryption because it wants to snoop on the messages/photos before being encrypted EtoE by the messaging providers.
There is no need for greater powers to prevent crime. It has been determined that there isn't enough funding to investigate the crimes reported already and now this system is supposed to report even more crime at the price of my privacy.
I could see potentially a system where known suspects are targeted specifically but in this case, everybody is a suspect. What happened to presumption of innocence?
The fact of the matter is that chat control is the digital Stasi, always listening to your conversations, analyzing your messages. God forbid the algorithm flags your innocent picture wrongly.
It was not shut down, it will certainly come. The DSA is another tool that is already in effect. Bit by bit all the pieces of a surveillance state are coming together in the EU.
It's socialism versus capitalism at its finest. The problem is that socialism risks regulating big tech out of existence. Is that an issue? Absolutely. By stifling big tech, Europe becomes heavily dependent on the US, which ultimately hurts our quality of life. As an entrepreneur living in Europe, the best thing you can do is move to the US.
Not only the tech market, they're on a pace in destroying the agricultural market as well. Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.
That’s already happened in the US without regulation, little farms don’t stand a chance against giant agribusinesses which may not even be US owned (largest pork producer is owned by Chinese) . In fact regulation is probably preventing it from happening faster in the EU.
the agriculture market relies heavily on goverment intervention to even exist.
The EU and its member states give out huge subsidies to keep food production local in the EU without being completely destroyed by cheaper crops from third world countries.
The US does the same, and it is for good reason, to actually make sure a steady food supply exists inside the country/union.
American agriculture already went down that path. This might be a global pattern following the adoption of improved technology. Is there a reason to believe otherwise in the case of Europe? Or maybe it's a multifaceted phenomenon.
When it comes to commodity staple foods there's just no way that small farms can survive. It isn't realistic given advances in technology and economies of scale. This isn't a problem, it's just inevitable. Small farms that want to remain independent will have to switch from commodities to specialty foods that command higher profit margins.
For agriculture at large I wonder if that's not going to be the final economic state everywhere in the world, regardless of government. That's just more efficient. Is there anywhere in the world where this trend is reversing and looking healthy?
Unless you only look at the financial side of things, and only from the perspective of the larger corps benefiting from this trend, it's not healthy at all.
>> Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.
> So making agricultural markets orders of magnitudes more efficient is destroying it in your view?
Yes, of course it is.
It's like replacing families by hell called a "System" - wet dream of the eg. leftists.
It literaly destroy "market" becouse producers side disappear and you have just institution :)
It destroys it becouse no one know how or want to do that hard agriculture business. People will just prefer to sit in slums around big cities. What they can do anyway if everything is not big but giant ? How to buy such area ? How to even learn what to do with it ?? How to acquire buyers if you even get that giant area LOL ? And if it to big for one man or family how to get enough workers (why they even wanted to live slums ? how they even learn what to do??) ??
That giant and efficient (in one dimension) thing just extend himself into lack of self-sufficiency on multigeneration time scale.
Monoculture becose it's cheaper ? :>
Product quality ??? Compare to XO brandy, champagne or artisanal leather wallets. Not to boxed milk with "not yet discovered" PFASes or future "improvements".
Food security in case of war or invasion ? Or mass drone invasion ? Without small and medium agriculture you have nowhere to run. And why to even run - do one giant owner will take multiple ex-bigcity refugees to his home (and feed them few months) or just hire security to shot them or scary of his land ?
And even if giant owner want to help he can't. Becouse hi is only one. Compare to many small/farms - they are somehow just "human" and humanity sized...
Don Corleone was planting tomatoes at the end ;)
I met few peoples that when stopped to be young just moved to province and started peacefull living of the land. Giant farms are a no go for that purposes.
And yes, eg. China builds piggeries and cowsheds town-sized now. Now imagine one case of some-flue in that "town" - best case... And suddenly millions have prices hike or are starving. Or Africa countries get very cheap but toxic meat. Or animal food. Eg. with prions included...
And all of that are just real world facts and "technicals". Now add greeeeed by "lawful" owners. Tell me - is that hypothetical ? \s You easily can write long replay or tree of them just on that subject :>
Corect way is to not build hell on earth in the first place.
Europe is correct.Taking initiative on the moonlighting of hyper cheating of common citizens by big tech firms.It is investing all conceptual strength on wayward money making by the four tech "giants" at the cost if people.They act as sentinels and gatekeeoers to prevent cheats from secret money making.
This is a not-so-thinly veiled argument for deregulation and rolling back consumer protections, pretty much like the US. It's common to use scare tactics when it comes to regulations and taxes. "Companies will leave". "You're killing companies".
As long as the EU has 400+ million consumers and they have spending power a market will exist and companies will adapt.
Take the example from the article of CUDA being a monopoly. Well, NVidia obviously isn't a European company but it will comply if the EU forces them to open CUDA because the alternative is to close themselves off to Europe. That's never going to happen.
Stop believing this "companies will leave" propaganda.
Could articles like this bemoaning Europe's state of regulation be opinion pieces?
What if what Europe does is a good idea for the people but just inconvenient for companies?
Europe is one of the power houses of the world but with low self-esteem I am afraid. In the long term what matters is the people's quality of life and diversity.
Take China or the US: if a lot of people don't have purchasing power and leisure who are then buying stuff for themselves as end users?
>In the long term what matters is the people's quality of life and diversity.
I think you'll be surprised to find out just how many Europeans disagree with the diversity part. We are quite close to ethno-state Europe, just like how it was between 1800 and 1950.
Ask a European what they think of Gypsies for a wild time.
> Could articles like this bemoaning Europe's state of regulation be opinion pieces?
I agree with the broader idea that a lot of this stuff is PR from vested interests, but this case it's not really secret, since the news outlet categorizes it as:
> Argument - An expert's point of view on a current event.
> What if what Europe does is a good idea for the people but just inconvenient for companies?
Thats exactly the issue. What's good for Europeans isn't so good for American corporations.
Already populist presidents in America have signaled they don't care about Europe so why should Europeans nurture and allow a hostile country continue to operate in their lands?
This type of outrage from American MSM is quite baffling. Whether their billionaires like it or not countries are going their own way and the biggest slap in the face is that those billionaires do not even live in America.
Are you under the impression that people in the US don't have purchasing power?
Also, Europe is a power house right now, but won't be a generation from now if trends continue. All forms of power are built on economic power or are a means to get economic power.
As an European, I heard that 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I don't think our laws should focus on tech companies' freedom since it doesn't seem to improve the people's lives.
Americans have the highest level of disposable income in the world, and it's not even close. Even Europe's mega-rich tax havens like Luxembourg have a lower disposable income than Americans.
Yea I know the rebuttal--"but I also heard they all have $100,000 hospital bills every year!!" The disposable per capita income numbers already account for healthcare expenditures.
You used the term "highest level of disposable income in the world".
Sorry to be so blunt, but it's not helpful if you look only at the average.
A better metric would be the median because it is well known that the super rich distort the disposable income in some countries (the US, but also some European countries).
I see in plutocraticish environments the rich and powerful sometimes very deftfully prevent measures inconvenient for Corporate but useful for the weaker part of the population.
I admit this also happens in Europe. But somehow it is just easier to live as a poorish person in many European countries.
Not sure if you checked the link, Wikipedia has both Mean equivalised and Median equivalised charts.
Americans rank #1 on both mean and median. So the point about the super rich distorting the mean is irrelevant.
> But somehow it is just easier to live as a poorish person in many European countries.
Perception and narratives are not reality. In fact, typically in economic matters it takes almost a decade for the public narrative to shift to match the reality of the numbers. Even if reality is right there in the data.
This is why bubbles usually go on for much longer than the "smart" people think they will. Look at any of Fama-French research; momentum is the strongest inefficiency in virtually all markets.
The other thing is - though US median performance is high and average performance is much higher - it's not just a couple of billionaires pulling up that average.
It's millionaires - tens of millions of them.
There's something special about a system that can create so many extremely successful people.
It does so by creating equally as many incredibly miserable people. Homelessness is rampant on the US and the average American is one health emergency away from poverty. That's also the same country well known for saddling college students with life-crippling debts.
Not sure where that stat comes from - median wealth in the USA compares extremely favourably with the rest of the world, while the average blows everyone except Switzerland out of the water.
Also, living paycheck to paycheck != being poor. There are many people with high incomes but poor budgeting who live paycheck to paycheck, but will realistically be just fine if they have to tighten their braces.
> As an European, I heard that 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
Yes, and we all declare bankruptcy every month, and charge $10,000 to our credit card to be allowed into the doctor's waiting room, where we announce our arrival by firing a gun in the air.
The numbers are debatable as usual but they're not taken from thin air
> A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. In other words, more than three-quarters of Americans struggle to save or invest after paying for their monthly expenses.
> Similarly, a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey revealed that nearly 70% of respondents either identified as living paycheck to paycheck (40%) or—even more concerning—reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses (29%).
The numbers are debatable as usual but they're not taken from thin air
> A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. In other words, more than three-quarters of Americans struggle to save or invest after paying for their monthly expenses.
> Similarly, a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey revealed that nearly 70% of respondents either identified as living paycheck to paycheck (40%) or—even more concerning—reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses (29%).
Before you can innovate you need to level the playing field.
Sure at the moment the amount of inner European Innovation in digital technologies is low, but local companies have to fight against foreign behemoths that simply disregard local regulations, or just buy the likes of Luxemburg or Ireland to get their own special law zones inside the single market.
Let the big US companies leave, the vacuum left behind will foster competition and local solutions.
The article doesn't list much in the way of tech. LLMs, social media, and advertising hegemons leaving Europe is hardly a tech flight. In fact, it sounds like a best case scenario. Someone call me when Zeiss moves out because they can't compete in Europe, and I'll be concerned Europe is actually losing something of value.
The entire article keeps saying "Europe" when it means "EU". Many European countries, including some large ones (Russia, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine...) are not EU members.
The article makes a number of questionable assertions such as "Non-personalized ads cannot economically sustain Meta’s services". I do not know whether that is true or not. Apple has a history of malicious so. I think there are multiple reasons the US dominates tech, and I do not believe "the EU’s rules all but ensure there are no comparably successful European companies". There are many successful European tech companies, as the article mentions later on (it links to a list of the largest that is clearly out of date - for example that omits ARM).
I also disagree with its analysis of why. If you look at their list of large tech companies, and there are a lot of Chinese ones which largely exist because China was protectionist and favoured domestic over US companies. I would argue, if anything, the EU (and other European companies) have not regulated American companies enough, to produce their own competitors. In particular they rarely block takeovers by established players of potential future competitors.
I agree the EU's approach to regulation is often badly flawed, but the DMA seems to be a reasonable approach - as other comments have said it only targets businesses with a lot of market power.
The article seems unfounded to me. We need regulation because companies are gaining more power, money, and data. Social networks are shaping entire societies to behave in different ways. Android is able to comply with these rules when implementing AI why not Apple? Late? Poor implementation? . However, I hope that movements like this will push the EU to create conditions and finance channels to enable competition in the tech space. I agree that Europe is lagging more and more behind, but Apple not releasing their products here is not the problem. Not having big tech companies is the problem
It’s probably smarter to only kick-in regulations after certain size thresholds are met. You can definitely strangle an organization with paperwork before it even has enough money to hire people to do the paperwork.
That's the case for most, if not all, of the new European regulations, such as the Digital Markets Act. The number of companies to which it applies can be counted on your hands, and they all have tens of billions of dollars of revenue.
If your company requires removing privacy laws and measures to stifle anti-competitive behavior, then by all means leave. I don’t want to live in a technological dystopia just to be “cutting edge”
One of the clearest examples of this to me is the requirement to show consent to store cookies. This just simply ruined web surfing experience, where now every site has to show a popup of all kinds of shapes and forms.
AFAIK there is no general requirement to ask for consent. For example, to store session tokens or language preferences. A lot of sites probably wouldn't have to show cookie consent prompts, if they don't share profiling data with third parties or do other shady stuff, but still show them because they're afraid of doing it wrong or because everybody else seems to be doing it. It's been a while since I read the text of the law, but I remember thinking that the line from which consent was required seemed reasonably drawn and that websites who cross it are right to be forced to declare what exactly they do. There was a post about this recently, titled something like "there is no cookie banner law".
An option for a general setting may be nice. I personally approximate it by only accepting cookies from whitelisted domains, and using ad blocking filter lists to hide cookie consent prompts.
Forcing global firms to leave is GOOD actually, but EU have essentially no domestic tech markets: most part of the ruling elite have no idea about IT and while they have made many wise choice in theory (eIDAS, e-billings, certified signed emails and so on) the implementation is obscene and mostly done on the shoulders of non-EU firms by not really competent local developers and the result is a practical MESS. All other the EU we almost have smart-card nfc IDs but using them is a pain because of crappy proprietary middlewaren and crapplications even more crappy on top, with public services designed by some mentally ill child with a keyboard. We have public accurate maps of the territory and no unified public way to access them, there is no public common conferencing decentralized/federated infra, some public body offer Big Blue Button or Jitsi meet based infra, others choose some USA private firm. Public money, public code is told everywhere but only told in most of the cases.
The sole way we can fill the gap is MANDATE FLOSS, publicly funding existing FLOSS projects and offering them all the infra through public universities and research bodies to create an EU-FLOSS ecosystem because that's the future we need, where once spread everywhere (desktops, smartphones, cars, domestic IoT etc) will allow private sector to pick and evolve individual ideas. This is the European way and we know it works, IF DONE. Unfortunately most fails to understand IT at all so it's not done, simply. As a result no digital sovereignty is possible on scale.
This is silly. So a bunch of American companies are refusing to go along with EU regulations that cramp their own monopolistic style. That doesn’t mean they are killing the local tech market.
I'm curious on why European people allow such heavy regulation. They really think that the Europe can enjoy their prosperity with little innovation for years to come?
The bills are voted in the law by the democratically elected Members of the European Parliament and the democratically elected governments in the Council of the European Union.
(And the Commission itself often gets its mandate for writing bills from the European Parliament, the Council of the EU or the European Council.)
I agree -- these comments are bizarre to me. Technology is the single biggest predictor of QoL in human history.
You can only miss out on so many Industrial Revolutions before you begin to lose power (economic, military, financial, social) and fade into irrelevancy. That will certainly hurt QoL more than any short-term gain from preventing Memoji AI from existing in your region, or strangling your next AI startup in the cradle.
The comments here seem ignorant of how regulations in the EU have become and what the dynamic is. Regulation is being lionized [0] as a political badge of honor, and as TFA shows, things are getting ridiculous: it is not enough that you can a) not use facebook, b) pay for it, or c) consent to let them use your data -- you MUST have d) use facebook for free without letting them use your data. In other words, socialist values must be upheld by corporations, now everyone must be able to avail of your product at no cost, to be subsidized by the wealthy, which in this case is the corporation itself! Of course businesses are just going to stop operating in this environment!
The comments here seem blind to this simple calculus. Then they will say, "nothing of value was lost": then think who is the arbitrator of value here? It is clearly not the consumer*, but the consumer's nanny. Was something of value lost in that philosophy? No? Perhaps China and North Korea are not so bad, then.
We have no way to influence what our leaders do in our own governments.
Go figure how much our representative in the EU parliament will be able to represent the will of the people.
Ask anyone in EU who is their country representative. They won't be able to tell you. Heck, ask who the president of the EU commission is. Nobody will be able to tell you and she's been ruining our lives for 5 years already.
MEP are just partying with the lobbyist in Bruxelles and challenging each other who can get the bigger bribe.
And Ursula wants a never ending war for the next few generations. She loves war. No money left for innovation or for fighting climate change, which is going to be very expensive.
> Regulating the tech Market is great for local tech
Except, it is not. At least not in the situation that the EU is in. Because all regulations are a constant burden on business, small relative to big corporations, huge for medium companies and insurmountable for startups.
The EU has no big players, not a single one! We have a few medium players like SAP and that is it. So, we are already far behind and every weight we load on to drag us down is another nail in the coffin.
It's good the EU doesn't have a big player. Having big players is like having cancer. The EU has a functioning Immune system, the US is buckling under its immunu-comporomised ass. The resources ~~cancer cells~~ big players are extracting aren't going to the people.
Tech is very interconnected though, and the article points out an example where what you state is very much not true: "How would Mistral, a leading AI firm, survive if Nvidia exits the French market due to regulatory concerns?"
Would've been good if they had been able to come up with a realistic example that could be problematic, but they have not made the case at all while Nvidia would forego the EU market.
Are you just counting on others being too exhausted to bring yet another moot argument to its predetermined conclusion?
I'll finish it to save everyone some time:
A: how much of gdp is facilitated through the search abilities of meta and google, though?
B: It doesn't matter.
A: Why not?
B: There will be someone else who is willing to play by the local rules fulfilling the same function in their place, just like in many countries around the world already.
> Building a competitive search engine [..] requires VC investment.
> VC investment requires a vibrant startup ecosystem, well crafted regulations and a risk-tolerant culture.
Yandex, Baidu, and many other lesser-known local-only search engines exist. There's also nothing stopping an already existing technology company from entering search. The statement is incorrect.
Meanwhile common sense tells us that obviously there's going to be investment into domestic search engines if Google voluntarily throws in the towel. Europe is a huge place and there's a lot of money to be made, even if it's merely with context-based advertising and no individual tracking.
> Building a competitive [..] AI model requires VC investment [..] and a risk-tolerant culture.
Training a large model anyways, since nobody has really figured out how to recoup that investment yet. Why are you trying to derail this from talking about search though?
> Are you just counting on others being too exhausted to bring yet another moot argument to its predetermined conclusion?
Umm, nope. I’m conjecturing that there could be an enabling aspect of huge scale, and that some smaller economies may fall below the threshold. Personally i hope what you wrote works.
Subtitle says "Poorly designed laws are forcing global firms to leave." I didn't see anything in the article that elaborates on the "poorly designed" part or any company that is forced to leave. Instead, the article uses a number of totally irrelevant examples to argue... nothing. I am really confused.
Apparently the author founded the "Center for New Liberalism". I tried to find out how that's funded, but could only see memberships that gives access to a 700+-person Slack, and couldn't find what the dues are. Would be interested in learning more about that, if anyone knows more.
It's interesting to me how the article looks great in a browser that does not auto-load resources or process CSS. But in a so-called "modern" browser, the kind worshipped by developers, the annoyance is so bad, the article is so difficult to read, that the forum moderator directs readers to use a different website. Others might not find it interesting but I do.
I think it should be remembered that the personalized ads are not just valuable for ad platforms - most of the personalization value actually accrues to advertisers themselves, who basically represent the entire economy.
EU regulators think their enemy is big American tech companies, but they are hurting their domestic advertisers and domestic economies even more.
I am saying this as someone who hates seeing ads and uses adblock, but I greatly appreciate the societal value.
We should be making laws that foster competition and safety. I struggle to see how cross-site tracking and personalized advertising by itself is anti-competitive or unsafe. The bigger issues that need to be solved on these platforms are gatekeeper monopolies, social division, and mental health.
With ads there is incentive for tech companies to harvest more and more data points for advertisers to use their magic orbs to find out whether you like Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi more. This in turn leads to powerful and concerning levels of understanding of a certain individuals personality and worse, behavior, that allows them to exploit those flaws in your personality, or exploit your emotion more than a billboard ever could.
On top of this, it creates an unregulated sky-is-the-limit 3rd party economy of data brokers who will sell these bulk collections of data to whoever coughs up the money for it. Enter in governmental intelligence agencies, there now is a concern of governments either sidestepping laws on lawful intelligence collection or outright breaking them, as the NSA and FBI have already admitted too if I recall correctly.
Edit: I'd also like to say, can you imagine how the intelligence agencies would pressure their legislators during attempts of reforming data brokers? "You can't take this away! We stopped this attack from happening with this! If you take this away, you'll cause 9/11 2.0!" That's exactly what they did for the FISA re-authorization this year in the US.
Regardless, personalized ads are evil and should be banned at least for granular types. People will survive with less personalized ads but we'll avoid a lot of problems by ditching them
I think we can debate regulations being productive or not all day and either side of the camp will never agree, however my biggest personal issue is that the government is removing the choice from anyone involved. As an adult you should be able to chose for yourself - if everyone chose no, then nobody would use these services and the companies wouldn’t do it. I think the effort needs to be focused on awareness and education, not restriction.
If the average user is fine with their data being sold in exchange for a service, then why not let them?
I’m personally not okay with it and I keep my data footprint as low as I can, but I know lots of people who just do not care if they get a service in return, and are fully understanding of what that means.
> If the average user is fine with their data being sold in exchange for a service, then why not let them?
But they are not okay with it. I understand why Corporations like to insinuate that people who click OK to twenty pages of legalese in an EULA really are okay with whatever clauses in it, but in reality this practice is an abuse of contract law and exploiting asymmetric power relations. In theory, a potential customer could print EULAs out, suggest changes, and send back the revised contract for approval or further negotiation. In practice, nobody ever does that and corporations would freak out if it happened on a large scale.
The problem does not just occur with new big tech. Banks have been doing the same for decades. I recently put some money on a savings account and was greeted with pages and pages of fine print that literally only a lawyer can understand. Normally, nobody in their right mind would accept this. However, the bank serves as a utility, changing banks is very difficult where I live and they all have the same kind of contracts in their favor. There is no alternative. The same is true for social networks and other big tech. It's not really a free choice for a small business owner to have a Facebook account or for a self-published author to put their books on Amazon, for instance.
That's why strong regulations, good customer protection and privacy laws are needed.
Companies circumvent real choice all the time. Regulations prevent them from doing so. There's no equivalency here. EU has repeatedly made legislation that does something or anything to counteract the power these tech companies have over the lives of billions. The EU has an interest in serving the needs of EU citizens. Tech companies do not. Tech companies only care about their bottom line, regardless of the human or financial cost to anybody else. There is no option for individuals to do anything about these companies. That's what we need governments for.
The US has largely decided that companies shouldn't be regulated at all (particularly with the recent Supreme Court decisions). This isn't a good thing. It will not benefit the vast majority of US citizens. There is no "choice" citizens can make that will undo the unraveling of government regulations on industry/business, unless it's voting for a political party that one that will reform the Supreme Court and revert their insane decisions, a party that isn't the GOP.
Then it sounds like what you’re saying is there’s a financial market for users like you and I who would rather pay a subscription fee than our data be sold? Or an ad supported tier?
The problem with your argument is you’re removing any revenue source the company has. If you won’t pay a subscription, and you block all the ads, and they can’t sell data, how do they make money? Money is required to run the service, whether that leaves a sour taste or not.
If you think you have a financially viable model that protects data, then you should start a company on that premise, I’d genuinely love to see someone make it work.
Protection of the water we drink is a legal right. Which is why companies cannot dump waste into the river, no matter what financial impacts it has on them.
Protection of user data is a legal right, or increasingly recognized to be. Companies have no right to sell it, or misuse it, no matter what financial impacts it has on them.
Rights cannot be contracted away or sold. They are rights.
I rent my rights via a contract to certain defined aspects of my autonomy for about forty hours per week. In exchange for that I get tokens that I can exchange for food. If I couldn't contract away those rights I'd get hungry.
I'm also willing to rent my right to determine the contents of advertisements inserted into my daily news feed, for the right price. These things feel equivalent in kind to me.
I contract away time-slices of my human effort. I consider that I own that effort by right, and part of that ownership bundle is the right to destroy or exchange it. So it is consistent to both have a right and to trade parts of it away. It would be less of a right if I were prohibited from exchanging it for other priorities, like food.
You are saying I shouldn't be able to consent to letting someone sell my data? Can I sell my own data? How about if I shared it, would that be illegal?
> Then it sounds like what you’re saying is there’s a financial market for users like you and I who would rather pay a subscription fee than our data be sold? Or an ad supported tier?
And the vast majority of users don't deserve privacy? Nah, that's a ridiculous argument to make and I'm not going to waste my time with this line of discussion. You're not making a good faith argument. I'm not playing your stupid games.
I don’t think there’s need for anger, I’m not “playing games”. All I’m doing is pointing out that there has to be a source of revenue to run any given service - and if you remove all the sources of revenue then the service ceases to exist. Right now the only viable sources of revenue at that kind of online service scale is subscriptions, ads, or data collection and sale.
If there’s a method I’m not thinking of I’m genuinely curious what the financial model would look like.
No one is forcing you to use these services. I care very much about my privacy and only use a handful of services that respect that privacy. Stop giving your money to companies you disagree with and stop forcing your morality on others. Because all that does is set the precedent for someone to force their morality on you even if you disagree with it. That's how we get anti gay, xenophobic, extremists forcing their moral views on others.
There's plenty of interpretative room to view the above comment as honest discussion as opposed to dishonesty ("bad faith"). But now you've burned the bridge so hard why do you even bother making an argument? Just to get the last word?
When you knowingly agree to use a service that sells your data, that's fine. When you link it to Facebook and then give it access to your contacts and the name, email address, and phone number of every person you know gets sold to a company that then goes and uses that information to send personalized phishing emails and commit fraud that's a lot less fine.
At the end of the day its about liability. There are many tech companies that are responsible for harm at both the individual and societal level, and they are not held accountable.
Always hilarious reading big tech propaganda. They're trying oh so hard to convince people that, no, us harvesting every single iota of information and selling it to data brokers is progress, actually!!!
The best part, for me, is while they flail and scream about the big bad EU, Japan and India are following suit with similar laws and regulations. It's only a matter of time until more and more countries start adopting these laws, and the tears from the techbros is going to be delicious.
The website the "article" (aka paid propaganda piece) is hosted on has over 700 partners that they'd like me to consent to having my data shared with. It also completely shits itself thanks to uBlock, meaning it's made so terribly that blocking the privacy-invasive trackers they have breaks the whole site.
If this is their idea of innovation, they can keep it and shove it where the sun don't shine.
I find this extremely misleading. It's not surprising, given the average american publication is not aware of the fact that the "big tech" relies on so many obscure open source software from all around the world
In my little buble hanging around the Berlin start up scene (not founder) I've never heard about complains for DMA, Ai Act etc. (only GDPr for medical stuff , but that is tackled by new laws... With less privacy).
Current stuff (other mentions): Germany's state of digitalisation and bureaucracy, investments.
So this guy clearly gives an lousy tech lobbyist .
Giving his initiative DMA is certainly pro market oriented. Why does he have a problem with it?
Europe is a place to take social benefits; there is no tech, no innovation. It's better to sit on the couch and watch Netflix than start a business. There is too much risk, too many taxes, and too many regulations.
My impression is that many if not most KDE developers are in Europe. That's some of the most useful user-facing software that exists. Most big American "tech" has essentially no utility, and is built around mindless scrolling, spying, and ads.
No utility you say? i’d argue all of this is relevant to consumers and/or businesses in europe:
• Microsoft windows
• microsoft office (excel, etc)
• google search
• google maps
• gmail and yahoo mail
• smartphones
• space-x (affordable satellite launches - for accurate weather forecasts and GPS)
• OpenAI (pioneering LLM’s from a product perspective)
• Visa and Mastercard networks
• AWS / Azure / GCP
• Adobe (photoshop, etc)
• Zoom / Webex (Skype is an exception, created in europe)
• Salesforce
• DocuSign
• AutoCAD
I can list more if you’d like…this was literally off the top of my head. All of these businesses and products were created in the united states, some with VC funding. They employ hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc. They provide critical business capabilities to businesses around the world. Some are user facing as well.
As far as critical business software Europe has created Skype, SAP, and i think that’s it? From the hardware side, major kudos for ASML and Airbus.
The stuff you read about in the news is focused on bad actors and toxic social media junk. thats a small piece of big tech.
> No utility you say? i’d argue all of this is relevant to consumers and/or businesses in europe:
>
> • Microsoft windows
>
> • microsoft office (excel, etc)
>
> • google search
>
> • google maps
>
> • gmail and yahoo mail
>
> • smartphones
>
> • space-x (affordable satellite launches - for accurate weather forecasts and GPS)
>
> • OpenAI (pioneering LLM’s from a product perspective)
>
> • Visa and Mastercard networks
>
> • AWS / Azure / GCP
>
> • Adobe (photoshop, etc)
>
> • Zoom / Webex (Skype is an exception, created in europe)
>
> • Salesforce
>
> • DocuSign
>
> • AutoCAD
>
> I can list more if you’d like…this was literally off the top of my head. All of these businesses and products were created in the united states, some with VC funding. They employ hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc. They provide critical business capabilities to businesses around the world. Some are user facing as well.
>
> As far as critical business software Europe has created Skype, SAP, and i think that’s it? From the hardware side, major kudos for ASML and Airbus.
>
> The stuff you read about in the news is focused on bad actors and toxic social media junk. thats a small piece of big tech.
Honestly, this comment inadvertently proves the need to quarantine US tech. Almost every product you listed is utter garbage, especially Windows.
There's nothing inherently better about Windows than Linux. Libre Office suit can become much better than MS Office if ot got enough suppoet - support that just goes away to M$ contracts.
Google search has become utter garbage.
Hetzner exists, and more Cloud companies would exist if it weren't for America's Big Tech having a competitive advantage due to their sheer size.
Adobe is a shit company with shit behavior. I'd welcome its implosion anytime. Again, if the billions siphoned away for their licenses was spent on FOSS alternatives, we'd end up with such healthier ecosystem.
Visa and Mastercard are leas innovation and more completely regulated duopoly at this point.
Also, with the exception of SpaceX, I'd gladly welcome the complete implosion of all companies you mentioned. I'd love to watch them burn to cinders, while the world finally breathes free.
ok, but real businesses and governments actually use them to run their business.
How long do you think a typical business would survive without excel? Do you realize how crazy powerful excel is? I hate that tool as an engineer but its utility is immense. I agree windows is junk, yet it somehow ends up in all the critical infrastructure lol. Crazy but that’s what happens. Same with autocad- good luck efficiently designing physical infrastructure like bridges in your country without that tool.
Hetzner is not struggling to compete with AWS or Azure because it’s smaller…it’s because Hetzner has almost no features. They have even less features than DigitalOcean. Hetzner basically offers VPS hosting, elastic block storage, and easy deployment of some common apps. Do they offer any of the building blocks for deploying a high traffic service into production? Or deploying something that requires a lot of distributed components? No. stuff like managed databases, flexible file storage (like S3), and most importantly a managed multi-container deployment. Like fargate, ECS or EKS.
unrelated, i think the LibreOfficr example is interesting. I think it would be difficult to design a competing product because at this time companies pay for a full suite including: outlook, office, sharepoint, etc. and office is available in the browser with realtime multi user editing too! Maybe the LibreOffice project should pivot in that direction? Perhaps they could offer a cheap online version of their products, as a way to fund continued development, while making the desktop version free?
No innovation in Europe? Who created Linux? Python? ARM? ASML? Outside of IT: BioNTech (first Covid mRNA vaccine), Ozempic from Novo Nordisk? A fee seconds of googling is enough to show how ridiculous this claim is.
The trouble with these examples is that many of them are foundations or open source projects. They don’t employ europeans and provide a direct boost to the european economy. So yes there is definitely innovation but is it translating to JOBS in europe?
Is python a company that hires hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc? no. Same with Linux. Also Linux was created by a european (torvalds) while he was living and working in the united states, and is now contributed to by engineers all over the world. I’d hardly call that a majority european innovation. A nitpick but I wanted to clarify that.
ASML, ARM, BioNtech and Ozempic are great examples though, i’ll give you that.
I don't agree with the exaggeration in the parent comment, but your one counter-example pivoted their workforce expansion to the US after openly criticizing Sweden's business environment. They took issue with the shortage of employee housing due to over-regulated planning restrictions, unfavorable taxation of stock options, and a lack of programming and development education. Those issues (less so education) are applicable throughout the majority of the EU.
That complaint happened 10 years after they were founded and five years after they launched in the US. By that time, they were already a billion-dollar business.
I can't see how the wages have anything to do with the points in the parent comment but you're never going to get US wages in Sweden as long as the unions are involved
What stops Spotify from paying USA wages in Stocholm or other cities in Europe that offer good quality of living and thus appealing to software developers? Software developer unions are going to say NO? Do such unions exist? Can they control software devs?
Sweden has collective agreements where workplace conditions including pay are decided between the unions and the employers rather than the government interfering in the process. Yes even software devs are covered under this.
Why would they want to move people around the world, deal with the unions who will force them to raise the floor of the local salaries etc when they can just hire the best talent in the US?
By my understanding, they didn't have to pay for the exorbitant North American interactive music licenses during their first five year. The EU rates were much more reasonable (plus I think they got grants and govt support?), allowing them to test the market and grow before entering the US.
That is not someone "shocked" or "outraged" at Apple not bringing the AI features to EU markets. Vestager doesn't give a fuck about whether iOS ships with AI features or not. She is just saying that by citing the DMA as the reason, Apple are pretty much admitting that the features as implemented are anti-competitive. And she is stunned that Apple would be stupid enough to make that admission.
Like, you'd at least expect the Apple C-suite to pretend it's because of some technical reason, or because the cost structure isn't viable to support in Europe, or something other than that it's breaking competition laws.
I think that people outside EU who believe it does not need big tech may be unaware that average salary in EU IT is around 80k, and actually a lot of people (not only IT, but also doctors, for instance) relocate to US/UK/Swiss hoping to make much more money. Its not clear who will be running innovative companies here and how EU is going to compete with China's completely different work ethics.
I used to not understand these aggressive "everything else is shit" articles, as in whats the value proposition for the audience.horra patriotism is not in the market dor analysis. Nowadays i understand better, these articles is the closest thing the us has to systemic self-doubt for deciders.
Nah, not really. The EU will have a thriving tech market. It just won't have ad-supported sites. Because if anyone hasn't noticed, "data privacy" is just targeted ads.
"This company was caught tracking which users visited each page" Yes, for targeted ads.
"Cambridge Analytica was" Yes, for targeted ads.
"3rd party" Yes, targeted ads.
It's all targeted ads. They want to serve you targeted ads. Any attempt to paint "data privacy" as something other than this is irresponsible fearmongering.
Didn't US lose most of its production capability for the same reason? US protected its workers' rights, but there are other places with cheap labor treating the workers like shit, so businesses are using factories in other places, which then build massive expertise at production.
This is similar. EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens for good, but there are also places like US where rights are less protected, or not at all. (and frankly, a sizeable amount of people there don't even give a crap about rights that seem ephemeral for them, like privacy). So naturally businesses go to those places.
It's not poorly designed laws, or at least not just it. It's also a tragedy of commons in a global economy, moving too fast vs too slow, and many other things.
> EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens for good
Western Europe is not the entire EU.
Czechia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and the rest of Eastern Europe give plenty of leeway to businesses who bring FDI in.
The Czech government indirectly pushed a former employer of mine to force employees back into the office from remote work by threatening to withhold tax credits they used to establish a tech/outsourcing center in Praha.
Plenty of similar stories in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, etc.
Oh, and the SEZs and Law Firms that the investment agencies made us use were always very closely connected to the incumbent poltical parties (and either indirectly or directly owned by them)
You can take Eastern Europe out of the Warsaw Pact, but you can't take the Warsaw Pact out of Easrern Europe's political and business establishment
They're not rights, they're needs.
They don't have space in regulation.
If you want privacy, purchase the privacy conscious option. Don't force the entire market to make ads worthless, forcing companies to charge for things, forcing ME and my adblock to pay for crap I got for free until yesterday.
It’s all European regulation really. The cyber resilience security act is another example. You are compelled to come out with security fixes for the life of the product. If this is embedded hardware this gets increasingly difficult.
Imagine you come out with a secure boot product for the pi. Currently this is considered beta at the moment. In any case it’s quite possible that it could change, making it impossible to provide an update.
So under this regulation do you think anyone will offer any extended warranties ? The small amount of extra money will not be worth the massive extra risk.
15 million euros fine or 2% of your income doesn’t make for a very attractive incentive on platforms where it’s complex and risky to perform low level upgrades for example.
So expect increasingly shorter product lifetimes going forward and more and more products that just won’t be released in Europe, I expect even ones developed by European companies. And what do you think about small players who can’t even afford one court care for example ?
There as much ai shenanigans going on here in Europe as in US. DMA rules do not apply to startups. GDPR is good and stings larger corporations more than smaller ones.
Apple and Google are holding a beta risky feature and leveraging it as reason to get some sympathy.
It’s interesting to observe how detached the discussion here is from the issues created for Europe due to the DMA. A majority of the comments here make the implicit assumption that the DMA is good because it will penalize big tech companies and force them to change business models in the EU. This is not what is happening or will happen.
What’s really being destroyed by the DMA is Europe’s access to new technologies and services. It’s almost like a self-embargo on the AI building blocks of their future economy.
When Nvidia GPUs are supply constrained do you really think it matters to Nvidia if they need to redirect the small chunk of their supply constrained volume that they were previously selling into France? Who is harmed in this picture? The only EU AI player of note, Mistral, and other EU businesses.
Does it really harm Apple if the DMA forces them to withhold new AI features in Europe? They still earn their device and services revenues. Who is harmed in this picture? EU consumers and businesses.
We’ve now seen within just a couple months, Apple withhold AI features and Meta withhold multimodal AI models from the EU. Expect this cutting off of the EU from new features to become a recurring event over the next year.
DMA-supporting voices are under a serious misapprehension of what the effect of the DMA is and will be over the next few years. It’s cutting off European access (consumer, business & government) to critical technologies which are all being developed outside the bloc.
The DMA violates a number of longstanding principles of good legislation - it is vague, it’s written to enable arbitrary enforcement, it’s penalties are not designed to be proportionate to damages, or even require actual damages in order to be applied, the regulator’s actions stray into actual takings of property (European Commission opinion that Facebook cannot charge a subscription fee for its ad-free offering… so it must operate as a charity? This is a taking of property. European Commission opinion that Apple cannot charge a platform fee for use of its IP? This is a taking of property).
I think the topic is hard to talk about because the EU is technically trying to do the right thing but reality often rewards the conquerors and the US, China etc. (aka the competitors) still believe in the right of tech conquest. They don't stop their companies from taking whatever they want whether it's properly licensed or not. So we are in a situation where the EU is dotting their i's and shaking hands in their moral superiority while not understanding that we have to compete with people who don't care if they steal something or rob you by force. It's similar in all these other areas like the DMA and GDPR... we are competing with markets who simply don't care that they are violating people's privacy and it's more profitable to rob people and sell their stuff. The EU in my opinion has to create regulations that understand this reality and create an even stronger wall for european companies. So please go create these regulations, fine.. but understand that you should make unfair exceptions for european companies.
Let european companies that are situated here violate these regulations and make this explicit: As long as the US and China do not have equivalent regulations, EU companies are explicitly allowed to steal US and chinese content. Yes really, make that very explicit. Make laws with the full understanding of what reality we are living in. We are dealing with competitors who will take our last shirt by force, not friends and "partners" as they so lovingly put it in their press releases.
I am an avid reader of Show HNs. And I remember many that became successful businesses. But not a single European one.
All the "startups" that I see here in Europe are very classical businesses. They build software tools for local enterprises.
It seems nobody in Europe is building something for the open web. Maybe because nobody here understands all the regulations that come with it. The GDPR alone is 100 pages of legal mumbo jumbo.
Most show HNs are just some shitty wrapper around OpenAI APIs these days, from what I've noticed. "Searching for papers with AI!" Doesn't exactly sound like the next Google to me, but maybe I'm just out of touch.
That's probably not a regulation issue that's mostly hitting US big tech, though.
European schools and universities tend to drill people towards employment and not to take too many risks so starting companies isn't as widespread and considered too bureaucratic.
Then there's the issue of multiple currencies and not every checkout SaaS supporting all of them and their various options of payment (afaik), which limits reach. That's a problem the US, India, China and Russia don't have.
Interesting they start the article using Apple. *In general* Apple has(had?) a reputation for creating smart and useful products which work in surprisingly simple and convenient ways. Apple is dogmatic (and aggressive), but the goal has been _something great_. Drawn into the article, you ask yourself--Why is the EU handcuffing Apple? The article wouldn't have the same momentum if you started with, say, Facebook. The rules described are perverse (ex. Twitter/X's blue checkbox). The imagined outcome is a shocking lack of products which people enjoy freely elsewhere in the world.
Then I started thinking of this through the lens of B2B SaaS software I use in small business every day. The outside of the box makes promises. Sales reps make promises. Demos abound. Contracts are signed. Setup fees are paid. Setup manhours are invested. And then you start using these services and products. Support issues go unresolved--not supported at this time--and go on the 'wish list' void. What you thought of as a solution to your business needs turns to questions of sunk cost. Total frustration resulting from the obviously profit seeking economizing decisions not described on the box--devil is in the details. Who is the more naive? Businesses for having purchased these products or the companies who develop and market them as industry solutions (vs. just another product with hidden cost-benefit determinations)?
Now think of the B2C environment the article is talking about where there are known deceptive practices working to profit on user's personal privacy. I have to laugh. Seems fitting to read about naive regulation against the decisions of manufacturers and developers making abhorrent conditions in the consumer market. I see the same frustrated naive decisions of business owners trying to get out of contracts for bad products and services they have chosen.
I would hope that the EU regulates a silicon-valley style tech market out of existence. That the US is more than happy to let their megacorporations go wild as long as it benefits their economy doesn't mean that others need to do do the same.
Europe is very afraid, too much protectionism for the people. It will solve itself when it most definitely back fires in the form of the actual harm showing up because of it
I wonder if Silicon Valley lobbyists are deliberately sabotaging the Eurozone regulatory environment. Technically there’s no reason why almost all huge Western tech companies have to be located in the US. European cost of labor in this space is much lower, and access to markets is much better, since they’re on the same continent. Their ineptitude in high tech can’t be coincidental
I have noticed all the comments on HN now are pro socialist and pro regulation. I remember a time when they were mostly pro libertarian. What changed? Are these AI generated comments to push a specific viewpoint?
Actually if europe builds tech working well and delivering within regulations and the us sink into ccc capitalism caused civilunrest,europas overregulated tech may be the last man standing and the one trusted by the world for stability.
The most telling feature of the DMA is that it doesn't include Spotify.
Spotify would not be compliant under the DMA for the same reason why the EU has charged Meta with non-compliance:
>Under Article 5(2) of the DMA, gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between designated core platform services and other services, and if a user refuses such consent, they should have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative. Gatekeepers cannot make use of the service or certain functionalities conditional on users’ consent.
- Source: EC statement¹
However the EU doesn't deem there to be any gatekeepers for music.² YouTube has over 80 million music subscribers. To avoid this obvious conflict they label "YouTube" as a video sharing site, deliberately ignoring one of the largest drivers of youtube traffic is music videos. Something which Google themselves advertise.³
If the EU cared about privacy and user harm they'd make the DMA protections apply to every business, not just big foreign ones.
Spotify's ads website actually brags about how it targets and tracks users and the various 3rd party data companies they partner with to extend that beyond Spotify.⁴
It's clear as day that the EU doesn't care about user harm or privacy, they just want that money for themselves. A view that is buttressed by what they're trying to do to encrypted chat communications.
I note this because they're constantly lying that their goals are for the protection of users, when their actions send a different message.
Here's the direct Twitter quote from Thierry Breton regarding the charge against Meta:
The #DMA is here to give back users the power to decide over their #data #Meta has forced millions of users across EU into a binary choice : “pay or consent”. In our preliminary conclusion this is a breach of the DMA. Today we take an important step to ensure Meta complies.
Meanwhile Spotify, all data brokers and any other non-DMA'd companies can take and exchange private user data. I believe the rule should apply to all companies because I don't see the point of "protecting" users from a handful of companies when that is a drop in the ocean of data collectors.
He also makes strange bed fellows, such as frequently advocating for Fortnite, the game title which the FTC found to be deliberately tricking children into unwanted purchases, then killing their Fornite accounts in retaliation should they obtain a refund.¹
If there is one thing we need to be afraid of, it is, that we don't regulate tech giants enough. That they can continue to exploit people. Maybe also, that GDPR continues to be violated by 90% of companies, because they think they will get away with it.
The core issue with the DMA is that there is no kind of pre-vetting or assurances available. This is combined with a very wide set of interpretations from a vague set of texts. We've already seen the DMA being waged against a scenario which Margrethe Vestager¹ herself had originally stated would be an ideal outcome of the DMA.²
When 10% of global revenue is on the line it makes adequate sense to tread carefully with EU releases until there is some legal precedent. (And 20% if the EU finds that compliance isn't being met.)
Margrethe Vestager has stated that withholding features is proof of anti-competitive behaviour. Such a statement would be hilarious if it wasn't so obviously preordained, and patently tone-deaf from the consequences of her own statements.
So what's the end game for the EU? In theory this should allow local and small competitors to fill the void since they're not beholden to the DMA. My expectation is that it'll just be the EU perpetually several steps behind the rest of the world and some types of tech involvement only available via US-based purchases/import basis.
Normally I wouldn't upvote a reply like this, but here in the US I got this one instead:
> There appears to be a technical issue with your browser
> This issue is preventing our website from loading properly. Please review the following troubleshooting tips or contact us at support@foreignpolicy.com.
I had to disable Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection in order to proceed. This is the first time since that feature was rolled out that I've had to remember where they put that disable switch.
EDIT: This isn't just a generic error handler, there's a specific piece of code that detects if their analytics provider loaded or not and shows that message if it didn't load. More details here:
// The tinypass.min.js script was blocked due to a browser content filter
console.log('Piano Script was blocked');
// Show error modal to user
FP.Utils.Piano.showBrowserCompatibilityErrorModal();
Looks like the code comes from their analytics provider: https://piano.io/
While adtech may be the most profitable part of tech industry, it's by far not the only part. Everything from advanced electronics to genomics to super-strong materials to reusable spacecraft is the "technology sector", and its parts are tightly intertwined.
The Human Brain Project's final 3 year period could have actually delivered a platform for actually modeling real human brain data, and GDPR totally blew that possibility out of the water: no one had the budget to take on the legal risk, and everything was finished up with synthetic/augmented datasets or done "locally".
our colleagues in the US and China are chuckling, so we'll just move our science there.
It's not like europe has any viable economic future left anyways. They've regulated, taxed and sanctioned their own industries out of existence and tourism is an excessively poor substitute economically. Good luck having high-tech industry or market without domestic support for it.
Pretty much only thing Europe is consistently producing nowadays is new legislations (EU and national, which are enforced incoherently and at the times contradictory)
Quite frankly I would prefer no tech industry over today's large, unregulated, monopolistic and aggressive tech industry. I feel like my life has not significantly improved at all relative to the enormous growth of the US tech industry in the last ten years, I'm no happier today than I was back then. Almost all of the gains have gone to a concentrated elite that I am not part of. Lately I've been looking at my phone and devices and other tech toys and asking "was any of this worth it?".
Foreign Policy is pearl-clutching because they've seen what actually enforced antitrust law looks like for the first time since Borke and Reagan ratfucked it.
The thing is, the tech business is uniquely conducive to generating monopolies, for a handful of reasons. The biggest being we're a copyright industry. Congress made the mistake of putting software under the same legal framework as Mickey Mouse, so the monopoly tech companies have over interoperability is government granted, has little bounds on its power, and lasts forever. And when tech and creative industries got together to enforce those legal rights through software, we got DMCA 1201, an awful law that gives anyone with a valid copyright veto rights over technological progress. The only way you get shit done in the tech industry is to get acquired so that you have enough market power to license and collaborate.
Outside of copyright we have online services firms like Google and Facebook, who operate primarily through surveillance capitalism. In prior media landscapes, if you wanted to sell to New York Times readers, you had to buy inventory in the Times. Today, you ask Google and Facebook to put ads on anyone who went on nytimes.com in the past week, which is just as lucrative for the ad buyer but Google and Facebook can pay the other sites less than what an actual NYT ad would command. Targeted advertising moves money away from a diverse and distributed group of publishers towards a pair of ad networks who know exactly everything about everyone at all times.
Facebook absolutely could be 'paid for' through nontargeted ads, but it makes Facebook a far less valuable business if they can't siphon data off you and sell it to other companies. Hell, Apple already proved this: iOS 14 moved ad tracking to opt-in[0], so nobody opted in, and Facebook had a revenue hit.
Europe is not inhospitable to tech, but it is inhospitable to tech monopolization, which is predominantly how American firms operate. And to be honest, I don't think Europe is wrong to do this. In fact, I want America's government to start doing the same thing. I want a government that acts less like a rubber stamp for a handful of megacorporations and more like the villains in an Ayn Rand novel.
Do you want to see what the alternative is? Simple: the end of democracy. Trump was just a preview. Democracy is not a given, it requires distributed political power, which requires distributed wealth and economic power. If a handful of firms can centralize economic power to themselves, then they become the economy, and they can start pulling the strings politically. We already saw this with oil in the 70s, but basically every American industry works this way. The only vestige of democracy left is that sometimes industries have conflicting economic interests and that sometimes the working class hurls an orange brick through everyone's windows.
[0] Unless you're Apple, who can still track you. Related note: Google is basically being forced to keep third-party cookies in Chrome because they dragged their feet on removing them for far too long.
Short of the EU directly designing products there's always going to be ambiguity. Most of the "controversy" over GDPR and DMA appears to be completely artificial and caused by malicious compliance.
Or consider the recent charges the EU levied against X. Under Elon Musk’s ownership, anyone can now purchase a blue check with a paid subscription, whereas blue checks were previously reserved for notable figures. EU regulators singled out the new system for blue checks as a deceptive business practice that violates the bloc’s Digital Services Act.
What are they thinking?? The blue check mark is supposed to mean verified. They changed it to simply mean paid subscription. They took a symbol of trust and utterly ripped out the trust part. I don't care how much you publicize it, that's not acceptable.
Would he be ok with my going and purchasing a SSL certificate for www.x.com???
Don't be naive. It was never a symbol of trust. At most it was a symbol of prominence or notability as decided by a biased, unaccountable group of Twitter employees. Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies.
The new X Community Notes system is far superior for establishing trust.
Fundamentally just because a software feature worked a certain way at one time doesn't create an obligation for tech companies to keep it working the same way. Whether you consider that acceptable is entirely irrelevant.
> Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies.
So? The point of the old blue checkmark wasn't to assure me that what the account said was true. It was to provide some assurance that the account was really the account of the prominent or notable person with that name.
Nah, it was never a symbol of trust in identity. A lot of those accounts were actually managed by social media staff, not by the "verified" people themselves. It was always just a meaningless vanity mark.
>Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies.
There are always going to be misinformation. It's crazy to think a company or any committee can determine these for us though. It's not even logical yet alone practical. then you need to determine whether said entity made any judgment errors in assessing a person or claim. Those who demand centralized 'truth' authorities are useful idiots for power seeking authoritarians.
It's not a certificate, it's a blue mark on a site that tell's you user is verified through payment. It should never be a symbol of trust, as twitter or anyone can't assess the trustworthiness of individuals :)
>as twitter or anyone can't assess the trustworthiness of individuals
You need to rethink what was being implied. Twitter CAN assess whether or not you can trust that the person that owns the account is who they say they are. That's what the blue checkmark was. It was NOT implying that the person was trustworthy.
The efficacy of bureaucratic destruction is explicit in warfare guidance [0]. We pretend peacetime is different. It’s not.
So among non-EU-dwellers, let’s raise a glass to our fallen competitors and erstwhile comrades. Better than Nordstreaming them, or at least more subtle. Onward, toward a new vassal-state future!
edit: It appears that EU subjects are distraught, or the topic is too raw. Let me know!
https://archive.ph/sLsnW
A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
but they have been trying desperately to stop all competition.
They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
Nobody is against regulation that disfavors large incumbents to support competition instead.
You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
However, virtually every other piece of regulation does the opposite.
Regulation usually gets trotted out after the downside of doing [new innovation] is experienced. This always happens, because doing something new always involves unknown risk. Most people aren't entrepreneurs and hate risk, so they pass regulation, and the market gets locked down so nothing new happens again. Incumbents and their army of lawyers can easily comply or are grandfathered in, and challengers are permanently disadvantaged. That market is officially dead until the next fundamental leap forward in technology.
What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all.
Combine this with a rapidly aging demography in Europe, and I only see this trend increasing. If there's one thing old people hate, it's risk and doing new things. Meanwhile, those same old folks are expecting massive payouts (social benefits) via taxation of the same private sector they're currently kneecapping with red tape. While ironic, those two trends converging aren't great for Europe.
Specifically with AI I don’t want to experience the downside of innovation before we regulate because of how wide spread its use already is, and it’s problems have already become apparent.
For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias. Companies don’t disclose how their models are trained to negate bias or anything like that either and that’s one example I remember off the top of my head
> it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias
I bet they also suffer from other biases that are harder to detect and maybe some biases we can't even imagine and thus control for.
So.....,just like humans?
That's the point though. It's illegal for humans to do things during hiring that are not illegal for AI to do as it stands now (all sorts of discrimination). We want to at least level the playing field.
There’s no exemption from prosecution for racial bias because it was done by an algorithm. If a company uses such an algorithm, AI or not, they will be open to prosecution for it.
The differential nugget is that LLMs and similar tech are auditable. You can audit the models, test for bias etc in a way that scales.
how do you audit the loaded die at the end of all llms?
Are there agreed upon neutral auditors or common processes for auditing models? If not, maybe what we need is (gasp!) some governmental oversight.
Humans can be asked to explain their decissions and personally take accountability for them. Even if AI processes were less biased, using them introduces the opacity of relying on models that simply can't be fully intuited or explained. For life-altering decisions, merely performing better than a human is not the benchmark.
Kind of like humans in that regard
Except being able to process 1e9 more applications, thus massively more biased and discriminatory.
there maybe better examples of why AI biases provide deep systemic problems but: CV screening? are contemporary LLM really worse that previous screening tech and processes?
I think a worse feature for them to have is consistency. Imagine being someone that has fallen through the cracks of software a significant number of employers are using... Basically soft-locked out of employment with no recourse.
I'd argue consistency in discrimination is easier because it makes it easier to detect and account for.
A range of different people interviewing are going to be alot harder to pin down.
Discrimination in this sense is a statistical property. If Jimbob gets rejected everywhere as an individual it isn't really discrimination but that doesn't mean it isn't an issue.
You can combat bias in a team of people, but in LLM you may not even know it exists.
Isn't not knowing that bias exists just the same problem that the average HR department has? You solve that by educating people about biases. If anything that should be easier with LLMs because you're not asking people to alter their sense of self ("I wouldn't do that!"), you're just informing them of technical limitations.
I don’t understand your argument. The whole purpose of AI-driven recruitment is to reduce human effort by doing some work for them. If AI due to existing bias reduces diversity in your pool of candidates, what can you do with it? You either do not notice the bias and just think that those people are indeed the best fit, you willingly accept the bias („But it reduces our hiring costs! We deal with diversity later, when this technology matures!“), or you go to see the unfiltered stream and put such an amount of work into it that makes AI useless. HR departments are not the people who will build their own solution, they will buy it from a third party and they won’t have control over or the budget for the fine-tuning.
How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantity?
This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem.
Just because you graduated from a CS program doesn't mean you will always write bug free code using the ideal algorithm and design pattern.
But you know what you should be striving for, can more readily identify issues, and maybe sometimes you actually are perfect.
> This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem.
I feel like it's really the opposite.
There is a major problem with using AI to screen CVs, which is that AI is bad at screening CVs. It excludes good candidates and offers mediocre ones, and opens up a bunch of hacks the equivalent of black hat SEO, which gives an undesired advantage to people inclined to dirty tricks.
But "it's racist" is a political hot button, so before people can start to point that out, someone scrambles to push the hot button and suck all the oxygen out of the room. Then the purveyors of snake oil can munge the algorithm until it passes the naive oversimplified racial bias test someone made up (probably making it even worse at its intended purpose), and then claim "the problem" is solved, as if that was the main and only problem.
They send resumes with the same accomplishments and names that indicate race and observe the relative degrees of acceptance.
Everytime they do this test, considerable bias is found to still exist.
Still using resumes, have an ai interview for knowledge and communication skill.
Like many others, we've built a product to do this.
I think it gives a much higher signal on candidates than a resume, and is more "blind" in terms of bias than a human.
It's based on voice messages. Open to all here if anyone wants to take it for a spin. https://candit.net
How do you get an unbiased evaluation of someone with an accent that differs from your training set? It took about a decade for my friends with Indian English accents to be able to use voice controls in luxury cars. And honestly young people from India have a much more American accent than my generation.
remove names then. problem solved.
There are still plenty of proxies that can amount to the same thing. Not a lot of white graduates of HBCUs, for instance. Are we removing the names of all schools, too?
if you dont want to favor ivy leagues that would be the next thing to remove yes
It‘s 2024. There are decades or research with a lot of data, there exist best practices and products that help combating the bias. The toolkit available to HRs is rich and there’s plenty of things that work. E.g. I have absolutely no problem hiring women in tech roles, because I simply adjusted my process. I heard complaints from other engineering leaders that they want to increase diversity but struggle to find candidates: they do not realize that they have bias in job descriptions, they apply same screening criteria and do the post-interview evaluation the same way regardless of candidate gender or background. Many people can do the job, but they communicate it differently and it is important to account for that when you see the CV or talk to them.
of course you can know it exists. you just need to observe inputs and outputs and compare with precious non LLM ways.
You do not understand how HR works then. They are not LLM researchers and just apply the available toolkit, e.g. organizing regular training for hiring managers. When they buy AI-driven solution from a third party, they have no tools neither to detect if it’s just a statistical fluctuation or there’s a bias they need to find a workaround for, nor to act on this information in a cost-efficient way. Most likely they won‘t even have enough data to reach any statistical significance. The vendor in theory could do it, but most of them are startups now and they do not have diversity in their OKRs, at least not now. It’s not the UVP of their product.
It's almost guaranteed there are people trying to sell an AI version of Robodebt right now to the Australian government, even though the last (non-AI) version of it was an absolute cluster fuck:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme
Other governments around the world have done similar (non-AI) things in the past with similar terrible results. They'll likely try an AI version of things too in the near future, just because "AI" apparently solves all the problems. Ugh.
Of course they could be. A company that doesn't want a racial bias won't intentionally filter on names, but might accidentally deploy an LLM that can discern race from name.
The humans will do it unconsciously if they can see the names.
It is like orchestras used to use auditions where the judges could see the people; when they went to auditions where they couldn't see the people, the number of women being hired went right up.
A human might, but a dumb filter wouldn't.
See, this is the problem with just deciding to invent your own facts.
There is a famous study on this topic, usually presented in much the way you describe. But usually people are more careful not to lie about the results. The rate of women being hired went down, not up. The "success" for women was contained to advancement through particular audition rounds.
https://archive.is/xmvp2
The original paper is not exactly a model of investigative integrity:
>> Women are about 5 percentage points more likely to be hired than are men in a completely blind audition, although the effect is not statistically significant. The effect is nil, however, when there is a semifinal round, perhaps as a result of the unusual effects of the semifinal round.
Are you citing a weird racist blogger on medium that disagrees with the stated conclusion of the paper? Is that how science works now?
Abstract from the original paper:
> A change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras--adoption of "blind" auditions with a "screen" to conceal the candidate's identity from the jury--provides a test for sex-biased hiring. Using data from actual auditions, in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired. Although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction, the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.90.4.715
You'll get more accurate results if you look at the paper's conclusion, not the abstract.
The whole point is that the paper doesn't actually support any of the claims, which it's fairly open about -- that's those "large standard errors".
They did not in fact find that the screen increases the probability of a woman being hired. They found that it increased the probability of a woman passing the final round of auditions. There's more than one round.
It's up to you, I guess, whether you want to follow the original authors to their conclusion that the semifinal round is fundamentally unlike the final and quarterfinal audition rounds. I wouldn't.
The paper is meritless, but even it's actual worthless findings aren't in the direction that people like to claim. Here's Andrew Gelman: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-...
> First, some equivocal results:
> This is not very impressive at all. Some fine words but the punchline seems to be that the data are too noisy to form any strong conclusions.
> Huh? Nothing’s statistically significant but the estimates “show that the existence of any blind round makes a difference”? I might well be missing something here. In any case, you shouldn’t be running around making a big deal about point estimates when the standard errors are so large. I don’t hold it against the authors—this was 2000, after all, the stone age in our understanding of statistical errors. But from a modern perspective we can see the problem.
> Anyway, where’s the damn “50 percent” and the “increases by severalfold”? I can’t find it. It’s gotta be somewhere in that paper, I just can’t figure out where.
> Pallesen’s objections are strongly stated but they’re not new. Indeed, the authors of the original paper were pretty clear about its limitations. The evidence was all in plain sight.
> For example, here’s a careful take posted by BS King in 2017:
>> Okay, so first up, the most often reported findings: blind auditions appear to account for about 25% of the increase in women in major orchestras. . . . [But] One of the more interesting findings of the study that I have not often seen reported: overall, women did worse in the blinded auditions. . . .
If you read the paper, you'd notice the problems.
But you might not want to run the risk of, um, "racism" that seems to be inherent in reading a paper on the impact of blind auditions on women.
The racism was more the guy having very strong opinions about black people's IQs and immigrants destroying western civilization on twitter (plus being against COVID vaccines and human rights and other stuff that suggest you are not a level-headed truth seeker).
Quote from your second, more respectable, link:
> Pallesen’s objections are strongly stated but they’re not new. Indeed, the authors of the original paper were pretty clear about its limitations.
When I read the original papers, like your second link, I find a level headed paper working with limited data they had available.
I would suggest that the annoyance is with pop science retelling at best, or just a quack selling anger online to fuel his weird obsessions at worst.
You realize this is a huge problem right? Even if that was my only complaint (it’s not!) that is 100% not acceptable. If it’s doing it with CVs it’s doing it with other things in other scenarios.
Another is that a health insurance company was caught using AI to determine if a claim should be denied or not which lead to a scandal as a whistleblower leaked the practice, as it was wrought with errors and ethical concerns
> For example, it’s being used to job screen applicants even though we have proven that AI models still suffer from thing like racial bias.
Can't we just say racism is illegal, and if a company uses an AI to be racist, they get fined the same way they would if they were racist the old fashioned way?
Look up the Dutch tax return scandal where the Dutch tax arm of the government (‘IRS’) used machine learning to identify fraud but it turned out to be very racially biased and it uprooted thousands of families with years of financial struggles and legal battles.
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_sca...
or the royal mail horizon scandal. although the software not called an "ai" afair
"Just", no.
Fence at the top of a cliff (make sure the AI is unbiased and can be fixed when it turns out it is) vs. Ambulance at the bottom (letting people sue if they think the machine is wrong).
When you make specific methods illegal, it tends to lead to loopholes. If you just make the result illegal then nobody can try and get around it by using a slightly different system design.
Also true.
But which way around does that apply? Racism is a concrete example of what AI may incorrectly automate, it's not the only bias that AI can have — any correlation in the training data will be learned, but not necessarily causation — and the goal of these laws is to require the machines to be accurate, unbiased, up to date, respectful of privacy etc., with "not racist" as merely one example of why that matters.
(Also the existing laws on racial equality were not removed by GDPR; to the previous metaphor, the fence being better doesn't mean you can fire the ambulance service).
I would argue that we already have experienced enough of the downsides of "AI" that there is reasonable cause for concern.
The implications of deepfakes and similar frauds alone are potentially devastating to informed political debate in democracies, safe and effective dissemination of public health information in emergencies, and plenty of other realistic and important trust scenarios.
The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such. Again it is not hard to imagine a near future where chat-based systems have essentially displaced search engines and social media as the default ways to find information online but then provide bad advice on legal, financial, or health matters.
There is a second serious concern with LLMs and related technologies, which is that they could very rapidly shift the balance from compensating those who produce useful creative content to compensating those who run the summary service. It's never healthy when your economics don't line up with rewarding the people doing the real work and we've already seen plenty of relevant stories about the AI training data gold rush.
Next we get to computer vision and its applications in fields like self-driving vehicles. Again we've already seen plenty of examples where cars have been tricked into stopping suddenly or otherwise misbehaving when for example someone projected a fake road sign onto the road in front of them.
Again there is a second serious concern with systems like computer vision, audio classification, and natural language processing and that is privacy. It's bad enough that we all carry devices with cameras and microphones around with us almost 24/7 these days and the people whose software runs on those devices seem quite willing to spy on us and upload data to the mothership with little or any warning. That alone has unprecedented implications for privacy and associated risks. With the increased ability to automatically interpret raw video and audio footage - with varying degrees of accuracy and bias of course - that amplifies the potential dangers of these systems greatly.
There is enormous potential in modern AI/ML techniques for everything from helping everyday personal research to saving lives through commoditising sophisticated analysis of medical scans. But that doesn't mean there aren't also risks we already know about at the same kind of scale - even without all the doomsday hypotheticals where suddenly a malicious AGI emerges that takes over the universe.
Let’s stipulate that all you said was true. How is EU regulation suppose to prevent that? Are they going to stop open source models from being used in Europe? Are they going to stop foreign adversaries from using deep fakes?
It’s just like trying to restrict DVD encryption keys from being published or 128 bit encryption from being “exported” in browsers back in the car.
> The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such. Again it is not hard to imagine a near future where chat-based systems have essentially displaced search engines and social media as the default ways to find information online but then provide bad advice on legal, financial, or health matters.
I think a bigger concern is LLMs providing deliberately biased results and stating them as fact.
The issue is, the regulations are tailored to address any of those concerns, some of which may not even be solvable through regulation at all:
> The implications of deepfakes and similar frauds alone are potentially devastating to informed political debate in democracies, safe and effective dissemination of public health information in emergencies, and plenty of other realistic and important trust scenarios.
The horse is out of the barn on this one. You can't stop this by regulating anything because the models necessary to do it have already been released, would continue to be released from other countries, and one of the primary purveyors of this sort of thing will be adversarial nation states, who obviously aren't going to comply with any laws you pass.
> The implications of LLMs are potentially wonderful in terms of providing better access to information for everyone but we already know that they are also capable of making serious mistakes or even generating complete nonsense that a non-expert user might not recognise as such.
Which is why AI summaries are largely a gimmick and people are figuring that out.
> they could very rapidly shift the balance from compensating those who produce useful creative content to compensating those who run the summary service.
This already happened quite some time ago with search engines. People want the answer, not a paywall, so the search engine gives them an unpaywalled site with the answer (and gets an ad impression from it) and the paywalled sites lose to the ad-supported ones. But then the operations that can't survive on ad impressions lose out, and even the ad-supported ones doing original research lose out because you can't copyright facts so anyone paying to do original reporting will see their stories covered by every other outlet that doesn't. Then the most popular news sites become scummy lowest-common-denominator partisan hacks beholden to advertisers with spam-laden websites to match.
Fixing this would require something along the lines of the old model NPR used to use, i.e. "free" yet listener-supported reporting, but they stopped doing that and became a partisan outlet supported by advertising. The closest contemporary thing seems to be the Substacks where most of the stories are free to read but you're encouraged to subscribe and the subscriptions are enough to sustain the content creation.
The AI thing doesn't change this much if at all. A cheap AI summary isn't going to displace original content any more than a cheap rephrasing by a competing outlet does already.
> Next we get to computer vision and its applications in fields like self-driving vehicles. Again we've already seen plenty of examples where cars have been tricked into stopping suddenly or otherwise misbehaving when for example someone projected a fake road sign onto the road in front of them.
But where does the regulation come in here? When it does that it's obviously a bug and the manufacturers already have the incentive to want to fix it because their customers won't like it. And there are already laws specifying what happens when a carmaker sells a car that doesn't behave right.
> Again there is a second serious concern with systems like computer vision, audio classification, and natural language processing and that is privacy.
Which is really almost nothing to do with AI and the main solutions to it are giving people alternatives to the existing systems that invade their privacy. Indeed, the hard problem there is replacing existing "free" systems with something that doesn't put more costs on people, when the existing systems are "free" specifically because of that privacy invasion.
If a government wants to do something about this, fund the development of real free software that replaces the proprietary services hoovering up everyone's data.
How do you know the race?
I've seen some places collect that information which is wild. But you can decline.
> it’s being used to job screen applicants
Any idea what software is being used ?
Just an example:
https://hirebee.ai/
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Problem is most innovation is in using existing models in new ways. You can't expect these most people to train their own models.
Regulating it the way you say just means "zero innovation!".
> What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass potential market killing regulation
This is entirely because the experts and fundraisers in the field promoted the technology as existentially and societally dangerous before they even got it to do anything commercially viable. "This has so much potential that it could destroy us all!" was the sales pitch!
Of course regulators are going to take that seriously, as there's nobody of influence vested in trying to show them otherwise.
OpenAI was smart enough to build a moat for itself in Europe.
The EU was dumb enough to dig it for them.
What is the value that OpenAI is bringing to the US right now?
Mostly its being used to generate text that fit a query.
That's not true, it's also very useful when trying to defraud and scam people en-masse!
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given that text is used everywhere, don't you think you might be undervaluing how valuable it is to "generate text that fit a query"?
What value does a google search provide?
The ability to target adverts more effectively.
Modern Google search? Very little
We’ve saved a few million dollars with it at my job.
It quickly generates BS text that costs billions of man hours to generate by people doing BS jobs, which could be doing something more useful, such as childcare.
I'm using it to quickly localize our application into different languages, such as Arabic. German took like a few hours to get from non existing to 100% functional. Arabic was sketchy with Arabic mixed with French text, now it's 100% Arabic.
> which could be doing something more useful, such as childcare.
Ok but what is your plan for letting people who lost their jobs to AI to do more meaningful things? Because unless there are bigger societal changes all it means those people will not have to find jobs that are even more bullshit.
I think they're going to do the same jobs they are doing now, but using AI instead which should probably reduce the amount of BS they have to deal with everyday. For instance some of the low pay work companies would use freelancers for, like processing huge amounts of data, manually transcribing text from documents, or content moderation.
how?
> This is entirely because the experts and fundraisers in the field promoted the technology as existentially and societally dangerous
> regulators...take that seriously
That's how.
The experts did that specifically so we would regulate barriers to entry into existence. It isn't a mew trick. Regulatory capture takes many guises, "think of the": Children, Consumers, ... Under booked hotels we could put you in.
>> Most people aren't entrepreneurs and hate risk, so they pass regulation, and the market gets locked down so nothing new happens again
I think that the bigger issue is that the people who suffer when the risk goes bad and the people who benefit when the risk goes well usually aren't the same people.
"before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all."
----
Let me laugh out loud. Those, who govern these companies know 10 years ahead how and what will happen. Bigdiks higher up has 10-20 year plans. And people talk about "before we had a chance to experience the upsides and the downsides". Get a grip on reality.
Yea, so wildly out of touch with reality. The governing elite are wizards of prediction!
Sundar at Google knew LLMs were going to be huge after Google invented them, so that’s why they were first to market and…
Oops. Maybe not?
While it might make risk-averse types feel good to imagine the people in charge are all-knowing (see religion), the truth is the world is a chaotic and reflexive system of unpredictability. Scary, I know!
I think you're the one who needs to get a grip on reality. There's no cabal of businessmen playing the world like a puppet. They don't have some secret knowledge of the future. They're often just as stupid as the rest of us, and prone to the same biases. If they were as prescient as you think, I assume companies would simply never fail - as others point out, they often miss things or make mistakes.
zzzzzz who said this?
What?
Google didn’t know in 2006 where cell phones were headed. If they did, they wouldn’t have made an Android as a BlackBerry clone.
No company can accurately predict where technology is headed a decade from now.
oakay
You ever read the first edition of Bill Gates “The Road Ahead” where he didn’t even mention the Internet?
Google thinking the future of phones were BlackBerry clones?
Palm CEO “The PC guys aren’t just going to walk in a figure this thing out” referring to the then rumored iPhone.
Predigested bs for people to ruminate about. Rather watch Tom & Jerry, that has much more profound thoughts.
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
I'm against the way it's being applied to Apple. I don't think that the government should dictate that consumers aren't allowed to choose a platform that's a locked down walled garden if that's what they want.
We have platforms that aren't walled gardens (Android) that many of us happily use (myself included), and Apple shouldn't have to become something that it didn't set out to be just because a few other big tech companies feel stifled by Apple's rules.
Going out of your way on the internet to defend apples right to take 30% of every sale on the app store is insane to me.
Just how can you not see there's probably 20% of every purchase sitting on the table if competition was ever allowed to occur.
Not to mention the simple freedom of choosing what you want to install yourself, and not just what Apple allows you to...
> Not to mention the simple freedom of choosing what you want to install yourself, and not just what Apple allows you to...
I have the freedom to install whatever I want. I get that freedom by using Linux and Android. I choose to have that freedom by selecting platforms that provide it.
Many HN users seem to want all the benefits of Apple's approach with none of the downsides, and it doesn't work that way. Apple is what it is because it has a tight, coherent strategy, and forcing Apple to change that strategy will have knock-on effects that most Apple users won't like.
If you value freedom to install whatever you want, you chose the wrong ecosystem, and hijacking the ecosystem to satisfy your values is unfair to the vast majority of customers whose values already align with the ecosystem's.
The Apple are trying to hijack the ecosystem of free competition and open market.
Apple is providing an entry into the free smartphone market that is a closed system with a highly controlled and curated software ecosystem. That is their product, that's what they offer.
It's no different than Nintendo's entry into the game console market being what it is—some people will choose that experience because what it offers is valuable for them.
For myself, I'm an Android phone user and a PC gamer, but just because I wouldn't choose those experiences for myself doesn't mean I begrudge their existence.
There is a strong difference here: Smartphones are kind of essential to our modern life, game consoles aren't.
The DMA does not allow you to install what you want.
It does not apply to consoles.
It does make it possible for companies to keep some more money, but most importantly it allows them to sidestep the protections for my privacy that I pay a premium to Apple for.
A real DMA would force facebook, twitter, etc to open up for alternative clients. That would bring competition in and benefit the end user.
Not that whatever digital slot machnine company is allowed to keep a higher percentage of the diamonds they sell you in their free to pay game.
WhatsApp and Facebook are forced to accept third party clients by these laws. So your concerns are addressed:)
it’s not 30%— in almost all cases it’s 15%. and by all means, if you think all the services and support for payments and returns and refunds and customer support are doable in 3%, you can have apple not do that too.
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Apple needs to get out of the infrastructure business if they want to play by their own rules. They aren't selling Gameboys and washing machines, they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices. That needs to be regulated and the consumer needs to have the final say, not Apple.
> they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices.
To be clear, I think privacy laws like GDPR absolutely have a place for consumer protection.
I just don't think the DMA does. Watching how the DMA applies to Apple, it feels far less about consumer protection than it does about businesses, and that's what makes me uncomfortable. The EU is in this case listening to complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart and ignoring the very real damage that their actions could do to consumer protection.
The Apple App Store protects users from myriad abuses by myriad bad companies. The EU wants Apple to build a blessed, paved off-ramp that companies can strongly encourage prospective customers to use that brings them deeper into the manipulative control of those companies.
> complaints from a bunch of other businesses who do not have consumer interests at heart
Apple (and other big tech companies) locking the competition out of the market, or buying them, hurts consumers. It robs them of other innovative choices.
Having more choices and interoperability is generally good for consumers.
If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you?
To clarify: I don't use Apple. I chose their competitors instead because I like the features offered by the competition better.
> If you stick with the Apple defaults how does this hurt you?
Because people won't be able to stick with the defaults. One of the first dominoes to fall if the EU gets its wishlist will be Facebook, which will put a version of its app that wouldn't pass Apple's review out through unofficial channels and strongly encourage or force users to switch to it. Once Facebook has paved the way many other companies that are similarly inclined to abuse their users will follow.
A walled garden with a wide-open back door is no walled garden at all, and the many Apple users who liked the garden are going to be cranky when they realize what tech lobbyists have done in the EU.
Interesting. I had thought of the garden walls as being in the way of users, based on my personal experience, but you bring up the point that the walls can also be in the way of nefarious companies. I assume both can be true.
And perhaps the legal system sees some of these garden wall as protecting Apple, falling under anti-trust, like the 30% markups on all financial transactions?
You mentioned malicious versions of the Facebook app that do an end-run around Apple's review. Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?
> Maybe the EU is trying to cover this with new laws like the GDPR and DMA, making malicious app behaviour illegal. Might that not be better, protecting all users regardless of platform?
If I thought the EU could actually execute on that? Maybe. But I know that Apple executes on it, and the fallout from the gdpr doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the EU knows how to regulate tech in a way that achieves desired outcomes and doesn't just lead to the same behavior as before with malicious compliance stamped on top.
> The Apple App Store protects users from myriad abuses by myriad bad companies.
Does it? Are the $50/month subscription flashlight apps gone?
This is just a form of 'think of the children'. Think of all those evil hackers waiting around the corner for the poor unsuspecting iPhone users.
> Think of all those evil hackers waiting around the corner for the poor unsuspecting iPhone users.
I'm not talking "evil hackers". I'm talking about Facebook just for a start. Once they pave the way and teach users how to use the off-ramp (or else not be able to use Facebook!) they'll be followed by dozens of smaller abusive companies that are eager to pass by Apple's review requirements.
I'm far less concerned about software vulnerabilities than I am about the companies that Apple's business policies currently keep in check.
A friend recently lost his life savings though a hack of a crypto wallet on an Android phone. Phone security isn't trivial.
Crypto comments aside, that could have happened on a Windows desktop too. Yet when MS tried to go walled garden with their store everyone complained. I don't see why Apple should get a free pass.
I guess with the iPhone it was walled from the start so anyone buying one knew what they were getting. I'd be pissed off if they walled gardened my mac. I've got an iPhone and have mixed feelings about the restrictions on it. They can be annoying but on the other hand I have significant investments and more and more banks are insisting you access them via an app and for that I'd probably prioritize security.
On the other hand, an example i've posted before: i want DaisyDisk for my iPhone. It will never be available as long as Apple can censor what's released for their phones.
> consumer needs to have the final say, not Apple.
And consumers spoke, and now other consumers unhappy with those consumers choices, are demanding the deal be changed.
Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority.
But it doesn't have to be, you can simply NOT regulate every damn little thing, especially when there are no victims and you are forbidding a simple trade between two entities who are both willing to engage.
No, developers who want to make money on the Apple Store are not victims. They can develop for Linux and sell apps there if they don't want to pay what Apple wants.
I'm one of them, I'm not supporting Apple or Google and I build everything on the web paying nothing.
I agree, mostly. It is worth noting that until the forced opening of the market occurred, safari was conspicuously lacking in PWA support, especially wasm support. I am a recovering libertarian, and I now see the need for regulation in more places. Largely because of regulatory capture, true, but I don't think anarcho-capitalism works. It just makes lawyers top of the heap instead of warriors (in pure anarchy). Which, when the lawyers command the soldiers, isn't any better.
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Because they can collect more data with a native app. A native app is far better from their perspective, but not from the user's, unless it is something computationally bound that can't handle overhead (mostly games?). The last exception is banking apps. They do a lot of weird stuff to fingerprint your phone too, but in this case the user definitely wants them to.
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Web apps have ways to track users, but users have ways to mitigate this via adblockers and privacy features in their browser. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ exists to help users check their own browser fingerprint.
Full apps on the other hand have many more ways to fingerprint users which aren’t as well known, such as “your free storage, your current volume level (to 3 decimal points) and even your battery level (to 15 decimal points)”. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/23/iphone-...)
Is one conclusively better than the other? I’m not sure, but web tracking and fingerprinting is still much more studied and users have more countermeasures, including using a different device where the user has more control.
There is also a battery status API for web apps
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...
Web audio api
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...
I think flash and actionscript might be a counterexample? People have different standards too. In thebearly days of win3.1 I liked apps that had different widget sets, now anything that doesn't look native is considered garbage. And some people seem to consider rastered fonts equivalent to baby-eating in a professional context. I don't think I have any common axioms or value systems to carry on conversations with them, but I believe they do care, so it is probably just that PWAs are my preference, but no one elses. I prefer the web mattermost to the app for instance.
Flash is actually an example of how bad cross platform frameworks are compared to native.
Despite what Adobe said when the iPhone first came out, there was no way that Flash was ever going to run on the first generation iPhone. It had only 128MB RAM and 400 MHz processor. When Flash finally came to Mobile in late 2010 on Android, it required 1GB RAM and 1Ghz processor. An iPhone with those specs didn’t come out until 2011.
Heck Safari could barely run on the first iPhone, it would do checkerboards until rendering could catch up with the scrolling.
And if you remember Apple’s cross platform Windows apps - iTunes, QuickTime and the short lived Safari, they also looked very bad on Windows.
Both Google and Facebook at different times said they are moving away from cross platform frameworks and web based technologies for iOS to more native software. Google has all but abandoned their cross platform mobile framework.
this argument doesn't work, because you could always argue that the consumer chose this product, and thus its features and practices should be allowed. Apple had it coming for a long time already, one way or another. And Microsoft also will again the way they are going.
Yeah, sure, you could always argue that about anything, but that's not a refutation of this particular argument in this particular situation. Apple's walled garden produces a lot of real benefits for its customers that are part of what make it successful, and dismantling their walled garden is going to harm consumers.
I would never pick an Apple device for myself. I would also never recommend an Android phone to my mother-in-law. I, myself, know to avoid the many Android security holes that exist because it's a relaxed platform. But for my non-technical loved ones, Apple provides a much better experience in large part because it's a walled garden that makes it very difficult to install garbage.
> Apple's walled garden produces a lot of real benefits for its customers that are part of what make it successful, and dismantling their walled garden is going to harm consumers.
What are those benefits, and why would they evaporate if Apple adds an "Install from other sources" toggle? If you want to exclusively benefit from Apple's discernment, keep that toggle off and stay in the walled garden.If the benefits are so great, then surely everyone will choose to stay in the walled garden.
> If the benefits are so great, then surely everyone will choose to stay in the walled garden.
Surely you've seen enough of the free market to know that this is baloney. The instant that the walled garden is gone abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install. And once the big abusive apps have started the trend, the walled garden is effectively gone. Businesses don't choose regulation if they can help it.
The only reason we don't see this with Android and Google Play is because Google hardly has any rules at all about what can go on the Play Store.
> Surely you've seen enough of the free market to know that this is baloney. The instant that the walled garden is gone abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install.
Nah. Users don't grok sideloading.
Even on android where it's always been possible, it's a fringe phenomenon. And every app is on Google Play. In fact it basically killed Huawei in the West not being able to offer it anymore.
The only exception is the epic store but they do it to make a point. Not because it actually works.
First and most importantly: you're imagining a sideloading method that is much less first-class than that the EU wants to impose.
Even aside from that, you can't compare the Play Store to Apple's because the Play Store is a thousand times less restrictive. There's a reason why people are constantly complaining about the App Store and (aside from Epic) never the Play Store. Apple has a lot of restrictions, and while some of them are there to extract more money most are there to protect their customers.
> First and most importantly: you're imagining a sideloading method that is much less first-class than that the EU wants to impose.
I'm not "imagining" anything. This is the status quo on Android and even setting one switch to "allow installations from this source" (one that already pops up automatically no less!) already freaks users out.
And the EU is fine with this. They didn't specify any technical implementation to Apple so I'm sure they will make it as scary as they can.
> Even aside from that, you can't compare the Play Store to Apple's because the Play Store is a thousand times less restrictive.
Apple has seen a lot of stuff slip by the reviewers too, and it's pretty much a hit and miss based on who you get. Just like with Google.
I'm sure a lot more app providers would love to get out from under Apple's heavy hand but in practice this is just wishful thinking. The tiny amount of friction there is on Android is more than enough for people not to bother.
> There's a reason why people are constantly complaining about the App Store and (aside from Epic) never the Play Store. Apple has a lot of restrictions, and while some of them are there to extract more money most are there to protect their customers.
We'll have to differ in opinion on that. I feel like most of the restrictions are there to protect their cash cow which is the app store.
You mentioned users leaving Apple for Facebook.
Does that change the garden for you? Can't users such as yourself remain in the Apple ecosystem? Do other users leaving affect you? Or Apple? Maybe they won't have as much cash?
Does Apple deserve the extra cash in perpetuity for being the first with the network effect? There might be a lot of better ideas out there, if they were given a chance, like Apple had back before them and Google took over the market.
From my comment (emphasis in the original):
> abusive apps (Facebook et al) will start ushering users away from it into their own, abusive paths as the only way to install
> Do other users leaving affect you?
To clarify, I'm not an Apple user. I use their competitors in all categories because they're not really my style. (Yes, choosing something other than Apple is a choice you can make!)
I'm just someone who feels the need to represent normal Apple users inside the HN bubble.
The path you describe is so realistic.
Facebook will leave the AppStore. Grandma can’t find Facebook anymore on her new iPhone, and will google “how to install Facebook on iPhone”. Thousands of websites will SEO for that, and give instructions (“There will be a popup that says ‘You might install dangerous software. Are you sure?’ Press YES.”) on how to install their AppStore with some Facebook clone/spyware/VPN MITM attack/keyloggers. They will have complete control of grandma’s phone, collect all the data they want. Soon she’ll have a new default browser with 7 toolbars, a new search engine, and be mining crypto on the side.
Still seems more of a "we need the mafia because they prevent you from buying hard drugs" kind of argument. If Facebook is so harmful then we should deal with it directly instead of giving another private company control over what individuals can install and what businesses can or cannot reach half of the population. More to the point whe should require Facebook to allow alternative applications which don't violate your privacy and thus could be on the app store so grandma never has to go searching for the "real" facebook to interact with her friends unless that's something she specifically wants.
The App Store review provides protections which are not a technical protections. Earlier someone talked about the failing of allowing a $50 subscription flashlight app into the store (dunno if they’d be able to find a citation). This was a failing of the expected business controls. There’s nothing technical to even be done to prevent these sorts of abuses.
One example from a while back was banning an internal Facebook enterprise developer account because they were using it to install a VPN onto users devices for the purpose of monitoring user behavior for competitive market analysis. This is not anything that can be prevented by technical controls, and was only able to be published because enterprise profiles can deploy apps outside the store.
Apple wants their customers to be safe. Third party marketplaces take that responsibility and control out of their hands. Apple stopped that VPN abuse immediately upon finding out about it. How long would it take for European regulators to force Facebook to turn off such a self published app of their own accord?
> Earlier someone talked about the failing of allowing a $50 subscription flashlight app into the store (dunno if they’d be able to find a citation). This was a failing of the expected business controls.
How about LassPass, then? That made it onto the AppStore despite being designed to make money and steal credentials.
Maybe not $50/month, though. I love one Apple apologist's remarks on that aspect:
> Instead, the scam LassPass app tries to steer you to creating a “pro” account subscription for $2/month, $10/year, or a $50 lifetime purchase. Those are actually low prices for a scam app — a lot of scammy apps try to charge like $10/week.
Emphasis mine. "Look, I know you got your credentials stolen, but at least you didn't also get scammed out of as much money as some other scammy apps!"
I am unsure your point - are you saying since the business controls are fallible, we should abandon them and have an internet's worth of potential side-loaded LastPass scam apps?
The problem is that having the option of exiting the walled garden kills the garden. As soon as the most important apps aren’t available on the apple App Store any more, everyone will have to exit the garden. You can argue about the pros and cons of that, but you can’t deny that this has an effect on every apple user, not just the ones that choose to exit.
People do have to exit the garden as much as people have to buy apple devices
When the tech support scammer calls your mother, there’s a decent chance it convinces to check that box and install who knows what that backdoors the phone.
If Apple was required to provide root access to all customers this would not prevent anyone from choosing to stay inside their walled garden.
You need app Foo on your phone for work (like Slack, maybe). Foo is in the App Store and worked great on your iPhone but decides they want to install via their own store so they can monetize employees’ data (location, whatever) to make more money. The new store launches, the new app version abuses private APIs, and the App Store version stops working. Your company announces that all employees need to download from the new source. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Sure, neither your company nor Foo should suck, but we all know plenty of companies that don’t care about employees or users.
Game company Bar decides to launch their own store and pull their game - we’ll call it Nortfite - from the App Store so they can add something shady like crypto features. Nortfite is a massive social game that all your friends play and it’s a huge part of your teenage social life. Your only device capable of playing it is your second-hand iPad. Do you really have a choice about staying in the walled garden? Who needs friends anyway, amirite?
Those examples all sound like issues that should be dealth with by appropriate laws instead of hoping that the maffia ends up protecting you from worse criminals.
The question isn't whether anyone could choose to stay inside if they want to, the question is whether I can trust that {insert older relative here} will stay inside the garden and not get tricked by a sketchy website into installing something through the back doors the EU is mandating.
If the opening up of Apple were as difficult to use as getting root on Android is I wouldn't have a problem. But that's not what's being proposed, and any attempts by Apple to make it less than perfectly smooth for someone to exit the walled garden are most likely going to be shot down.
How difficult is it to get root in Android in your world? Getting root on Android comes in a variety of difficulties.
I reckon the peaceful existence of macOS is a counterpoint to this argument.
Are you also for workers being able to choose to live in company towns where they have to spend their incomes at the company store? When lock in and network effects come into play then yes the government should make sure that people have real and not only theoretical choices.
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason. It literally only targets the potential monopolists.
You're commenting on an article doing exactly that. So that was not much of a struggle.
> You'll struggle to find people who are against the Digital Markets Act for this reason
You missed most of the discussions about DMA on HN, I guess. There's always someone ready to say how EU will kill all innovation and make Google/Apple exit the market because they dare to question anything.
> Nobody is against regulation that disfavors large incumbents to support competition instead.
Actually pretty much all EU regulations and especially enforcement of those regulations gets pundits shouting that the EU is only trying to milk US megacorporations.
> However, virtually every other piece of regulation does the opposite.
Not true but even if so not all regulation concerns itself with monopolies. GDPR in particular is about user rights and should therefore apply to everyone, same for similar kinds of regulations. If corporations cannot survive without violating you in every way possible then they should not be allowed to live. If anything is lacking it's enforcement against incumbents.
> What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience both the upside and downside, so the innovation never happens at all.
Good. Not all "innovation" should happen.
> Combine this with a rapidly aging demography in Europe, and I only see this trend increasing. If there's one thing old people hate, it's risk and doing new things.
Again, good. Moving fast and breaking things at societal scale is not a good idea.
Makes no economical sense, but arguably the right response to not only AI, but every thing.
It's not that most people hate risk. It's that individuals whom are harmed by sociopathic individuals that exploit methodologies, techniques, and products to enrich, steal, and harm the population. (When I say that I mean financially, emotionally, socially, physically, etc). To add further insult to injury, defending ones self against these individuals is disproportionately impossible.
Socially: Creating and cultivating a culture that screws up dating.
Emotionally: Filter bubbles, and data analyitics to push proganda and motivate people in directions (cambridge). Additionally subjecting people to material to manipulate.
Stealing: Scooter companies are actively stealing the public space to operate their business (sidewalks), endorsing their users to run over people on the sidewalk (also making it difficult to identify the individual), etc.
Privacy wise: Companies are forcing you to give up your private info to live. (Retail tracking to individuals.. even accross multiple companies [see "The Retail Equation"])
I'm not insulting people who hate risk. For the stability and health of society, it's good that most people are that way. We need people who shake their fist at anything new or different to keep us sane (people like you it seems, from your laundry list of frustrations).
But we also need the people who do like risk taking and new stuff, and there's less of them. So innovation is much more of a fragile thing than stasis.
Even if you think society and human life in general can't be improved in any way, to just maintain the way things are now...will require many new innovations and people taking risk on new stuff. Your welfare, lifestyle, and security depends on the risk taking of others. So we should probably be careful about making it too hard for the folks taking risk (it's already hard enough).
Trust me, the risk-averse folks will still be the dominant voice either way. Even this forum--which started as a community of risk-taking entrepreneurial types--is now dominated by the risk-averse majority.
In theory I agree with your argument, but in practice I find it’s very often the AI and other dominant companies — often tech — that are at the root of the risk averse landscape you observe. To put it simply, major tech companies are among the greatest driving forces of that landscape because they would prefer to operate without any competition.
My point being “letting the risk adverse take risks” is not the same thing as “don’t rein in VC backed attempted monopolies”. You can do the latter without doing the former (theoretically of course; in practice doing the latter is impossible without a substantive change in the underlying incentive structure of current global society).
> But we also need the people who do like risk taking and new stuff
The issue with that is that risk is usually not borne by the people getting rewards.
> Stealing: Scooter companies are actively stealing the public space to operate their business (sidewalks), endorsing their users to run over people on the sidewalk (also making it difficult to identify the individual), etc.
OMG I cannot wait for these companies to be fined out of existence.
How can you be allowed to have a business model that relies on people leaving your trash wherever they feel like it.
I have no idea. Chicago had a limited period in which the scooters could operate a few years back. I saw someone that had an experience where the scooter wasn't picked up more than a week past the end. I contacted the alderman to get streets and sanitation to remove the vehcile.
What I got was: The alderman employee tried to get this cleared with the scooter company rather than towed.
I was blown away.. if I parked in front of the Division blue line station my car would be fined, towed, charged with storage fees, potentially vandalized within an hour. Them? Oh the gov employee will do CS for them. I filed a complaint with the city ombudsman and later found out she was removed.
>Regulation usually gets trotted out after the downside of doing [new innovation] is experienced. This always happens, because doing something new always involves unknown risk.
I would challenge "unknown"-- it very well seems like the risks have been known every time, they just don't give a shit
>What's different now though, is the hysteria over AI is leading regulators to pass this incumbent-cementing regulation before we've even had a chance to experience ...
Sounds good to me? It's sociopathic and opportunistic to want to risk major socioeconomic issues for the mere chance of a corporate "innovation"
The move-fast-and-break-things mentality of many tech companies has absolutely killed people.
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/parents-kids-died-after-dr...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/01/business/instagram-suicid...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electric-scooter-electric-bike-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-sues-airbnb-19-m...
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/rohingya-seek-reparat...
https://www.thedrive.com/news/40234/no-one-was-driving-in-te...
"full-self-driving doesn't self drive", "wear a helmet on the bird scooter", and "safety is our first priority at facebook" is the 21st century version of "don't get roundup all over yourself"
The hard part about reality is the opposite is also true. Cancer patients have gatekept access to cutting edge drugs, etc.
I believe your worldview is correct and also incomplete. It’s really fucking hard to come up with general rules that cannot be gamed.
I wasn't attempting to express my entire worldview in a comment. Yes, technology often brings both risk and reward. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize/criticize/discuss those risks.
My perspective is that framing them as “unrecognized risks” is wrongs. We are mostly engineers - what happened to “tradeoffs”?
Most of the issues in my examples above, I think are primarily created by business/marketing, not by engineers making engineering tradeoffs.
e.g FSD is mostly fine as a technology but lives would likely be saved if it were marketed more responsibly
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Not all progress is good progress. Adding lead to paint was progress at the time. Same with using asbestos for insulation. We’ve since decided that the costs outweigh the benefits there.
Regulators should and do weigh both the harm and good of restricting the usage of new technology. The fact that they don’t always get it right isn’t a reason to stop regulation altogether.
> Regulators should and do weigh both the harm and good of restricting the usage of new technology. The fact that they don’t always get it right isn’t a reason to stop regulation altogether.
That might or might not be wrong, but is certainly a typically European perspective. The U.S. Bill of Rights is full of clauses specifying things like "Congress shall make no law regarding..." freedom of speech, establishments of religion, etc. because of the notion that the government's inability to reliably get it right is indeed a good reason to stop altogether.
I don't disagree, in general. Roundup also fed many people. But there are certainly poor choices evident in the above examples that weren't necessary for the progress to be made, but were just disregarded by an organization operating without guardrails. They deserve the pressure to course correct.
> Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people
Teen suicides are a thing. It isn’t lung cancer, sure, but it also isn’t nothing.
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Why would I want to do that? Do you routinely compare apples with oranges?
The only complete analysis is risk vs. benefit.
We don't look at heart transplants and say "look how many people died! we should ban them"
We can't regulate social networks or ban AI because of heart transplants?
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I don't know how you jump from "innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum" to "we will never innovate again if we regulate social network use by teens".
social networks are not modern technology
modern tech can exist without tiktok algos that push eating disorder propaganda to 12 year olds that leads to suicide and hospitalization
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i really, really don't think that's likely to be the case
> Now, large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people (unlike say tobacco, or talc powder, 3M and half of their solvents, weed killer, most car makers, etc etc)
It's nearly as bad. Social media causes addiction and mental health problems especially for the youth. PISA scores are going down. It can already be seen now, although not many 20 year olds have had a smartphone for more than 10 years. Here in this country every 7 year old has a smartphone and it will get only worse. Physical health is impacted because of kids are tapping on a screen instead of running and playing. It has impact already to language learning and social development of babies because parents interact with their smartphone several hours a day and instead of interacting with their baby.
Of course there is other tech than social media and smartphones. But at least in these areas equally strong regulation as for tobacco and alcohol would be required.
Large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people in the same way big tobacco haven't killed any people. Nobody smokes a cigarette and immediately die. But one would have to be immensely dense not to see the correlation between smoking habit and lung disease, or Facebook refusing to moderate social media activity in Burma and some of the worst atrocities committed on humans anywhere this century.
Smoking is causative - did you mean to imply the same for the Burna situation?
Most importantly all this tech is not reducing cost of living, but is increasing it. Tech is reducing prices of compute and memory and software but everyone's monthly bill increases. This is only possible through parasitic behavior. And we know how to kill parasites. The life and times of a parasite are not as fun as the worthies who come up with these unsustainable business models think.
Do increases in suicide rates from social media addiction count?
There are emails unearthed from the early days of Facebook where utilizing addiction feedback loops were discussed to retain and maximize young users.
The Anxious Generation provides a lot of evidence correlating the rise of social media and a major increase in depression and anxiety related disorders.
When controlled for testosterone levels, how do the suicide rates look?
> large tech companies haven't wholesale killed people
Facebook's and Twitter's recommended feed algorithms and blocking procedures, have to a significant extent determined the outcome of elections, coup attempts, protest movements. These companies have custom tuned their algorithms for particular countries at particular times, during such events. Many people have died, or their lives negatively affected because of the decisions by these companies.
Not to mention the effect of platforms like Facebook and Instagram on young boys and girls.
I have a feeling there's a lot of analogies to be had between parenting, regulation and AI alignment.
All three are about trying to persuade an intelligent organism to adopt acceptable, rich and virtuous behaviour. All three seems to have similar failure modes.
Too much red tape and you'll get over fitting, lack of creative and new behaviour.
Except listed companies are sociopathic. They have no empathy. And their only goal is shareholder value. There’s no appealing to their conscience, so carrots and sticks it is
What do they do that would be illegal in physical stores? If I wanted to open a physical store that gave away free stuff but you had to agree to give a bunch of personal info that would be completely legal (but not profitable).
Do companies need onerous regulations that increase costs for consumers or do they need the incentive in form of not having their corporate charter cancelled and corporate officers banned from doing business as a threat to maintain a fair market?
Large tech companies have killed:
Apple kills migrant workers in China when fires break out or through stress, Samsung kills women working with solvents banned in the US, Exxon kills oil rig workers operating dangerously, etc.
> They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit. Because regulators in the USA are hamstrung, they are used to being able to basically doing stuff that would be illegal if it were in physical stores/pre-existing industries.
Did you actually read the article? I don't know how you square this kobayashi maru situation, unless you think Meta is outright lying about it:
> Europe recently charged Meta with breaching EU regulations over its “pay or consent” plan. Meta’s business is built around personalized ads, which are worth far more than non-personalized ads. EU regulators required that Meta provide an option that did not involve tracking user data, so Meta created a paid model that would allow users to pay a fee for an ad-free service. This was already a significant concession—personalized ads are so valuable that one analyst estimated paid users would bring in 60 percent less revenue. But EU regulators are now insisting this model also breaches the rules, saying that Meta fails to provide a less personalized but equivalent version of Meta’s social networks. They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users. In a very real sense, the EU has ruled that Meta’s core business model is illegal. Non-personalized ads cannot economically sustain Meta’s services, but it’s the only solution EU regulators want to accept.
Also, what about the CUDA situation? I don't see how any consumer is harmed by this, which is quite different from a social media company doing its thing.
> They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users
Where are they demanding that? Reading https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_24_..., their complaints seem to be that Facebook
- cannot call the ‘with adverts’ version ‘free’
- makes it too difficult for consumers to find out what exactly they give to facebook in exchange for this ‘free’ service
- is not clear enough about the fact that paying will not remove all ads
- forces existing users to choose between paid and ‘free’ versions before they can use the service again.
Nowhere do they say on that page that Meta "provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users”. Am I reading the wrong page?
> Am I reading the wrong page?
Yes. That's a separate investigation; "Today's action focuses specifically on the assessment of Meta's practices under EU consumer law and is distinct from the ongoing ... , and the assessment by the Irish Data Protection Commission under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."
The illegality of "Pay or Consent" is a GDPR thing. The EDPB ruling on that issue is here: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/system/files/2024-04/edpb_opinion...
But it's an extremely settled matter. The GDPR says explicitly that consent is not "freely given" if the provision of a service is dependent on said consent. (Where the service does not absolutely require the data processing in question; See Article 7, recital 43)
Thanks. They avoid saying Meta should have a free option without personalized ads; they only say Meta should consider it. I wonder what other options Meta has, though, apart from leaving the market.
Maybe they’re thinking of Meta making Facebook paid for everybody, but giving users the option of getting paid for getting personalized ads? Apart from the wording, I don’t see how that’s different from “It’s free, but if you don’t want personalized have to pay”, though.
It would be different in that it makes it more explicit that users are selling something, though, so maybe it would be enough in the eyes of the EU?
>In a very real sense, the EU has ruled that Meta’s core business model is illegal.
Is this actually bad?
No, but the EU and the citizens thereof should then accept that Meta or other similar companies in similar situations can't operate within the EU.
The EU regulators and select HN users might be okay with that, but EU citizens on average probably won't be.
Meta should've been nuked when Cambridge Analytica happened; the fact that US lawmakers did nothing after that is a complete joke. Zucc should be in jail alongside every other piece of shit who thinks it's their right to mass-harvest every single person's personal data indiscriminately for profit.
The FTC fined Facebook 5 billion dollars and required new safeguards and audits around sharing of user data: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...
> No, but the EU and the citizens thereof should then accept that Meta or other similar companies in similar situations can't operate within the EU.
I wouldn't mind if FB left...
That's why I said this:
> The EU regulators and select HN users might be okay with that
WhatsApp though?
There is signal/telegram/line/whatever.
Though FB should have never been allowed to buy WhatsApp and Instagram... (same for Google buying YouTube…)
Besides void would be filled sooner or later with something, hopefully something interoperable (XMPP maybe?)
Yes?
No company should be allowed control over such a large portion of private communication.
Telegram is basically the same
> No, but the EU and the citizens thereof should then accept that Meta or other similar companies in similar situations can't operate within the EU
More pointedly, that they can't be built in or run from the EU.
... and can't do business in the EU.
You know what they say: Only old people use Facebook.
All the younger people I know are on Instagram (yes Meta owns that). But another social network will take its place like it always has. I’m pretty sure Meta knows this since they also own WhatsApp.
If FB dies, we’ll all be fine.
Only if "companies in similar situations" means companies that have been built around violating users' basic rights.
You're free to not be a user, but millions of other people want it.
Possibly. Facebook has strong network effects. It is possible that nobody actually wants to be on Facebook.
BS. Lot's of companies / entities moved there because of said "millions" so you are unwillingly forced to use them as a mean of contact. And sadly open alternatives are blocked/unavailable...
you know it's possible to get through life without either Facebook or a Facebook alternative, right?
I closed my account ten years ago, and I don't have an alternative. After the withdrawal period I stopped caring.
My loved ones send me text messages of their kids. Exactly what is the point of Facebook?
My sister has kids, and their school exclusively uses whatsapp to broadcast events and other things happening in the school, despite repeated complaints from many parents. There's millions of little things like this out there. Many small businesses like repairmen or such only do Whatsapp. It's quite literally unavoidable in some countries.
Sorry, this is just how technology works. There is going to be a way that the vast majority of people want to communicate and if you don't want to use it, it's going to be a pain in the ass for you. This is always going to be the case, and nobody is under any obligation to accommodate you. If you didn't want to have a home phone in the 90s it would have been the same thing.
Of course but the argument was: "You're free to not be a user, but millions of other people want it.".
So the notion that you have complete freedom is somewhat false…
Who is talking about complete freedom? Nobody who lives in any human society will ever have that.
So? Just because there are reasons to compromise our freedoms doesn't mean we should stop asking which compromises are worth it and saying no to those that aren't.
No, this is how monopolies build their turf. Individually it is almost impossible to say no to that but as society we can simply outlaw these lock in tactics.
You might have heard of the phone network and email. Both provide you with choices as to which corporations you want to do business with without limiting what contacts you can talk to.
It's not and it won't accepted. WhatsApp will be for third party clients.
Whatsapp is not Facebook, and it's not social media. It's a messaging application. Different thing. I quit Facebook -- I didn't exit every messaging platform. Yes, if you eschew every messaging platform, nobody can reach you. That's obviously correct.
However, nothing I use could be called a Facebook replacement, either. WhatsApp isn't a Facebook replacement.
He means the network effects of it. Facebook has locked people in via Facebook groups, Instagram messenger and such.
So many people are in it’s if you don’t have it, it’s hard to be part of certain communities.
I deleted my Facebook like ten years ago, I missed out on a a LOT of party invites.
people just text me to invite me to things. I don't want to be invited to parties where someone just invites everyone they know on Facebook.
if they want me there, they can ask me directly. My social life has not significantly changed since I quit Facebook.
if you have good friends, they will find you. if you don't.. why do you care about losing them?
That’s a pretty glib stance. Plenty of people have difficulty finding a friend group and not everyone can be an island until they do (see the loneliness epidemic). Perhaps consider that there are other people with different life situations than yours for whom demanding individualized treatment does not work, and they may have much less choice about what technologies they have to use as a result.
Popular kids don’t care about that.
I don't use Facebook but for example KLM/AF at least 5-6 years ago pushed hard "means of contact" as "talk to us at whatsapp/facebook". And they weren't the only one. And the track of thinking was probably "If everyone/millions use it then let's move away from this old pesky email"...
There are groups/communities (real ones, for example building or school) that settled on WA/FB group so while you are not necessarily forced to if you don't there is a high chance that you will miss some crucial info…
I don't use it in any manner for personal communication though…
Ok, I also live without a FB account.
But I don't go around pretending that that doesn't cut me out of social contacts. Not everyone will be as accomodating as your friends and relatives.
yes, arbitrarily killing business people like is bad
For what is worth, I think Meta is lying about it, or at least playing the victim card too strongly.
> They’re demanding that Meta provide free full services without personalized ads or a monthly fee for users.
Meta is being sued because their paid plan is not honest - they are currently asking for 10€/month which is disproportionate - for comparison, a Business Standard Google Workspace account with 2Tb and Gemini costs 11€. From [1], "EU law requires that consent is the genuine free will of the user. Contrary to this law, Meta charges a 'privacy fee' of up to €250 per year if anyone dares to exercise their fundamental right to data protection".
[1] https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-gdpr-complaint-against-meta-ov...
The price looks reasonable to me after looking at the average revenue per user. https://www.statista.com/statistics/234056/facebooks-average...
I don't think reasonable prices are based on what the potential maximum profit per user is. Normally it's based on the expense per user plus a percentage for profit.
Your mistake is assuming that "reasonable" exists as something concretely defined. Reasonable is an opinion.
Reasonable is definitely an opinion, but that doesn't mean it's random.
In legal and economic contexts, reasonable profits are a thing that is routinely calculated. Where industries are more regulated, 'reasonable' profits are often bound by statutory guidelines. In more competitive markets, prices are not fixed in the same way but you can take a look at industry standards to ascertain what might be reasonable.
That is perfectly honest. If it were 10x that it would still be honest. Pay the price or don't use the service. Nobody owes you anything.
And we don't owe Facebook anything. Play by the rules or GTFO.
I don't believe a single word anyone from Meta says, yes. That company is full of amoral scum, you think lying is beneath them if it helps them out?
lol. You don’t think Meta would outright lie about this stuff? They have been for years and years. Why is this different?
> but they have been trying desperately to stop all competition.
Every large company in every industry wants to do this.
> They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit.
Why would you expect a company not to pursue profits?
> Why would you expect a company not to pursue profits?
People keep talking about the obligation to shareholders for a company to maximize profits, but there's a wide list of possibilities between not doing that and seeking to actively, wholesale ruin privacy.
I expect the people in companies to take responsibility for their actions instead of pretending that they're beholden to the company's wants.
"We share the risk but the profit is mine" company mindset is no better than medieval thuggery
> Every large company in every industry wants to do this.
And the point of regulation is to stop it and bring balance. Or are you happy with mono-/oligopolies?
I'm fine with regulation to prevent monopolies / duopolies.
In practice, regulation almost never actually does that.
Every major industry is a monopoly or duopoly if you're even a bit generous with the term.
I'm just pointing out there is nothing unique here with tech or data.
And the politics are mostly theater that often makes things more monopolistic, not less.
I think you're making a mistake confusing the way things are today in terms of market concentration with the way things were in the past. In terms of market concentration in the US at least, things were massively different even 20 years ago.
Adding a link to the Boston Fed report on it from a couple years ago: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspe...
I read that as saying there's nothing to be done, monopolies are natural, we can't stop the order of things without making everything worse, we must just acquiesce and learn to live with them.
Is that correct? I have a hard time thinking that is true.
> > They've also been trying to extract as much personal info as possible for profit.
> Why would you expect a company not to pursue profits?
And that's how you justify children in cobalt mines I suppose ?
Why do you expect countries to not restrict how companies can pursue profits to protect their citizens?
> A company that provides a phone service (mobile or other) has to conform to a large amount of regulatory red tape. Why? because either a company before tried to monopolise the entire country, or they killed someone.
you sweet summer child
no, that's not how the red tape got put in place. the government put the red tape in place to protect the established companies in the space from upstart competitors
The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
There's zero reason to think that this will mean the EU won't have a tech market. It just won't have one that includes Apple products which refuse to follow the law. Seems like a massive win for the EU, and because Apple is the one deciding to pull their products rather than follow the law they can't really complain either, so win/win I guess.
Except EU doesn’t have big tech.
Anything that gets close gets bought or killed by non-european giants.
Tencent buys basically all game companies, microsoft buys basically all communication companies (skype, nokia come to mind), google buys basically everything. Even ARM is owned by Softbank after starting out in the UK.
The Automotive industry and ASML are just about the only things resistant to this because they're so large already; Automotive acts a lot like big tech. (a clear similarity I saw after being in BMW R&D and Googles Zurich and SF campuses)
There is an issue with that perspective though. The Europeans sell out. Ok. Maybe they are bad at valuation and don't realise that their companies are worth more than they are being paid for. Or maybe an EU company can't capture as much value as a US/Chinese company. And those are really the only two options - either the decision is rational or irrational. If it is an irrational decision then there isn't much to talk about. But it is probably the second case - selling out to someone on a different continent generates value. And there is a good chance that is because it helps avoid EU regulators.
For example, you mentioned Nokia. Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0]. It wasn't a close battle, the EU contender was crushed. Apple's motivation for entering the market was that among other things that companies like Nokia were so bad at making phones that Apple reckoned it could break in to a new vertical. That is a very EU-led-industry problem to have. The reason they sold out was because the EU turned out to be incapable of incubating a modern, successful phone manufacturer in the 21st century even with an incredible lead and Nokia was being outmanoeuvred everywhere.
[0] Both looked like regulatory issues to me, we've seen how the EU responds to things like micromanaging the iPhone charging port.
> Nokia was blown out of the market by superior Chinese manufacturing and US design [0].
No, Nokia was blown out of the market via the exclusive deal with Microsoft, which in turn made the dumbest management decisions ever. Nokia bled under the horrible management of Steve Ballmer and their own ignorance with regards to Android. They also proved later on that you don't need any expertise to produce decent Android phones, as HMD global used their name as a brand and has been thriving.
To add to this: It's not that hard to develop a mobile operating system that's on par or better than Android, despite what Google might want you to think.
Pretty telling though. When dijit was talking about Tencent, Microsoft or Google a few comments ago they were being presented as these huge incumbent behemoths that scoop up everything in their path. And, fair enough, they are.
But when Nokia starts with an overwhelming incumbents advantage, their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone! They couldn't defend themselves from multiple companies in completely different industries with no prior competence in the mobile phone world. That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
The issue here isn't company size, it is something specific to the EU. I'm not sure what, but since it is a geographic thing I'd start with regulation and branch out from there.
> their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone!
I'm sorry but it's honestly pointless discussing this as no one in this thread wants to spend even an ounce of time into researching this. Reading your comment in it's entirety tells me you weren't there when stuff was happening.
> That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
For the record, the Lumia phones had A-Tier hardware in them. They boasted the best low light cameras on phones for a while around ~2012.
Nokia made the Lumia phones, MS provided the operating system. Previously, Nokia had their own Linux based OS, called Maemo, which was originally supposed to run on what became Lumia. It later formed into Sailfish OS, which had it's own device family.
The issue wasn't the hardware platform itself, it was the fact that Nokia decided to go with the MS ecosystem, instead of Android. And honestly, I don't even think that was a bad move. I am at a loss trying to figure out how device manufacturers actually make profits based on what has turned into extremely restrictive licensing deals with Google in order to get GAPPS on their phones.
I used to have a Lumia phone as a teenager and it was very nice. I loved how curved and rounded it was, made it look very sleek and sci-fi, and it felt really good in the hand. Even the panel-style home screen was considered to be pretty cool. I remember at the time that, as you say, the main criticism was that it was isolated from the main android/iOS app store ecosystem and there were hardly any apps for it.
Exactly. Part of Nokia still lives on in Jolla and they have a modest team.
I owned a Jolla phone and it was the sickest thing ever, even though I was a Linux noob.
I honestly think Android was a net loss for mobile computing, both in terms of platform and performance.
> There is an issue with that perspective though. The Europeans sell out. Ok. Maybe they are bad at valuation and don't realise that their companies are worth more than they are being paid for. Or maybe an EU company can't capture as much value as a US/Chinese company. And those are really the only two options - either the decision is rational or irrational. If it is an irrational decision then there isn't much to talk about. But it is probably the second case - selling out to someone on a different continent generates value. And there is a good chance that is because it helps avoid EU regulators.
I think it comes down to two things:
1) The US is a large, uniform (regulation, language, media, etc.) making it easier to grow quickly. This puts the US competitor in a better place to buy the EU competitor than vice-versa.
2) More significantly, the US capital market is bigger & better. That starts with VC funding but is also the case with IPOs and publicly traded companies. That‘s how the EU tech standouts such as Spotify end up IPOing in the US.
#2 is certainly something the EU can work on improving but it has very little to do with tech regulation.
They can't buy anything unless Europeans are willing to sell.
Vivendi and Tencent attempting to buy Ubisoft via shares might be one thing in living memory that disagrees.
If you are publicly traded there is little you can do to prevent people buying shares - though you are right that people sell privately held companies a little too often.
Ubisoft in particular created many poison pills to prevent companies getting too dug in, however that didn’t prevent anything except a total buyout. Their board is stacked with Microsoft and Tencent which causes weird, extremely harmful, decision making in the org.
> If you are publicly traded there is little you can do to prevent people buying shares
Nobody can force you to sell your shares. Nobody can force you to make your company public. It's all voluntary. You can't have your cake and eat it. Want to get that juicy foreign investor money then cry that the foreigners are taking over?
I have a low tolerance for absurdly stupid comments.
Once you sell a share you don't get to control who it is sold to afterwards, you could give shares to people as stock-options, and they are (rightly) going to sell their shares regardless who the buyer is, only based on the price.
So. Seriously, shut the fuck up, you're suggesting that the only answer is isolationism.
Identification of an issue (people buying up European talent before it gets large enough to be competitive) is not an invitation for absurd and deficiently reasoned victim blaming.
Your anger comes from your frustration, your frustration comes from realizing that you're wrong.
If you want to keep control of a company - or anything - within certain hands, then you can't sell that thing to others. As evident by millions of companies never having their shares publicly listed or sold on any market. If you sell, you have to accept that you don't have any control of who owns in the future. You can't have your cake and eat it. Not even Europeans can do that.
"People buying up European talent" - they can only buy if Europeans are willing to sell. Such victims...
This reminds me of people complaining about foreign investors buying up real estate. But of course, no blame is to be put on the greedy sellers who slurped up that juicy foreign money.
What's your intended message?
Yes, people sell things voluntarily. (In particular, small companies being bought and killed by monopolies is usually very benefitial to the small companies' owners, even if it's bad for the economy as a whole.) That does not contradict the parent comments.
The parents comments are about foreign companies owning your company.
If you do not want that, do not voluntarily sell your company.
I like my cat. I don't want others owning my cat. I probably shouldn't sell my cat then right? I can't take the money now and complain later the neighbor owns my cat.
SAP, too.
EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars.
EU usually doesn't let companies to grow uncontrollable sizes that the government is completely controlled by them not the citizens.
The existence of Big Tech means that the government did a very poor job in protecting the consumers and the free and fair market
The only difference is that US has lower cost of debt and that’s why they can buyout EU companies
> EU didn't go into an uncontrolled spree investing every company that had .com in its name and ruined thousands of lives and wasted billions of dollars.
This is the thing that so many Americans in tech don't seem to understand. VC Twitter is full of smugposting about how the US has "$5 trillion market-cap of startups" and the EU doesn't.
And what they miss is that the EU doesn't want Silicon Valley. It doesn't want the "trillions in startups". Because essentially none of them turn any profit. Why on earth would anyone want $5 trillion dollars in companies that do not make financial sense yet have awful externalities.
AAPL's profit is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Slovakia.
I understand you were rebutting OPs point that not every tech company is a capital furnace, but when framed in this manner, this sounds like something to be solved, not something to be proud of. That’s the difference between the EU and the US, and there is a strong case to be made that life is better in the EU when observing majorities.
Who is benefiting from Apple’s profits being the size of a small country’s GDP? Not most people, therefore, why would this be optimized for?
Assuming that they know better than everyone else how they should be spending their money, and that reality is the one wrong because the numbers are too big when they are selling to the world? That sort of hubris is exactly why they don't have a world tech industry.
> That sort of hubris is exactly why they don't have a world tech industry.
You make this sound like a bad thing. There are diamonds to be found generating genuine value, but quite a bit of activity is simply low value under the guise of innovation.
I would caution against mistaking clarity and understanding for hubris. Europe doesn’t have line go up, but their citizens live better lives by most objective measures. From an optimization and first principles perspective, we should always be mindful of what we are optimizing for, so when I see people come out swinging with “Such profits! Much Tech! Innnnnnnovaaaaaation!” I approach it from a “simmer down now, lets decompose the system and observe” approach. What are the desired outcomes and what is value perspective we can compromise on as “good,” and then work backwards.
Apple makes a lot of profit because their products provide a lot of value.
Do you think that if you compare the profit that Apple makes to the value that that users get that Apple has the larger share of it? To a disturbing degree?
Certainly, if a company’s profits are the size of a small country’s GDP, I find that disturbing regardless of the value they’re delivering. Value is the experience and consumer excess, profits are fiat. Could that same value be delivered with compressed profits leading to greater consumer excess? I believe so. Not all profits are earned, some are inherent once an org achieves a certain maturity or industry position. Visa and Mastercard skimming a non insignificant amount off of US GDP, for example. Is that value?
https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/LAZONICK_Willia... (“Profits Without Prosperity: How Stock Buybacks Manipulate the Market, and Leave Most Americans Worse Off”)
You didn't answer the first question about whether you think consumers or Apple have the larger share.
I thought my comment was clear, I will attempt to be more explicit: I am of the opinion that Apple’s profits are excessive, regardless of the consumer value delivered. I respect that others may have opposing views that profits should have no limits as long as value is delivered.
Well if EU politicians think Apple's profits are excessive what about introducing laws to foster some competition? You can complain about other countries running circles around you all you want but at the end of the day if you can't make a phone, piece of software or a CPU you will be at the mercy of those who can. The way to reduce "excessive profits" is to make it easier to start businesses which could provide the "overpriced" goods and services cheaper.
Easier to reduce their size with regulation versus believing a free market that isn’t truly free will suddenly whisk competition into the space. This is why China gives their domestic companies “unfair” advantages, because the free market is an illusion. It’s only unfair if you believe there is a “free market” or the market is fair, which it is not.
It is easy to forget that the economic system of fiat and capital is a shared delusion, agreed upon rules that can change when needed. The intent is to encourage outcomes, not to be the primary function.
Whatever your views on free market if you want goods cheaper someone needs to make them cheaper. Splitting up Apple won't result in that. You still need someone else to make phones.
> Apple makes a lot of profit because their products provide a lot of value.
That is a non-sequitur.
> Who is benefiting from Apple’s profits being the size of a small country’s GDP? Not most people, therefore, why would this be optimized for?
Off the top of my head, probably the millions of people who have a pension through one of Apple’s institutional investors like CalPERS. The effects of Apple’s profitability goes far and wide.
> Off the top of my head, probably the millions of people who have a pension through one of Apple’s institutional investors like CalPERS. The effects of Apple’s profitability goes far and wide.
That's like a member of the working poor who owns one share of stock, "benefiting" from company lobbying to keep the minimum wage down.
He's got two-hundredths of a cent more in dividends, and has lost many hundreds of dollars in potential wages.
These numbers are always trotted out like these people have a material majority investment in the equities market (“won’t someone think of the teacher pension”), when per the Federal Reserve, the top 10% of Americans by wealth hold 93% of US equities.
This doesn’t entirely discount that CalPERS holds almost 40M shares (~$8.7B) of Apple (its top holding), just that them doing so is not reason enough to be more judicious about governing corporate profits. Still profits, but less. Those profits have to come from somewhere.
(CalPERS has $502.9B AUM ending June 2024, making APPL ~1.72% of their total assets)
https://www.calpers.ca.gov/docs/forms-publications/acfr-2023... (page 115)
https://calpers.ca.gov/page/newsroom/calpers-news/2024/calpe...
That seems all quite orthogonal. You asked who benefits and I’ve given you an example. Some benefit directly and some indirectly. But millions in the economy benefit and not just through institutions such as CalPERS.
Fair point, some people lose when policy is patched.
That's great for apple shareholders and citizens of Ireland indirectly benefitting from the miniscule amount of tax Apple pays here!
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American culture in a nutshell is to be in awe of large numbers without thinking very hard about whether you’re measuring the right things in the first place.
The five trillion market cap is from very profitable companies
Startups, not big tech companies.
Every company was started up
oh my God please stop inovating and making jobs think of the externalities!!!
> The existence of Big Tech means that the government did a very poor job in protecting the consumers and the free and fair market
I'm sure they are quite proud of that achievement
Not on Apple's scale, but with apple pulling products from the market, this opens the door for someone else to step up and fill that highly profitable gap in the market apple abandoned. I really hope that they do. The more players there are in the game from other countries the better off we'll all be.
But Apple also fumbled with the Vision Pro. They won't remain on the top for much longer I think.
How is apple impacted if Vision Pro fails? You think they care about the lost R&D cost? Or do you think others will leapfrog them in the VR/AR space?
This is the first product miss. And I don't know where Apple goes from here. Others will also leapfrog them is my instinct. Basically they are too big now and startups have a chance of beating both Google and Apple.
Apple has had other misses. They themselves cancelled the iPhone mini. There was the newton, quite similarly a product that the technology level was not quite ready for but they had great success with later. They constantly screw up with the Mac pro, introducing one version and then letting it whither away for many years.
Nah, the first iPhone was too expensive, slow, and limited in capabilities (no App Store). They quickly iterated to improve on all of that. The first watch also kind of sucked. The initial iPod wasn’t a blockbuster, either - didn’t work well on Windows, required FireWire. I’m sure there are other initial misses. I think there’s something there with Vision Pro, they just need to iterate and get the cost down.
Are you really saying the original iPhone was a "product miss"???
It was a good product, but it took a lot of iteration to make it the juggernaut it is today. Add bad battery life to the list of flaws, along with slow web browsing, slow processor, etc. With all of those, and the high price, it was relatively niche. The 3G lowered the price substantially, and iirc that plus the faster modem gave it a big popularity boost. And the 4 was substantially more popular than that.
My point is, don’t write off this whole product category because people balked at the price of the first iteration, it happened with the first iPhone, too. Apple grinds its way to excellent products.
I dunno if you were alive at the time but that's not really what happened. The first iPhone was really expensive but people bought it anyway because it was sooo far ahead of the competition. Until the iPhone most people didn't even bother with smart phones because they were so bad (Blackberry was a partial exception).
The web browsing wasn't slow - part of what made it so compelling was that you could browse the real web without going insane. No WAP nonsense.
Yes, it was rough compared to the later versions, but even the first one was insanely better than anything else. It was pretty clear what the issues were (battery life and lack of 3G as you said).
I don't think the Vision Pro is like that at all. It's big issues aren't missing features or lack of polish. It fundamentally makes no sense as a product even if they improve the resolution, speed, battery life, etc.
>I dunno if you were alive at the time but that's not really what happened.
I was pretty alive at the time, I was an intern on the iPhone team at Apple when it launched and the run-up, so I was using the first gen phone/touch all day every day, and I was paying pretty close attention to its launch (but just watching what was said in the press/by the people I knew, nothing privileged on the sales side). Looking around at sales figures, it looks like the first gen sold low single digit million units total, 1.4M in 2007. The 3G sold 1M on the first weekend (the press release tagline was "Twice as Fast at Half the Price", and that lower price is a big part of what brought it mainstream). Now they’re up to a couple hundred million phones per year.
I wouldn't say it was a "miss", it was very good compared to the status quo trash on the market, but it also wasn't the company defining success it turned into until the following gens, it made much less revenue than Macs at the time, and the Mac was pretty niche. My point was that it took a bit to really dial it in, and Apples first gen products don’t usually reflect their eventual success very well.
I don’t think Vision Pro is at 1M sold yet, and Apple products definitely have more sales reach now, but again, I wouldn’t count it out. I was pretty impressed when I tried it, they really nailed a lot of the hard technical problems, especially around text rendering, and if it was 1/3 the cost, I’d definitely have one now, maybe at 1/2. Which means that unless they really dilute the capabilities or drop the cost less than I expect, I’ll probably have one within the next couple of iterations (I'm also assuming they'll sub out the metal for cheaper/lighter materials to improve long-term comfort). But yeah, maybe it’ll end up being a modern day Newton, we’ll see.
I don't think so. You are confusing the absolute and the relative. The iPhone when it launched had die hard fans. The sheer excitement was palpable. The Vision Pro has nothing like it.
In my opinion, nothing is lost here. They will either put out new improved and cheaper versions until they get the interest they want, or wait for someone else to innovate and then copy it better, the apple way (TM). I don’t see a way where this is apples downfall until they continue to f it up again and again.
The only other OS option being Android (on mobile) and Windows (on desktop) I don't think Apple is going anywhere anytime soon. A lot of Apple's moat is in its OS (however degrading in has been in last decade). It's the perfect duopoly in both segments. Do you see that changing? If not then all other OEMs will keep fighting among themselves for loose change.
The Vision Pro was innovative but risky and, so far, unprofitable. I hope Apple does more Vision Pro-like things, it beats yet another iPhone model.
Did they? It really felt to me like they weren't trying for a moonshot with it: their sales projection of ca. 1M units falls under the single-digit percentage range of their annual revenue.
Yeah, they've actually sold less than that, but in context, it's still very much a "let's throw it at the wall and see what sticks" kind of thing. It also nonetheless fits how Apple communicates their product vision in new areas.
Yes. Everyone has set targets and expectations, which imply a certain product strategy, that are all completely at odds with everything Apple has indicated. Then, they call AVP a failure for. It meeting those set expectations. It’s not all that impressive to win an argument when you get that much freedom over framing things without much regard for the realities.
What's the product strategy? How's it at odds with what Apple has indicated?
The accusatory use of the second person implies that you're in my head enough to know that I'm trying to win an argument. It's patently untrue; I want to be loudly wrong so that I have more than merely a snowball's chance in hell of garnering understanding here.
If you have corrections to offer, I'm receptive to them.
How important “big tech” though? Honestly ? It’s even an insidious sounding name.
How important is technological industry? Pretty damn important I'd say if you're interested in economic growth and hence supporting your social safety net.
The technological industry is indeed very important, the mistake is thinking VR goggles and chatbots are somehow the only or even particularly relevant form of technology. Europe is of course full of high technology firms, (the awkwardly named https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana) contains a non trivial amount of high value added industry in the world.
What we need more of these days is 155 mm shells, chip fabs, nuclear power plants, solar cells and rail, not Facebook and Apple equivalents complaining about regulations.
You have a good point, I'll give you that.
We get so focused on big tech being social media/ad companies that we ignore the rest of it, which is actually huge.
Big tech is not inherent in the concept of a tech industry. Big tech is like 6 companies that want to swallow the world. Not being able to separate these two concepts is grade school level literacy and critical thinking. It’s not acceptable to conflate them. It’s completely ridiculous.
how many other large eu based tech companies can we name? like 3 total?
Accenture, Siemens, Nokia, Ericsson, Capgemini, Atos, Dassault Systems, Bosch, Ahold Delhaize, Dassault Systèmes? maybe little known outside the EU, but the EU has something like 20% of the world's software developers.
GP will have to explain to me, at a grade school level, how they want to differentiate big tech and BIG tech.
You're mixing up many things here:
1. Accenture, Capgemini and Atos are consulting companies that don't produce anything, they just rent out their code monkeys to the customers. And you know what those code monkeys are trained in? Software stacks that were created mostly in the US.
2. The rest of the companies you mention do not employ that many software developers.
3. They also do not deliver terribly popular, or important products. I mean, Bosch produces commodities like dishwashers, vaccuum cleaners and power tools, hard to call it "tech company".
Is Tech only Software?
If so, Apple and Nvidia won‘t qualify. They‘re more of a hardware company.
BTW Bosch‘s main business is automotive supplies. They‘re doing everything down to having their own fabs for automotive chips. It‘s just completely invisible to us as consumers that‘s why you consider it a dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and power tools company.
Nvidia’s moat is almost entirely software though, not just cuda but all the other bits of drivers required to bitbang a gpu into showing stuff on a screen (see: intel arc for how important this is)
Will have, if Russia can have their own search engine or Czechia (8M people). It’s matter of nit having US competition that undercuts on ads monopoly
Ever heard of Spotify or SAP maybe?
those are tech companies, but aren't really considered big tech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech
If you consider salesforce big tech, then you gotta consider SAP big tech as well. They have 31 vs 34.5 billion. Spotify has only 13.x something tho
How is that a bad thing?
How important “big tech” though? Honestly ? It’s even an insidious sounding name.
Big tech has caused a lot of problems for society. Echo chambers on social media, monopolistic behaviour, teen depression and addiction.
We want the tech, without the grifting.
Are they separable? Teens in particular appear to be bad for each other's mental health. Connectivity increases that effect, anonymity makes it worse, likes and other status features makes it worse still. Not sure where you draw a line between not quite bad enough and too bad.
It doesn’t help there are algorithms designed to keep them looking at things that aren’t great for them to be looking at though does it. Can you provide an example in the past wheee this has existed before outside of big tech ?
I wasn’t arguing that this was just as bad before. It’s clearly all made worse and accelerated by social media calling engagement and ad dollars above all.
Historically the victims of contagion have been oldsters in a moral panic. This time I think it is actually true - there’s a mind virus loose.
This could be the beginning of big tech for them, another winning situation.
> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers
I'm intentionally taking this out of context to point out that laws can act as gatekeepers and help preserve incumbent's positions.
Stuff like "minimum service requirement" which require new entrants to front a massive initial investment, preventing them from getting a foothold (see: France telecom landscape in the 90s-'10s). GDPR was crafted by the likes of Google & Meta that were strong enough to weather the transition, but kill off smaller competition.
There are always tradeoffs, but those aren't talked about as much.
It's absolutely true that regulations can be written by corporations to keep out competitors. Regulations are just tools. They can be used to protect and benefit the majority or to further enrich a small number of wealthy and powerful individuals. I haven't seen anything to convince me that the Digital Markets Act was written to hurt competition at the expense of the public.
Yeah if people complain about government regulation then they've never seen a company regulate a market.
> Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
Currently Apple has been complying with the letter of EU law (opening their devices to alternative app stores, etc) but not the spirit of the law (leaving the EU market).
> The EU is free to pass laws preventing gatekeepers and insisting on interoperability requirements and Apple is free to refuse to do that and not offer their non-competitive gatekeeping products in the EU.
Apple is also free to lobby the US government and people to take action against the EU. Especially if Trump gets elected, Apple complaining about Europe taking advantage of American companies would resonate with a lot of the officials likely to staff such an administration.
Given Russia, it is likely that the US has far more leverage on the EU than the EU has on the US.
Why should the US government care if Apple chooses not to sell some of their products in the EU because they don't want to abide by the EU's laws? The EU isn't taking advantage of US companies, or looking to pressure the US. The EU has every right to set their own laws and businesses can decide for themselves if they want to sell their products there. The fact that Russia exists doesn't change that.
Because even without public ownership of Apple stock China style or even any lobbing from Apple, the US government are effectively "invested" in their gains via taxation. Apple's interests are the US's interests to some small extent (technically so is that small coffee shop down the block). Geopolitical interest implies they'd care enough to at least nudge the EU a little.
Eu has lots of leverage too against US. Lobbying for actions against eu may have absolutely bad consequences and it's totally bonkers to think/prise that an us company has this much power proving once again that maybe it's a good think eu doesn't have such big corpos
The EU just has to hint that they’d move closer to china, and all this supposed leverage would evaporate.
Both us and eu are heavily relying on China. Even Nvidia sells lots of gpus with small limitations to china that in the end will not change things that much. Or ASML sells non covered by sanctions chip production utilities. All this trade war is just scratching the surface, in reality heavy money are made by all parts
This clever geopolitical analysis notably ignores China, and the fact that Trump pushing the EU to China would be the greatest geopolitical victory for China in history.
how it’s a win if i can’t use apple products?
It's funny how you already answered your own question
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"Europeans could end up living in an online backwater with out-of-date phones, cut off from the rest of the world's search engines and social media sites, unable to even access high-performance computer chips."
Sounds like a paradise. More healthy lifestyle. For most people much of this stuff is unnecessary. If one wants to live life "online", glued a screen digesting garbage and propaganda 24/7, then one can relocate to some country where that's what people do. Chances are, tourists from such countries will want to visit Europe even more.
We are all living in an "online backwater" in case the author hasn't noticed. The web is a sewer of surveillance, marketing and ads. Despite the information access possibilities the internet presents, the distribution of factual information seems to be at an all-time low, at least in the lifetime I am living. I have never seen people who were so detached from commonly shared reality as a result of "search engines and social media sites". To access facual information, cf. marketing and propaganda, worthless opinions, and "AI" generated garbage, one did not and does not need the latest "phone" or "high-performance computer chips". This stuff is not making people smarter. Is it is not making society better.
I would be willing to bet the countries that have the populations that are most reliant on "search engines and social media sites" and "high performance computer chips" are going to have the highest rates of mental illness and other complications that arise from too much screen time, and the lowest test scores. These will be dumbed down, whacked out societies. They will have the worst quality of life.
I was listening to an interview with Jonathan Kanter recently and the interviewer tried to get him to comment on Europe's approach to regulation of "Big Tech". He was hesitant to accept any comparison. But I am confident there are plenty of folks, generally _not people who comment on HN_, who are envious of the direction Europe is taking.
The idea that regulating Apple and Meta, companies that exploit people commercially as they use computers, e.g., as data collection sources and ad targets, is going to contribute to cause "poverty" or deprive Europe of useful networking and computer technology, e.g., the type used for national defense, is absurd.
What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.
They will probably move to those whacked out societies.
> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.
You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?
I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if you try to kill it).
A lot of “crap” is innovation too. In the past some considered video games to be crap, rotting children’s brains, promoting violence, etc. Look what happened when we figured out that add on cards for projective rendering could also multiply matrices really quickly.
Whether or not an innovation is crap can only be judged in hindsight.
And I think you missed mine.
I agree with you. A lot of innovation is indeed crap. But there are times when they are not crap, but brilliant instead.
So these crappy and brilliant innovators are going to move to the whacky societies. It's for Europeans to judge if that is a net loss or a net gain.
> You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?
Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow. In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.
> Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow.
It sounds like "spaghetti code" is not actually the competitive disadvantage software engineers imagine it to be.
I say that as a software engineer.
Pretty sure there's a lot more to those machines than software.
> In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.
Not because of "spaghetti code," but because of US-led sanctions. China has technical talent, a lot of money, and now motivation to enter that space.
If you think EUV lithography is 'ripe for disruption', then sir, I wish you and your VCs all the best. :)
If we (EU) are not allowed to have high end AI chips strapped on quadcopters and Russia is, well, good luck to EU.
A (very hypothetical) war is not going to be won by AI chips and quadcopters.
Furthermore all of this applies to consumer tech, not military tech. Consumers are not allowed to have military drones, attack fighters, and tanks either.
You don't seem to know what is currently being used in Ukraine right now.
Well, that stupid government isn’t “allowed” to import chips either. How has that materially changed anything? (Please use specific examples.)
Putting limitations on technology is really stupid from a defense point of view.
In Europe we don't have anough capacity for ammo production. Lack of AI chips is the least of our security problems.
I thought we were talking about future policies here, having effect 20 years from now.
It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.
> It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.
I think you're failing to make important distinctions. Being "less advanced" in algorithmic addiction machines, ad targeting, personal privacy invasion, or monopoly is not going to cause any of those things.
As an American, a good chunk of American consumer technology is more akin to a parasitic burden than any advantage.
Things like Facebook, Meta, Uber and whatnot are not really innovative technology. Almost none of the tech the DMA regulates is innovative as such, other than some "innovation" to deal with the scaling, and the only reason they need to scale is due to the dubious business activities that allowed them to grow to this size.
The DMA is really about regulating basic common sense free market rules, not regulating technology as such.
Exactly my thought here. Such a privileged view of the world to not appreciate the luxuries that internet technologies have bestowed us.
It's also naive in that they somehow think they wouldn't get invaded the second some dictator decides they want some lebensraum. You can't have an entire continent (save Poland, Finland, Britain, France, and a handful of others) more or less ignore defense (via technological advancement) and hope to keep pax liberalism
There is no equivalence between (a) "internet" or "high end computer chips" (much less "technology" or "innovation") and (b) "search engines" or "social media sites". Except if one is Silicon Valley VC, Big Tech employee, "tech" journalist, payola recipient or other supporter of "Big Tech". This is false quivalence, a flawed premise. Arguments relying on a flawed premise are, of course, inherently flawed.
I don't live in Europe, but wish we had these sorts of regulations in the US.
If tech companies cannot provide us a means to control our personal information, and require us to be locked into their gatekeep-y, nanny-state, walled gardens and submit to using locked-down devices that don't actually obey what we want them to do, then those tech companies should not exist.
I've gotten a little bit of a taste of some of this stuff in the form of the CCPA/CPRA, and it's delightful. Getting to tell companies they're not allowed to sell any of my information to third parties is wonderful. I just wish that was the default and I didn't have to opt out.
Big tech is far, far under-regulated, even in Europe, too, and that needs to change.
IMHO the problem has been that FAANG has not been regulated enough. The sheer size of these companies and their market share means there's little chance of competition from anywhere.
Though TBF when it comes to poorly thought out regulation, the amount of human time lost to clicking cookie consent/reject screens surely has to be a net loss to society.
The regulations don't require a banner. Just don't gather or share unnecessarily. No banner or notice required. Companies would rather hound users than stop selling them down the river, even their directly paying customers.
And if people are better informed of how far and wide their data will be prostituted, then I'd call it a win.
Fair points.
I guess browsing life would be much easier if something was implemented at the browser level and cookie pop ups become the exception.
I wish targeted advertising was made completely illegal here, I am sure our society would greatly benefit from that.
Do you actually get relevant online ads? I usually get ads about the thing I just bought
Statistically this works out pretty well.
If you spent real money on something, you're far more likely to buy it again or buy it for someone or send that link to someone than a completely new product.
Do you really need an ad to get you to do that?
The question is, rather, does an ad increase your chances of doing that by 0.1%?
If yes, it suddenly makes sense to show the ad to the ~1000 people in your target group.
Even worse. It doesn’t work. Yet, it either way requires large scale harvesting of everyone’s personal information.
If it wasn’t allowed, the value of all this personal information wouldn’t be as high.
I thought it’s idiotic until the first time I sent something back for a refund.
And how many times did you do that :))
The great thing about them selling you something made to be as crappy as you will stand, is that then you'll then have to refund it all the time, making their re-targeting ads even more "effective" :)) What a virtuous cycle!
What exactly do you mean by "targeted advertising"? I'm guessing you probably mean "behavioral advertising", which is a subset of "targeted advertising".
Targeted advertising includes contextual advertising (e.g., a company putting an ad for their bird watching binoculars on a bird watching blog) and I'm having trouble thinking of any reason to ban that.
I'd even go to banning all commercial ads, like several cities have done offline.
Reasons?
Click bait, boosts consumerism, ads imply essentially a tax for everyone (remember that ads have to be paid by the consumers), CEO spam, annoying, environmental costs
You should ask an economist to model this scenario for you and then see if you still feel this way.
Making everything rely on subscription (consider European TV license fees as such) and word-of-mouth is what you end up with. Except in the case of former, over-subscription is getting into a problem too.
why does nobody think of micro payments?
Micro payments would be the way to go, but the current payment systems do not enable this method of transaction.
Removing ads would require being willing to make micro payments to some random shady news site you found on google to read their article.
In the current payment world, that would require sharing a lot of private information in the case of PayPal or, even worse, sharing your CC number.
The Digital Euro might fix this, if it turns out to be well implemented.
Once a well implemented Digital Euro arrives, an internet without advertising would be a real possibility.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4J4uor3JE comedy sketch called kill all the poor
Oh no, companies can't manipulate people as easily and some will go bankrupt, because they can't give people as much FOMO and there will be less trash in the internet
> boosts consumerism
Don't we live in a capitalist world?
Consumerism is overrated, but we all want it because neighbour has nice thing
What does it matter?
People need to constantly buy stuff for the economy to keep growing, this is how the economy is designed.
At some point we have to deal with the limits to growth, indeed.
The economy should serve the people, not the way around.
This goes against the idea of capitalism. It expects infinite growth. If growth stops, we need a different economic model.
Which is fine, no economic system lasted forever, and capitalism is not expected to last forever either.
I have some excellent news for you about the legality of targeted advertising under the GDPR.
The GDPR is very clear about this. Advertising is not a legitimate interest or a functionally-required data processing, ergo, it may only be done with user consent. And that user consent may not be coerced in any way at all, you may not even refuse access to services if users reject their data being used.
It's taking a while to go up and down the courts, but the days of ad-tech are numbered.
Good intentions but how well is that working out so far?
Only thing we got was annoying cookie popups everywhere, where consent is one click away and reject is three layers behind a small “learn more” button.
That just shows us that the companies don't give a shit and are implementing every dark pattern under the sun to keep harvesting data. The ePrivacy bill, GDPR and the EU cookie laws say nothing about cookie banners or anything of the sort, companies just make it as annoying as possible so that people get tired by it and mindlessly click reject.
Guess what, the whole hidden reject thing? That's not legal. Opting out should be equally as easy (or easier) than opting in, which a lot of EU companies realize.
every meeting I have been in wrt PII collection had some provvisions for 1) how will this be protected enough 2) how can we easily delete this if needed; so I would say decently.
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There are no free web services. By watching ads you are paying with other people's money.
Why would it benefit society to get less targeted ads as opposed to more targeted ones?
> Why would it benefit society to get less targeted ads as opposed to more targeted ones?
Because more targeted ads require a dangerous and abusive system of pervasive surveillance while less targeted ads can still be targeted without hurting as many people in the process.
> Because more targeted ads require a dangerous and abusive system of pervasive surveillance
I don't think they require it.
A targeted ad can be as simple as geolocation via IP address and showing local businesses.
Ads can be targeted but not at individual.
If I am Tylor Swift fan I should get her merch advertising only when I am visiting swifties forum or group - but not when I am checking my fishing forum where I expect fishing gear ads. But nowadays I get adsg
Because there would be no incentive to commodify user activity, bundle it up, and resell it to ever more dubious information brokers?
Also it would help reduce overconsumption which is great given the finite resources we have on this planet.
You'd need to ban targeted marketing, not just advertising.
If I were selling widgets I still greatly care about knowing who buys a billion widgets a year and will pay good money to find out.
Tracking stats of your customers using the data they willingly gave you and making marketing decisions isn't the problem. Neither is making sponsorship agreements with content producers who make relevant content.
Creation of global markets with interconnected networks to track and share detailed personal information about mental states, political alignment, sexual life and more is the problem.
Yes, all those things mean I get to find out what _groups_ buy my products.
The plural of anecdote is data after all.
Ads would be less effective at convincing people to be unhappy.
I agree to the fullest
I'd just say all advertising. It's effectively money time and effort we just light on fire.
All advertising is a step too far, I think. But banning accepting any remuneration to deliver, display, or cause to be viewed any advertisement, and limiting physical ads in places viewable from public areas seems like it would improve things. Buildings shouldn't be covered in ads, and the internet shouldn't be largely based around scamming as much information out of people as possible to jam ads down their throat, but a business should be allowed to put up flyers on their own storefront. I mean, if you're really pedantic about banning all ads, that probably precludes restaurants posting menus out front.
Bring back yellow pages.
Extremely limited, focused, designed to deliver facts rather than entertainment or flashy catchy content 'ads' could be informative and beneficial. The structure of the ad should be as close to sanitized textbook as possible, maybe even follow a regulated formula. Something like, "This is a thing that exists. Here's the benefit without dramatizing or 'selling' someone something they don't need. X brand can be found at Y location for Z cost."
It's easy to agree with all advertising. I think that's the quickest, easiest measure to cut that yields an outcome beneficial to society, and that more ads are nearly always worse.
I also think that sales are worse for society than every day prices that deliver value; sales do make sense for things like seasonal items which are in abundance due to just being harvested.
I’ve wondered the same thing. How much does a company have to spend on ads just to keep up with their competitors’ ad spend? I don’t know but if I had to guess I’d say most of the ad budget. Not to mention that ads are a cancer that infest and overrun anything they touch.
Would be a dream. Then a more-or-less independent entity paid by our tax money could be used to test stuff according to objective and scientific standards. I mean, stuff like TÜV certification already exists, doing a bit more work to get a reliable measure of performance, repairability, etc... like some review websites do wouldn't be that difficult.
Instead, we're forced to turn to third-party testers with dubious manufacturer relations - even when the results aren't freely available! - or technical knowledge (e.g. Consumer Reports using 1/3 octave smoothed power response for loudspeakers)...
Why not make Sales illegal too.
Happily. I'm not very fond of dumb calls from "sales" starting with "Let me introduce you to our new shiny product"...
Just curious, what industry do you work in?
What's the relation to the outlook?
This would kill the free internet tomorrow, and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it.
Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do.
> Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do.
Even assuming that is true, companies are bidding for user's attention and against each other. What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?
> and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it
Great example. Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.
> What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?
It's quite obvious, isn't it? They will stop buying ads altogether.
The entire reason targeted ads pay better is because they have a higher conversion rate, so advertisers can afford to pay more.
> Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.
And that's why shovel-ware "personal finance" crap YouTube channels make mega-bux, while actually interesting creators earn pennies. If you want more "junk food content", have at it: Ban all the targeted ads!
Just don't come crying in five years when there's nothing good to watch or read.
The Internet existed before Internet ads (and particularly targeted ads) did. Personally, while I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're making, I'm curious to see what a pendulum swing in the opposite direction might look like.
If targetted ads are suddenly illegal, won't this mean the advertising market jumps 20x larger?
Either that, or we'll find out what just content based untargetted ads work pretty well.
I might be talking out of my depth, as I don’t live in Europe, but I’ve heard the same paraphrased headlines like these since at least 2016. Has status quo been swayed one way or another since then? Theoretically speaking, wouldn’t legislating away the top US players open the market to the local companies a la Naver in SK, WeChat in China or Line in Japan? I understand I’m dumbing it down, but assuming such legislations are supported by the local residents. I don’t think I would support it, personally, but I can see their point as well.
I don't get this article.
Title is "Europe Is in Danger of Regulating Its Tech Market Out of Existence".
But then the subtitle says "Poorly designed laws are forcing *global firms* to leave." (emphasis mine)
Then you see a picture of an Apple Vision Pro. I've only skimmed through the article and there are 11 mentions of Apple and 12 mentions of Meta, then some mentions of X and such. These aren't even "global" firms, they are all American ones.
If anything, it sounds like they may be regulating away US products from the European market, and that's a big "maybe", which is different from what I understood from the title they chose.
A more practical example is that Facebook cannot promote its marketplace anymore. In Europe there are local alternatives for market places that get disadvantaged.
Spotify, an EU company, has to compete with Apple Music and YouTube Music. Both of which have their own mobile operating systems and markets.
Now we get a lot of backlash from these big tech firms as for years they have been integrating services into their walled gardens. Which now is hard to decouple from their platform.
This is not always good for the end user. Now I have to go to google maps manually because it’s most of the time no longer integrated with google search
what exactly prevents them from giving me a dropdown with links to apple maps, kagi maps, bing maps and google maps and my choice gets saved to my google account as the default? Instead all they show me is a useless javascript map which is still google maps but I cant do anything useful on it and it's super frustrating trying to get to a map for a place search
To play devils advocate - it costs money to integrate with all the competing map providers and to display them properly on the site. You could think of a plug in approach where map providers integrate themselves, still someone needs to maintain that plug in infra. Nothing is free.
And it’s the same story for any kind of service that’s subject to DMA.
Yes but this is a multi billion dollar company and the base integration could be as simple as opening the link and it doesn't even have to link to the correct place. They can have the ui make clear that it's a generic link to another map site. Although I just figured out how to link to something with a query text on bing in a minute: https://www.bing.com/maps?q=USA The exact same thing works on kagi.com/maps btw. So I don't think that this is too much to ask for, I rather think that they are trying to create pressure on the EU.
> it doesn't even have to link to the correct place.
That's an obvious DMA violation. You can't preference your own service over others, like when you link to the exact pin on your service but just the general area on another.
They already commit a DMA violation by showing any google map at all then. It's not rocket science to conform to the spirit of the law, if they offer a simple API for other map providers to provide their own strings to google it will be solved in a day. They clearly just don't want to actually advertise other mapping providers for free which is something I understand fully btw. But the way they are currently doing it is actively hurting them because I hate how I can't jump to any map from the searc results now.
Google does a million things that cost money, every day. But this particular thing costing money is a problem. How about no.
If you do all the things that cost money, you can suddenly find yourself not being the big company anymore.
They don't want to link to their competition, so they'd rather not link to their own service and if users complain they tell them to complain to the EU.
That's Google's fault. They could offer an api for other map providers to be displayed.
Typical US centric reporting. “EU tech market” == US companies’ ability to make a profit in EU
It seems to hinge on extrapolating from Apple not doing AI in the EU that NVidia might leave the market, harming Mistral.
Why would Nvidia leave the market?
Unspecified future boogeyman AI regulations. Or antitrust which Nvidia is already being investigated for.
Realistically Nvidia did not leave China and they will not leave Europe.
which doesn't make any sense, b/c afaik almost here AI regulations impact usage etc, not chip makers.
Some people are calling for GPUs to be nerfed but that's fringe at this point. If you wanted to create the most extreme strawman of EU regulation possible... maybe that's one example you'd come up with.
Even with nerfed gpus why would nvidia leave? I mean they sell lots of nerfed gpus to china
Beats me, and the article also doesn't back that up at all, other than that Apple skipped a feature in the EU.
CUDA being viewed as anticompetitive by French regulators (source: the article).
CUDA is also viewed as anticompetitive by HN. Lots and lots of discussion about Nvidia's moat and how AMD could or can't break in. It's just here in the thread about regulation that some people suddenly forget.
Who said AMD couldn't break in? As far as I know, the HN consensus is that they never bothered to try.
You seem to have confused "tech market" with "tech industry".
IDK, are local products and products from elsewhere other than US are not meant when one says "european tech market"?
The title says the market is in danger of going out of existence, and the article solely mentions a handful of big US companies AFAICT.
Or maybe it's a dig at Europe for having large parts of its market dominated by US companies, and I'm missing that.
The market is defined by the buyers, not the sellers.
Same. I didn't see any explanation or example about "poorly designed" or "leave". And yes Vision Pro is completely irrelevant and very confusing. To me the entire article is just a well-formatted rant adapted from a random reddit post.
I’m living in Europe, I'm deeply disappointed by the current situation. The problems run much deeper than just regulations; they extend far beyond politics.
1. VCs outright avoid investing in deep tech, with only rare exceptions.
2. Founders overwhelmingly choose to build small, sustainable companies, steering clear of big tech.
3. Employees consistently prefer consulting jobs and value vacation days over equity.
4. The bureaucracy startups face when incorporating or raising funds is staggering (Germany, I'm looking at you).
While this may seem beneficial from a social perspective, it creates the worst possible environment for tech startups. I have immense respect for the few European startups that manage to survive and thrive despite these obstacles.
Fair enough. Unless I misunderstood your point it sounds like, what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives. Isn't that the entire point of life? I can see why general population might support it, while us techies would be pushing for deregulation and less of work-life balance. So my understanding of these articles is "it might be bad in a long term!", but Europe is still big enough market for all these companies eventually bend over backwards to get access to it.
Again, really no skin in the game, as I don't live there and I only have limited amount of perspective, which comes from my European resident non-techie friends.
I think a lot of the complaining on HN comes from the engineers themselves. "Ugh," they say, "We have to write all of this boring code to comply with regulations, rather than writing exciting features!" I see it a little differently. As someone who's spent a good part of the last 6-8 years working on GDPR and DMA compliance projects, the way I look at it is: "We are finally making our product better for users, working on privacy improvements that our companies have opposed until it was forced on them." EU-led regulation has been a great engineering opportunity and a product forcing-function.
Europe is an amazing place, which is why I moved here in the first place. But for techies, it can be pretty challenging. The issue isn't with the techies themselves, though. The problem is that the environment here holds back big tech, making Europe heavily dependent on the US.
The mistake is making oneself dependent on big tech in the first place.
Comfortable stagnation is not a stable state for a society.
> what you guys have right now is good for people and their lives
Let's see how long it lasts, Europe's economy is terrible and their people are significantly poorer. I don't think their current welfare state is sustainable without tax revenue from large businesses. Eventually every European citizen will be a waiter, hotel staff, or a tour guide.
how is europe's economy terrible? by what metric? considering that the EU still has a very large part of the global economy, especially compared to its population and size.
Also, the tech industry is not the only part of the economy. large parts of the EU are absolutely massive in terms of industrial machinery and scientific companies.
People on HN always seem to forget that a lot of money can be made by making something very high end which solves a specific problem, no matter if it is sexy or not.
40 years ago Europe (without former Warsaw Pact countries) accounted for 25% of global trade. These days it's ~12% and dropping. Since 2008 there is no meaningful GDP growth (1-2%) whereas US and China exploded in that time. India is on track to surpass EU by 2050. All that will be left is a large open-air museum.
India, a country with 1.4 billion people and growing, overtaking the EU with 0.44 billion people in 26 years (!) isn’t the flex you think it is.
It's not about flexing, it's about the diminishing importance of EU in the world. It doesn't matter if EU still has a better GDP PPP if India ends up with a bigger GDP overall as you are only as important as you have in the bank internationally. Competing for resources would then flip in favor of India; EU burning bridges with Russia sending it to China's orbit will likely accelerate the process as well.
Of course the influence of the EU will diminish over time, because they are currently very strong. It would be very weird if the Asian countries wouldn’t catch up, which automatically lets the EU have a smaller proportion of global trade. Guess what, at some point, India and china will also overtake the US. Is that shocking to you? That’s just what happens when absolutely massive countries catch up to everyone else.
US has fewer inhabitants than EU (342M vs 449M) yet keeps up with China economically in absolute terms.
And you think they will manage to keep up in the future? You don’t think china will be 1.5x the US in 26 years?
The point is that since 2008 US was able to keep up with rapidly expanding China whereas EU stood still. We are discussing future of EU here.
In what way was the US able to keep up with china? The GDP chart google shows has a factor of 3.2 for 2008 and 1.4 for 2022 when comparing the US to china. If you seriously think the EU falling back behind china is a EU problem, I don’t know what to tell you. It might happen at a different speed but it’s only a matter of time before china takes over the US.
Yeah, but the pie did not remain the same and Europe's slice shrunk. Some parts of the pie just grew faster. It doesn't mean Europe went backwards
Now imagine we are talking about companies: "We grew just our competitors grew 4x as much as we did." - that would be a prime candidate for an acquisition or being labeled a "zombie company" in a few years due to exponential growth effects.
That’s exactly what happens to every large company. At some point, growth is limited. You think google grows as fast as Kagi? Should google be concerned because kagi managed to 10x their users in the past year (made up figure, you get the point) and they didn’t?
Maybe terrible is too strong but the trajectory is not great: https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/07/25/germanys-busine...?
well, lets not forget what happened since the start of 2022...
the invasion of ukraine has a major impact on the european economy, but that has very little to do with the article in question...
You have a weird definition of “terrible”. How much EU taxes are being paid by Apple, Meta, Google, etc?
We pay more than enough taxes in Europe.
I thought that tech companies working in Europe take advantage of Irish/Dutch laws and skip taxes almost entirely. Is that outdated?
We do, but Apple, Meta, and Google don't.
Poorer is debatable. Ppl in eu usually can afford going to a hospital or going to school/uni- for us it isn't that straightforward
And saying eventually everyone will cater to tourism is peak us ignorance. The tourism sector in eu is fairly small, even in the (over) touristic italy. Just the fact you mentioned this leads me to think you are an ignorant american that likes how people suffer from being poor and being exploited by big corpos...
from a personal and social perspective, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, even in the EU we still ahve a lot of BS startups. We imo need more sustainable businesses, that value actual societal value/value to consumers or businesses over growth and shareholder value.
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Regulation can be good. For example car sector and expanding car centric infra including erasing old towns killed a lot more ppl and had a huge environmental impact in us compared to eu where this sector was more regulated. So long term the suffering got bigger in us compared to eu because us had poor regulation and poor decision makers
This seems like a very socialistic perspective to me, which might not align well with big tech and innovation. I suggest re-reading "Atlas Shrugged" for this topic.
We should definitely take the word of an infamous welfare queen (Ayn Rand) on how to run society, indeed
not an argument
Neither is recommending a piece of fiction.
It doesn't sound at all like the workers owning the means of production.
>I suggest re-reading "Atlas Shrugged" for this topic.
Ah yes, that's the problem. We all need to read and subscribe to the ideology of Ayn Rand, then we'd understand and everything would be better!
Wait, these are problems? Other than #4 they all sound like good things.
A working base that values vacation days over equity doesn’t sound like a place I’d want to start a business.
And I’m not the only one. Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.
> Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.
That's what trial periods are for, within the first 1-12 months (depending on position and sector) you can very easily get rid of employees. That's when you're supposed to evaluate their performance and fit.
And if they don't do their job afterwards you reprimand them and they can then be fired for cause if you have actual causes.
I find it the other way- lots of contracting roles in europe coming from US/Switzerland. There are also many roles coming from different eu countries to other eu countries. In other words it doesn't seem to have such a big impact
Germany's position in context is at least understandable: the Mittelstand is a force to be reckoned with, and that entire segment of Germany's trade system is extremely averse to risk. (It's also a lot of other things, part of which can be witnessed by hopping the border to Switzerland and reading through the platform for their self-proclaimed "Partei des Mittelstandes.")
The real fundamental issue is VCs, which as you pointed out, are far more adventurous in America.
On the contrary, I see the VC influence on American tech has been incredibly destructive. No one builds companies or products or services to last. Everyone is only in it for the quick buck. Basically every service provided by big tech has turned into a chase to cover it with ads and seek as much rent as possible while never actually improving anything. The state of software has gone downhill precipitously in the past decade and it’s only getting worse as VCs gain more and more control over the entire economy from housing to education to financial services to insurance.
"... seek as much rent as possible ..." I think this is sorely understated in the context of understanding Europe's regulatory environment vis-à-vis American big tech companies or targeted advertising-supported (read: personal data mining) software startups.
We need to remember that Europe is the continent that gave us extractive colonialism. A player always knows their own game.
Unfortunately true, but one can also think that it’s a consequence and not the root cause. Why VC should invest if the environment isn’t supportive? A vicious circle :)
to give a different perspective,
why are VC's somehow the cause of "tech industry"? this seems like a very US perspective on tech in general.
Also, VC's in the US have another large advantage. Very, very cheap money because the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency compared to the euro and other currencies.
> why are VC's somehow the cause of "tech industry"
Who else will give private capital for what is purely an idea?
Not Banks giving a business loan - they will demand interest at the current interest rate.
Not Private Equity - they only move private capital into public companies or late stage private companies
Not Hedge Funds - they only deploy capital into public markets
Not Growth Funds - they only deploy capital into late stage companies
The only funds that will deploy private capital into early stage companies are Angel Investors and VC Funds.
> this seems like a very US perspective on tech in general
Israel, India, China, UK, Russia (pre-2022), Ukraine (pre-2022), and ASEAN all developed a VC scene similar to the American scene.
Yet mainland West European investors are nowhere near as dynamic.
If the Western European market was more dynamic, Spotify would not have moved to NYC, Ghodsi would have founded Databricks in Stockholm instead of San Francisco, and Datadog would have remained a purely French company instead of moving most of hiring from Product Leadership to HR to the US a decade ago.
While you can mention ASML, the only reason ASML/Phillips even has EUV IP is because the US Government gave it to them instead of Canon or Nikon due to anti-trust reasons in the early 2000s and can very easily revoke IP access if prodded.
> Very, very cheap money because the status of the US dollar as a reserve currency compared to the euro and other currencies
Then why do high interest rate Israel, India, and China continue to have fairly robust VC scenes despite having high interest rates and currency controls and/or relatively illiquid currency markets?
The reality is "cheap money" as in interest rates don't really matter for early stage funding. Indtutional investors always leave some money on the side for VC funding as a diversification tool.
The difference is American, Israeli, Indian, Chinese, and ASEAN institutional investors will try to fund local VCs to build a local ecosystem, but Western European ones will just hand that money to an American, Israeli, Indian, or Chinese VC instead.
The VCs ask you to relocate to the bay area if you want money. People go where the money is.
UK tried to have a "silicon roundabout" and attract VC investment, but then Brexit happened and the allure of English-speaking entry point into the EU market has disappeared.
Europe has missed out on the craze of getting millions to build an Uber for Cats.
Just paid articles trying to push their agenda.
We have no tech sector in europe. As soon as a company has more than 6 developers it gets bought by a USA company (that's a slight exaggeration, not by much).
That's not a slight exaggeration, it's a huge exaggeration to try to make your point valid.
Try to find a job as a software developer in europe in a company with more than 50 developers that isn't foreign owned.
How would this change what I've said and you've said? Instead of providing real stats you just throw random affirmations and expect people to believe them
Just curious what their agenda can be…
FBs agenda? Be able to do whatever they want without paying taxes basically.
Yes, it’s exactly what is needed in EU. Especially now as we can’t trust in trans-Atlantic relations. EU will go with own tech and military 100%
I don't think big-tech companies exiting is a bad thing. They're so used to getting their own way and making the rules that it's probably signal that Europe is on the right track.
Pretty much these articles from FP are notorious for their poor journalism and just a mouthpiece for billionaires
In fact a huge chunk of American MSM is turning out to be unreliable and quick to deceive its readers who are still stuck in the "why would they lie to us".
Europe is doing a good job and as are more sovereign countries waking up to the techno-colonialism at play.
If Google or Facebook is in your country, they do not share your country's interest and instead pushing their own American ideologies.
More and more countries should reject American tech companies that seek to interfere and spread their fcked up ideologies in the host country.
> If Google or Facebook is in your country, they do not share your country's interest and instead pushing their own American ideologies.
> More and more countries should reject American tech companies that seek to interfere and spread their fcked up ideologies in the host country.
I'd go father: even in America they don't share their country's interest and instead are pushing their own Silicon Valley ideologies (e.g. they're all for solving problems, only so long as the solution means using more of their products, making them even more money, etc.).
to be exact, San Francisco ideology shaped by the images of their limitless compassion now spreading world wide and raising questions.
> to be exact, San Francisco ideology shaped by the images of their limitless compassion now spreading world wide and raising questions.
Are you talking about the homeless encampments? I suppose that's another part of it.
But I was thinking about the ideology that says that more computerization (and less friction) is always more better. Basically, "We care about teen mental health, just as long as those teens are still glued all day to Instagram, even if Instagram itself is the problem."
I don't think (orphan grinding machines) exiting is a bad thing. They're so used to getting their own way and making the rules that it's probably signal that Europe is on the right track.
Tech sector pretending that the regulations that worked in all the other sectors don't and won't apply to them or they will upend the human civilization.
The real problem is that the requirements for a social platform are getting very onerous, to the point that it takes at least several engineers working full time on the problem.
That really hurts a startup's ability to initially launch in the market, especially one with less VC money. (Certain BigCo new products can be thought of as a startup too, with limited budgets.)
This doesn't just affect social media companies, it affects almost any product where a user can upload data, or any product with a social feature, no matter how peripheral the feature is.
Turns out that's a wide swathe of technology, and that social features are fairly valuable.
Of course the big companies will eventually get around to launching in Europe anyway, it will just trail behind the rest of the world.
This can be said about any regulation that makes it more difficult to deliver a product. Are food safety regulations "onerous" because the food company has to hire several people to ensure their food is safe? A food startup who can't afford to hire those people might argue that they are at a disadvantage and therefore the regulations are onerous and favor large companies.
>A food startup who can't afford to hire those people might argue that they are at a disadvantage and therefore the regulations are onerous and favor large companies.
That is literally the point of food regulations.
They are not prescriptive but descriptive.
No regulation says 'make food with >100 E-coli per KG' it always says 'use stainless steel table, no smaller than 2mx1m, in a well ventilated room of size...'.
> The real problem is that the requirements for a social platform are getting very onerous, to the point that it takes at least several engineers working full time on the problem.
There are only 19 companies in the world that are required to comply with the strict rules. I think they can pay those "several engineers" from the money they make in EU. This is not about startups, and this is not about launching.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act#Large_onl...
Most, if not all this kind of EU regulation has size limits, usually several steps between small startups with a small number of users, up to the size of gatekeeper platforms. There aren't many startups that start off as a gatekeeper since there is only six companies in the world that has that definition (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft).
Is that true though? Are there any 5-person startups with < 10k users getting sued/shutdown by this regulation?
That data point is very hard to provide any evidence for, and not sufficient to draw any conclusions from. For example, what if the company was never started? What if they pivoted after speaking to a lawyer?
> Criteria relating to the size of the companies: (a) a turnover of the company of at least 7.5 billion euro in the European Economic Area for three years at least or (b) a market capitalization or equivalent of at least 75 billion euro;
> Criteria relating to the place of the company in controlling access of other businesses to final customers: the company needs to have (a) more than 45 million monthly active end users in the EU and (b) more than 10,000 yearly active business in the EU;
> "An entrenched durable position" which is a qualitative criterion which the regulator considers met if the numbers of active users in the second criterion are met for three years in a row.
It is indeed very hard to find evidence that DMA does not affect startups, if you don't want to find that evidence.
You're seriously arguing that a startup founder would think "well, when I get to a 75 billion euro valuation, there will be some cumbersome rules, so I might as well not start anything"???
Sure, but those quantitative criterion were not met by iPadOS, and the EC just said "nah, we gots the feelz" and declared it a gatekeeper platform anyway.
Who is to say they won't decide that a 6 person startup with 10 users doesn't qualify?
This is a clear example of slippery slope fallacy.
Frankly I'm not very convinced by that -- it seems that most social networks are already killed by winner-takes-all SV companies buying-out any possible threat.
The situation in America is an absolute nightmare with data being sold through all sorts of mechanisms with zero oversight (your ISP, your car, most apps on your phone, whoever does your credit scores) -- I'm sure there's some way to make successful tech that isn't the hellscape America has.
Which regulations are you referring to? Do those not apply just to those that have managed to obtain a dominant role, ie not startups entering the market?
The requirements for social platforms are just becoming more inline with all other industries. The period of special treatment is over. The era of, “If it’s on social media then no one is liable for this content or the harm it may cause, but also I can still monetize it,” is over.
It is a welcome change, but not for those who mean to exploit the special status that “social media” and “apps” have been given all these years.
In other words - classic regulatory capture.
Because the EU values their citizens privacy tech may leave. Personally I could live with that if that is the result of my privacy being protected.
> Otherwise businesses have no ability to plan for the future and investment stops.
And then there is a 'chat control' every year pushed relentlessly. Thus no, not at all. EU doesn't value citizens privacy.
The EU commission (made of elected statesmen from all over the EU) is free to propose as many laws as it wants, but these things never have broad appeal and do not pass parliament (the MEPs we directly elect).
Chat control keeps being proposed by the same Swedish politician, and she will continue to do so and she will continue to fail- because politicians in the EU are already aware its stupid.
You are wrong, most MEPs know that this will break encryption and are more than happy to go for the ride because they have exempted themselves from such regulation. Surveillance for thee not for me.
Chat control is not just the love child from the Swedish politician, it is being pushed by US surveillance companies that convinced the commission members that CP can be detected and stopped only if Europol has access to all your messages, emails, photos and videos until the end of time without having any recourse as to what it will be used for or by whom it will be viewed.
Then there is also Chat Control V1 which is currently extended each year despite being a temporary measure supposedly. Then there is also the data retention directive which everyone knows was illegal to start with and took 10 years to be overturned.
The fact that people still associate EU with privacy is a joke. The EU wants your data just like Meta and Apple or Google. At least Meta is not trying to gaslight me into thinking that giving my data is to save the children or some other complete BS reason.
How do you reason your thinking with the fact that the EU created GDPR?
The EU laws typically fall on the side of promoting privacy and protecting citizens against large multinational organisations (criminal and legitimate).
There is a need for greater powers to prevent crime, but nobody is going to weaken privacy for it. The most likely outcome is a centralised interpol-esque database to track and track suspects more quickly. Right now its very easy for criminals to just change hosting region and the investigating national police have no jurisdiction to do anything. It’s a large issue.
That is not what Chat control is. Chat Control is live analysis of all your messages/emails/photos and videos.
Chat Control breaks encryption because it wants to snoop on the messages/photos before being encrypted EtoE by the messaging providers.
There is no need for greater powers to prevent crime. It has been determined that there isn't enough funding to investigate the crimes reported already and now this system is supposed to report even more crime at the price of my privacy.
I could see potentially a system where known suspects are targeted specifically but in this case, everybody is a suspect. What happened to presumption of innocence?
The fact of the matter is that chat control is the digital Stasi, always listening to your conversations, analyzing your messages. God forbid the algorithm flags your innocent picture wrongly.
Is this the future we want?
Chat control still has not passed, and GDPR arguably contains a few articles in favor of citizens privacy. I wouldn't say "not at all".
If the EU cares about its citizen's privacy why does it do everything in its power to spy on its own citizens?
Are you talking about the "Chat Control" that keeps on getting shut down?
It was not shut down, it will certainly come. The DSA is another tool that is already in effect. Bit by bit all the pieces of a surveillance state are coming together in the EU.
It's socialism versus capitalism at its finest. The problem is that socialism risks regulating big tech out of existence. Is that an issue? Absolutely. By stifling big tech, Europe becomes heavily dependent on the US, which ultimately hurts our quality of life. As an entrepreneur living in Europe, the best thing you can do is move to the US.
I'm not sure I follow. The incumbent capital class is driving policy decisions around this. Where's the socialism?
i don't think you know what socialism means if this is your interpretation.
Lets not forget that half of the EU actually lived under a quasi socialist regime not that long ago...
Not only the tech market, they're on a pace in destroying the agricultural market as well. Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.
That’s already happened in the US without regulation, little farms don’t stand a chance against giant agribusinesses which may not even be US owned (largest pork producer is owned by Chinese) . In fact regulation is probably preventing it from happening faster in the EU.
what are you talking about bro the US has tons of farming regulation haha
Fair point I was comparing US to EU.
the agriculture market relies heavily on goverment intervention to even exist.
The EU and its member states give out huge subsidies to keep food production local in the EU without being completely destroyed by cheaper crops from third world countries.
The US does the same, and it is for good reason, to actually make sure a steady food supply exists inside the country/union.
American agriculture already went down that path. This might be a global pattern following the adoption of improved technology. Is there a reason to believe otherwise in the case of Europe? Or maybe it's a multifaceted phenomenon.
When it comes to commodity staple foods there's just no way that small farms can survive. It isn't realistic given advances in technology and economies of scale. This isn't a problem, it's just inevitable. Small farms that want to remain independent will have to switch from commodities to specialty foods that command higher profit margins.
For agriculture at large I wonder if that's not going to be the final economic state everywhere in the world, regardless of government. That's just more efficient. Is there anywhere in the world where this trend is reversing and looking healthy?
It's literal Econ 101 that economies of scale push towards monopolization. It's why we used to have anti-trust laws in the US.
Unless you only look at the financial side of things, and only from the perspective of the larger corps benefiting from this trend, it's not healthy at all.
I'm asking for counterexamples which are healthy. What is the leading example in your mind?
There's this new book called The Grapes of Wrath that might interest you.
That’s not destroying it, that’s saving it from the doldrums of inefficiency and requiring masses of people focused on food production.
Not advocating for it but it's called economies of scale and it's happening in every country including mine (Australia)
So making agricultural markets orders of magnitudes more efficient is destroying it in your view?
>> Small, medium size farmers are disappearing fast, they quit or at best being absorbed by large farmcorps.
> So making agricultural markets orders of magnitudes more efficient is destroying it in your view?
Yes, of course it is.
It's like replacing families by hell called a "System" - wet dream of the eg. leftists.
It literaly destroy "market" becouse producers side disappear and you have just institution :)
It destroys it becouse no one know how or want to do that hard agriculture business. People will just prefer to sit in slums around big cities. What they can do anyway if everything is not big but giant ? How to buy such area ? How to even learn what to do with it ?? How to acquire buyers if you even get that giant area LOL ? And if it to big for one man or family how to get enough workers (why they even wanted to live slums ? how they even learn what to do??) ??
That giant and efficient (in one dimension) thing just extend himself into lack of self-sufficiency on multigeneration time scale.
Monoculture becose it's cheaper ? :>
Product quality ??? Compare to XO brandy, champagne or artisanal leather wallets. Not to boxed milk with "not yet discovered" PFASes or future "improvements".
Food security in case of war or invasion ? Or mass drone invasion ? Without small and medium agriculture you have nowhere to run. And why to even run - do one giant owner will take multiple ex-bigcity refugees to his home (and feed them few months) or just hire security to shot them or scary of his land ?
And even if giant owner want to help he can't. Becouse hi is only one. Compare to many small/farms - they are somehow just "human" and humanity sized...
Don Corleone was planting tomatoes at the end ;)
I met few peoples that when stopped to be young just moved to province and started peacefull living of the land. Giant farms are a no go for that purposes.
And yes, eg. China builds piggeries and cowsheds town-sized now. Now imagine one case of some-flue in that "town" - best case... And suddenly millions have prices hike or are starving. Or Africa countries get very cheap but toxic meat. Or animal food. Eg. with prions included...
And all of that are just real world facts and "technicals". Now add greeeeed by "lawful" owners. Tell me - is that hypothetical ? \s You easily can write long replay or tree of them just on that subject :>
Corect way is to not build hell on earth in the first place.
Is it time for our 'tech companies complaining about EU regulation' article again? Must be a day ending in Y.
Europe is correct.Taking initiative on the moonlighting of hyper cheating of common citizens by big tech firms.It is investing all conceptual strength on wayward money making by the four tech "giants" at the cost if people.They act as sentinels and gatekeeoers to prevent cheats from secret money making.
No, it's not.
This is a not-so-thinly veiled argument for deregulation and rolling back consumer protections, pretty much like the US. It's common to use scare tactics when it comes to regulations and taxes. "Companies will leave". "You're killing companies".
As long as the EU has 400+ million consumers and they have spending power a market will exist and companies will adapt.
Take the example from the article of CUDA being a monopoly. Well, NVidia obviously isn't a European company but it will comply if the EU forces them to open CUDA because the alternative is to close themselves off to Europe. That's never going to happen.
Stop believing this "companies will leave" propaganda.
Could articles like this bemoaning Europe's state of regulation be opinion pieces?
What if what Europe does is a good idea for the people but just inconvenient for companies?
Europe is one of the power houses of the world but with low self-esteem I am afraid. In the long term what matters is the people's quality of life and diversity.
Take China or the US: if a lot of people don't have purchasing power and leisure who are then buying stuff for themselves as end users?
>In the long term what matters is the people's quality of life and diversity.
I think you'll be surprised to find out just how many Europeans disagree with the diversity part. We are quite close to ethno-state Europe, just like how it was between 1800 and 1950.
Ask a European what they think of Gypsies for a wild time.
> Could articles like this bemoaning Europe's state of regulation be opinion pieces?
I agree with the broader idea that a lot of this stuff is PR from vested interests, but this case it's not really secret, since the news outlet categorizes it as:
> Argument - An expert's point of view on a current event.
> What if what Europe does is a good idea for the people but just inconvenient for companies?
Thats exactly the issue. What's good for Europeans isn't so good for American corporations.
Already populist presidents in America have signaled they don't care about Europe so why should Europeans nurture and allow a hostile country continue to operate in their lands?
This type of outrage from American MSM is quite baffling. Whether their billionaires like it or not countries are going their own way and the biggest slap in the face is that those billionaires do not even live in America.
Are you under the impression that people in the US don't have purchasing power?
Also, Europe is a power house right now, but won't be a generation from now if trends continue. All forms of power are built on economic power or are a means to get economic power.
As an European, I heard that 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. I don't think our laws should focus on tech companies' freedom since it doesn't seem to improve the people's lives.
No need to "hear." This is easily Googled.
Americans have the highest level of disposable income in the world, and it's not even close. Even Europe's mega-rich tax havens like Luxembourg have a lower disposable income than Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
Yea I know the rebuttal--"but I also heard they all have $100,000 hospital bills every year!!" The disposable per capita income numbers already account for healthcare expenditures.
You used the term "highest level of disposable income in the world".
Sorry to be so blunt, but it's not helpful if you look only at the average.
A better metric would be the median because it is well known that the super rich distort the disposable income in some countries (the US, but also some European countries).
I see in plutocraticish environments the rich and powerful sometimes very deftfully prevent measures inconvenient for Corporate but useful for the weaker part of the population.
I admit this also happens in Europe. But somehow it is just easier to live as a poorish person in many European countries.
Not sure if you checked the link, Wikipedia has both Mean equivalised and Median equivalised charts.
Americans rank #1 on both mean and median. So the point about the super rich distorting the mean is irrelevant.
> But somehow it is just easier to live as a poorish person in many European countries.
Perception and narratives are not reality. In fact, typically in economic matters it takes almost a decade for the public narrative to shift to match the reality of the numbers. Even if reality is right there in the data.
This is why bubbles usually go on for much longer than the "smart" people think they will. Look at any of Fama-French research; momentum is the strongest inefficiency in virtually all markets.
The other thing is - though US median performance is high and average performance is much higher - it's not just a couple of billionaires pulling up that average.
It's millionaires - tens of millions of them.
There's something special about a system that can create so many extremely successful people.
It does so by creating equally as many incredibly miserable people. Homelessness is rampant on the US and the average American is one health emergency away from poverty. That's also the same country well known for saddling college students with life-crippling debts.
Not sure where that stat comes from - median wealth in the USA compares extremely favourably with the rest of the world, while the average blows everyone except Switzerland out of the water.
Also, living paycheck to paycheck != being poor. There are many people with high incomes but poor budgeting who live paycheck to paycheck, but will realistically be just fine if they have to tighten their braces.
That's partly because they aren't protected sufficiently from Corporate cleverly using psychological and other tricks to empty the pockets.
> As an European, I heard that 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck
Yes, and we all declare bankruptcy every month, and charge $10,000 to our credit card to be allowed into the doctor's waiting room, where we announce our arrival by firing a gun in the air.
Where do you guys hear this stuff?
The numbers are debatable as usual but they're not taken from thin air
> A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. In other words, more than three-quarters of Americans struggle to save or invest after paying for their monthly expenses.
> Similarly, a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey revealed that nearly 70% of respondents either identified as living paycheck to paycheck (40%) or—even more concerning—reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses (29%).
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-pa...
The numbers are debatable as usual but they're not taken from thin air
> A 2023 survey conducted by Payroll.org highlighted that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, a 6% increase from the previous year. In other words, more than three-quarters of Americans struggle to save or invest after paying for their monthly expenses.
> Similarly, a 2023 Forbes Advisor survey revealed that nearly 70% of respondents either identified as living paycheck to paycheck (40%) or—even more concerning—reported that their income doesn’t even cover their standard expenses (29%).
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-pa...
Before you can innovate you need to level the playing field.
Sure at the moment the amount of inner European Innovation in digital technologies is low, but local companies have to fight against foreign behemoths that simply disregard local regulations, or just buy the likes of Luxemburg or Ireland to get their own special law zones inside the single market.
Let the big US companies leave, the vacuum left behind will foster competition and local solutions.
The article doesn't list much in the way of tech. LLMs, social media, and advertising hegemons leaving Europe is hardly a tech flight. In fact, it sounds like a best case scenario. Someone call me when Zeiss moves out because they can't compete in Europe, and I'll be concerned Europe is actually losing something of value.
The entire article keeps saying "Europe" when it means "EU". Many European countries, including some large ones (Russia, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Ukraine...) are not EU members.
The article makes a number of questionable assertions such as "Non-personalized ads cannot economically sustain Meta’s services". I do not know whether that is true or not. Apple has a history of malicious so. I think there are multiple reasons the US dominates tech, and I do not believe "the EU’s rules all but ensure there are no comparably successful European companies". There are many successful European tech companies, as the article mentions later on (it links to a list of the largest that is clearly out of date - for example that omits ARM).
I also disagree with its analysis of why. If you look at their list of large tech companies, and there are a lot of Chinese ones which largely exist because China was protectionist and favoured domestic over US companies. I would argue, if anything, the EU (and other European companies) have not regulated American companies enough, to produce their own competitors. In particular they rarely block takeovers by established players of potential future competitors.
I agree the EU's approach to regulation is often badly flawed, but the DMA seems to be a reasonable approach - as other comments have said it only targets businesses with a lot of market power.
Tech is more than social networks though
Yeah, it's advertising too.
The article seems unfounded to me. We need regulation because companies are gaining more power, money, and data. Social networks are shaping entire societies to behave in different ways. Android is able to comply with these rules when implementing AI why not Apple? Late? Poor implementation? . However, I hope that movements like this will push the EU to create conditions and finance channels to enable competition in the tech space. I agree that Europe is lagging more and more behind, but Apple not releasing their products here is not the problem. Not having big tech companies is the problem
It’s probably smarter to only kick-in regulations after certain size thresholds are met. You can definitely strangle an organization with paperwork before it even has enough money to hire people to do the paperwork.
That's the case for most, if not all, of the new European regulations, such as the Digital Markets Act. The number of companies to which it applies can be counted on your hands, and they all have tens of billions of dollars of revenue.
Each country may have its own regulations though, which makes it difficult, because not all of them are threshold based.
I don't think safely handling data subject's data for example is something that should start only from a certain size.
Let's only make the small bridges unsafe?
Like the gatekeeper designation in the DMA, or the threshold for assigning a data privacy officer in GDPR, you mean?
If your company requires removing privacy laws and measures to stifle anti-competitive behavior, then by all means leave. I don’t want to live in a technological dystopia just to be “cutting edge”
Funny how any effort to limit Big Tech’s ability to do whatever they want is seen as a negative thing.
IMHO attention to privacy and privacy regulations will help make Europe the leader in privacy-respecting services.
One of the clearest examples of this to me is the requirement to show consent to store cookies. This just simply ruined web surfing experience, where now every site has to show a popup of all kinds of shapes and forms.
Why not let the users decide in whole-sale, if they wish? like with this extension - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/accept-all-cookies/...
AFAIK there is no general requirement to ask for consent. For example, to store session tokens or language preferences. A lot of sites probably wouldn't have to show cookie consent prompts, if they don't share profiling data with third parties or do other shady stuff, but still show them because they're afraid of doing it wrong or because everybody else seems to be doing it. It's been a while since I read the text of the law, but I remember thinking that the line from which consent was required seemed reasonably drawn and that websites who cross it are right to be forced to declare what exactly they do. There was a post about this recently, titled something like "there is no cookie banner law".
An option for a general setting may be nice. I personally approximate it by only accepting cookies from whitelisted domains, and using ad blocking filter lists to hide cookie consent prompts.
Forcing global firms to leave is GOOD actually, but EU have essentially no domestic tech markets: most part of the ruling elite have no idea about IT and while they have made many wise choice in theory (eIDAS, e-billings, certified signed emails and so on) the implementation is obscene and mostly done on the shoulders of non-EU firms by not really competent local developers and the result is a practical MESS. All other the EU we almost have smart-card nfc IDs but using them is a pain because of crappy proprietary middlewaren and crapplications even more crappy on top, with public services designed by some mentally ill child with a keyboard. We have public accurate maps of the territory and no unified public way to access them, there is no public common conferencing decentralized/federated infra, some public body offer Big Blue Button or Jitsi meet based infra, others choose some USA private firm. Public money, public code is told everywhere but only told in most of the cases.
The sole way we can fill the gap is MANDATE FLOSS, publicly funding existing FLOSS projects and offering them all the infra through public universities and research bodies to create an EU-FLOSS ecosystem because that's the future we need, where once spread everywhere (desktops, smartphones, cars, domestic IoT etc) will allow private sector to pick and evolve individual ideas. This is the European way and we know it works, IF DONE. Unfortunately most fails to understand IT at all so it's not done, simply. As a result no digital sovereignty is possible on scale.
This is silly. So a bunch of American companies are refusing to go along with EU regulations that cramp their own monopolistic style. That doesn’t mean they are killing the local tech market.
Is the local tech market alive?
I'm curious on why European people allow such heavy regulation. They really think that the Europe can enjoy their prosperity with little innovation for years to come?
Well. The laws are made up by a non elected commission. And these people don’t give a shit about what the people think.
Governments that don’t toe the line to what the commission want get pressured into ultimately complying.
The bills are voted in the law by the democratically elected Members of the European Parliament and the democratically elected governments in the Council of the European Union.
(And the Commission itself often gets its mandate for writing bills from the European Parliament, the Council of the EU or the European Council.)
I agree -- these comments are bizarre to me. Technology is the single biggest predictor of QoL in human history.
You can only miss out on so many Industrial Revolutions before you begin to lose power (economic, military, financial, social) and fade into irrelevancy. That will certainly hurt QoL more than any short-term gain from preventing Memoji AI from existing in your region, or strangling your next AI startup in the cradle.
The comments here seem ignorant of how regulations in the EU have become and what the dynamic is. Regulation is being lionized [0] as a political badge of honor, and as TFA shows, things are getting ridiculous: it is not enough that you can a) not use facebook, b) pay for it, or c) consent to let them use your data -- you MUST have d) use facebook for free without letting them use your data. In other words, socialist values must be upheld by corporations, now everyone must be able to avail of your product at no cost, to be subsidized by the wealthy, which in this case is the corporation itself! Of course businesses are just going to stop operating in this environment!
The comments here seem blind to this simple calculus. Then they will say, "nothing of value was lost": then think who is the arbitrator of value here? It is clearly not the consumer*, but the consumer's nanny. Was something of value lost in that philosophy? No? Perhaps China and North Korea are not so bad, then.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-iphone-15-usb-c-eu-malta-4240...
* Consumers vote with their wallet and their feet when it comes to products and establishments
There are too many layers of government.
We have no way to influence what our leaders do in our own governments. Go figure how much our representative in the EU parliament will be able to represent the will of the people.
Ask anyone in EU who is their country representative. They won't be able to tell you. Heck, ask who the president of the EU commission is. Nobody will be able to tell you and she's been ruining our lives for 5 years already.
MEP are just partying with the lobbyist in Bruxelles and challenging each other who can get the bigger bribe.
Here here. Well said!
And Ursula wants a never ending war for the next few generations. She loves war. No money left for innovation or for fighting climate change, which is going to be very expensive.
The headline should be corporations are in danger of criminalizing themselves out of existence.
Regulating the tech Market is great for local tech só what happens is pretty the opposite. No country will lose GDP if meta or google leave
FP tends to have pro-US spin. This article reads as propaganda attempting to protect US interests.
> Regulating the tech Market is great for local tech
Except, it is not. At least not in the situation that the EU is in. Because all regulations are a constant burden on business, small relative to big corporations, huge for medium companies and insurmountable for startups.
The EU has no big players, not a single one! We have a few medium players like SAP and that is it. So, we are already far behind and every weight we load on to drag us down is another nail in the coffin.
It's good the EU doesn't have a big player. Having big players is like having cancer. The EU has a functioning Immune system, the US is buckling under its immunu-comporomised ass. The resources ~~cancer cells~~ big players are extracting aren't going to the people.
Tech is very interconnected though, and the article points out an example where what you state is very much not true: "How would Mistral, a leading AI firm, survive if Nvidia exits the French market due to regulatory concerns?"
Would've been good if they had been able to come up with a realistic example that could be problematic, but they have not made the case at all while Nvidia would forego the EU market.
Theoretically it would just be the French market, due to: https://www.reuters.com/technology/french-antitrust-regulato...
how much of gdp is facilitated through the search abilities of meta and google, though?
Search abilities increasingly loathed for poor quality, blocked by providers, made useless by AI slop and superseded by the likes of even TikTok?
Are you just counting on others being too exhausted to bring yet another moot argument to its predetermined conclusion?
I'll finish it to save everyone some time:
A: how much of gdp is facilitated through the search abilities of meta and google, though?
B: It doesn't matter.
A: Why not?
B: There will be someone else who is willing to play by the local rules fulfilling the same function in their place, just like in many countries around the world already.
> There will be someone else who is willing to play by the local rules
Building a competitive search engine or AI model requires VC investment.
It's simply too expensive to do otherwise.
VC investment requires a vibrant startup ecosystem, well crafted regulations and a risk-tolerant culture.
> Building a competitive search engine [..] requires VC investment.
> VC investment requires a vibrant startup ecosystem, well crafted regulations and a risk-tolerant culture.
Yandex, Baidu, and many other lesser-known local-only search engines exist. There's also nothing stopping an already existing technology company from entering search. The statement is incorrect.
Meanwhile common sense tells us that obviously there's going to be investment into domestic search engines if Google voluntarily throws in the towel. Europe is a huge place and there's a lot of money to be made, even if it's merely with context-based advertising and no individual tracking.
> Building a competitive [..] AI model requires VC investment [..] and a risk-tolerant culture.
Training a large model anyways, since nobody has really figured out how to recoup that investment yet. Why are you trying to derail this from talking about search though?
lol. Kagi exists and kicks the ever-loving shit of the garbage bin that is google search.
So no, ot doesn't require VC cash to build something useful for people.
Kagi is wonderful: agreed!
> Are you just counting on others being too exhausted to bring yet another moot argument to its predetermined conclusion?
Umm, nope. I’m conjecturing that there could be an enabling aspect of huge scale, and that some smaller economies may fall below the threshold. Personally i hope what you wrote works.
Did I miss anything?
Subtitle says "Poorly designed laws are forcing global firms to leave." I didn't see anything in the article that elaborates on the "poorly designed" part or any company that is forced to leave. Instead, the article uses a number of totally irrelevant examples to argue... nothing. I am really confused.
Apparently the author founded the "Center for New Liberalism". I tried to find out how that's funded, but could only see memberships that gives access to a 700+-person Slack, and couldn't find what the dues are. Would be interested in learning more about that, if anyone knows more.
Works where archive.ph is blocked:
or It's interesting to me how the article looks great in a browser that does not auto-load resources or process CSS. But in a so-called "modern" browser, the kind worshipped by developers, the annoyance is so bad, the article is so difficult to read, that the forum moderator directs readers to use a different website. Others might not find it interesting but I do.I think it should be remembered that the personalized ads are not just valuable for ad platforms - most of the personalization value actually accrues to advertisers themselves, who basically represent the entire economy.
EU regulators think their enemy is big American tech companies, but they are hurting their domestic advertisers and domestic economies even more.
I am saying this as someone who hates seeing ads and uses adblock, but I greatly appreciate the societal value.
We should be making laws that foster competition and safety. I struggle to see how cross-site tracking and personalized advertising by itself is anti-competitive or unsafe. The bigger issues that need to be solved on these platforms are gatekeeper monopolies, social division, and mental health.
With ads there is incentive for tech companies to harvest more and more data points for advertisers to use their magic orbs to find out whether you like Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi more. This in turn leads to powerful and concerning levels of understanding of a certain individuals personality and worse, behavior, that allows them to exploit those flaws in your personality, or exploit your emotion more than a billboard ever could.
On top of this, it creates an unregulated sky-is-the-limit 3rd party economy of data brokers who will sell these bulk collections of data to whoever coughs up the money for it. Enter in governmental intelligence agencies, there now is a concern of governments either sidestepping laws on lawful intelligence collection or outright breaking them, as the NSA and FBI have already admitted too if I recall correctly.
Edit: I'd also like to say, can you imagine how the intelligence agencies would pressure their legislators during attempts of reforming data brokers? "You can't take this away! We stopped this attack from happening with this! If you take this away, you'll cause 9/11 2.0!" That's exactly what they did for the FISA re-authorization this year in the US.
Regardless, personalized ads are evil and should be banned at least for granular types. People will survive with less personalized ads but we'll avoid a lot of problems by ditching them
I think we can debate regulations being productive or not all day and either side of the camp will never agree, however my biggest personal issue is that the government is removing the choice from anyone involved. As an adult you should be able to chose for yourself - if everyone chose no, then nobody would use these services and the companies wouldn’t do it. I think the effort needs to be focused on awareness and education, not restriction.
If the average user is fine with their data being sold in exchange for a service, then why not let them?
I’m personally not okay with it and I keep my data footprint as low as I can, but I know lots of people who just do not care if they get a service in return, and are fully understanding of what that means.
> If the average user is fine with their data being sold in exchange for a service, then why not let them?
But they are not okay with it. I understand why Corporations like to insinuate that people who click OK to twenty pages of legalese in an EULA really are okay with whatever clauses in it, but in reality this practice is an abuse of contract law and exploiting asymmetric power relations. In theory, a potential customer could print EULAs out, suggest changes, and send back the revised contract for approval or further negotiation. In practice, nobody ever does that and corporations would freak out if it happened on a large scale.
The problem does not just occur with new big tech. Banks have been doing the same for decades. I recently put some money on a savings account and was greeted with pages and pages of fine print that literally only a lawyer can understand. Normally, nobody in their right mind would accept this. However, the bank serves as a utility, changing banks is very difficult where I live and they all have the same kind of contracts in their favor. There is no alternative. The same is true for social networks and other big tech. It's not really a free choice for a small business owner to have a Facebook account or for a self-published author to put their books on Amazon, for instance.
That's why strong regulations, good customer protection and privacy laws are needed.
Companies circumvent real choice all the time. Regulations prevent them from doing so. There's no equivalency here. EU has repeatedly made legislation that does something or anything to counteract the power these tech companies have over the lives of billions. The EU has an interest in serving the needs of EU citizens. Tech companies do not. Tech companies only care about their bottom line, regardless of the human or financial cost to anybody else. There is no option for individuals to do anything about these companies. That's what we need governments for.
The US has largely decided that companies shouldn't be regulated at all (particularly with the recent Supreme Court decisions). This isn't a good thing. It will not benefit the vast majority of US citizens. There is no "choice" citizens can make that will undo the unraveling of government regulations on industry/business, unless it's voting for a political party that one that will reform the Supreme Court and revert their insane decisions, a party that isn't the GOP.
Then it sounds like what you’re saying is there’s a financial market for users like you and I who would rather pay a subscription fee than our data be sold? Or an ad supported tier?
The problem with your argument is you’re removing any revenue source the company has. If you won’t pay a subscription, and you block all the ads, and they can’t sell data, how do they make money? Money is required to run the service, whether that leaves a sour taste or not.
If you think you have a financially viable model that protects data, then you should start a company on that premise, I’d genuinely love to see someone make it work.
Protection of the water we drink is a legal right. Which is why companies cannot dump waste into the river, no matter what financial impacts it has on them.
Protection of user data is a legal right, or increasingly recognized to be. Companies have no right to sell it, or misuse it, no matter what financial impacts it has on them.
Rights cannot be contracted away or sold. They are rights.
I rent my rights via a contract to certain defined aspects of my autonomy for about forty hours per week. In exchange for that I get tokens that I can exchange for food. If I couldn't contract away those rights I'd get hungry.
I'm also willing to rent my right to determine the contents of advertisements inserted into my daily news feed, for the right price. These things feel equivalent in kind to me.
What rights are you contracting away, exactly?
Usually capitalist rhetoric refers to contracting as a right in itself, muddying your point significantly.
I contract away time-slices of my human effort. I consider that I own that effort by right, and part of that ownership bundle is the right to destroy or exchange it. So it is consistent to both have a right and to trade parts of it away. It would be less of a right if I were prohibited from exchanging it for other priorities, like food.
You are saying I shouldn't be able to consent to letting someone sell my data? Can I sell my own data? How about if I shared it, would that be illegal?
> Then it sounds like what you’re saying is there’s a financial market for users like you and I who would rather pay a subscription fee than our data be sold? Or an ad supported tier?
And the vast majority of users don't deserve privacy? Nah, that's a ridiculous argument to make and I'm not going to waste my time with this line of discussion. You're not making a good faith argument. I'm not playing your stupid games.
I don’t think there’s need for anger, I’m not “playing games”. All I’m doing is pointing out that there has to be a source of revenue to run any given service - and if you remove all the sources of revenue then the service ceases to exist. Right now the only viable sources of revenue at that kind of online service scale is subscriptions, ads, or data collection and sale.
If there’s a method I’m not thinking of I’m genuinely curious what the financial model would look like.
No one is forcing you to use these services. I care very much about my privacy and only use a handful of services that respect that privacy. Stop giving your money to companies you disagree with and stop forcing your morality on others. Because all that does is set the precedent for someone to force their morality on you even if you disagree with it. That's how we get anti gay, xenophobic, extremists forcing their moral views on others.
Let people decide what is right for them.
There's plenty of interpretative room to view the above comment as honest discussion as opposed to dishonesty ("bad faith"). But now you've burned the bridge so hard why do you even bother making an argument? Just to get the last word?
One cannot unring a bell.
It's not (necessarily) about you.
When you knowingly agree to use a service that sells your data, that's fine. When you link it to Facebook and then give it access to your contacts and the name, email address, and phone number of every person you know gets sold to a company that then goes and uses that information to send personalized phishing emails and commit fraud that's a lot less fine.
At the end of the day its about liability. There are many tech companies that are responsible for harm at both the individual and societal level, and they are not held accountable.
Always hilarious reading big tech propaganda. They're trying oh so hard to convince people that, no, us harvesting every single iota of information and selling it to data brokers is progress, actually!!!
The best part, for me, is while they flail and scream about the big bad EU, Japan and India are following suit with similar laws and regulations. It's only a matter of time until more and more countries start adopting these laws, and the tears from the techbros is going to be delicious.
The website the "article" (aka paid propaganda piece) is hosted on has over 700 partners that they'd like me to consent to having my data shared with. It also completely shits itself thanks to uBlock, meaning it's made so terribly that blocking the privacy-invasive trackers they have breaks the whole site.
If this is their idea of innovation, they can keep it and shove it where the sun don't shine.
I find this extremely misleading. It's not surprising, given the average american publication is not aware of the fact that the "big tech" relies on so many obscure open source software from all around the world
What does one have to do with the other?
In my little buble hanging around the Berlin start up scene (not founder) I've never heard about complains for DMA, Ai Act etc. (only GDPr for medical stuff , but that is tackled by new laws... With less privacy).
Current stuff (other mentions): Germany's state of digitalisation and bureaucracy, investments.
So this guy clearly gives an lousy tech lobbyist .
Giving his initiative DMA is certainly pro market oriented. Why does he have a problem with it?
Well done EU and good riddance to any company that doesn't like these laws.
We have a tech market?
Europe is a place to take social benefits; there is no tech, no innovation. It's better to sit on the couch and watch Netflix than start a business. There is too much risk, too many taxes, and too many regulations.
> no innovation
So all innovation requires you to capture user's data for profit via advertisement or data brokerage?
Had to laugh at that
[flagged]
I wonder how much we are actually losing on this side of the pond with that.
Maybe it is for the best. I don't really trust those billion-dollar companies.
classic, uh, actually it's a good thing we don't have any tech scene bringing jobs and innovation!!
> innovation
Target Advertisement? Gig Economy?
Er... We have different ideas of what innovation is desirable, maybe.
How many gig workers have you actually talked to? Most massively prefer it over what they had before.
Quite a few actually.
And, no. Most I spoke to certainly did not prefer it.
This Is Good For Bitcoin!
My impression is that many if not most KDE developers are in Europe. That's some of the most useful user-facing software that exists. Most big American "tech" has essentially no utility, and is built around mindless scrolling, spying, and ads.
No utility you say? i’d argue all of this is relevant to consumers and/or businesses in europe:
• Microsoft windows
• microsoft office (excel, etc)
• google search
• google maps
• gmail and yahoo mail
• smartphones
• space-x (affordable satellite launches - for accurate weather forecasts and GPS)
• OpenAI (pioneering LLM’s from a product perspective)
• Visa and Mastercard networks
• AWS / Azure / GCP
• Adobe (photoshop, etc)
• Zoom / Webex (Skype is an exception, created in europe)
• Salesforce
• DocuSign
• AutoCAD
I can list more if you’d like…this was literally off the top of my head. All of these businesses and products were created in the united states, some with VC funding. They employ hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc. They provide critical business capabilities to businesses around the world. Some are user facing as well.
As far as critical business software Europe has created Skype, SAP, and i think that’s it? From the hardware side, major kudos for ASML and Airbus.
The stuff you read about in the news is focused on bad actors and toxic social media junk. thats a small piece of big tech.
> No utility you say? i’d argue all of this is relevant to consumers and/or businesses in europe: > > • Microsoft windows > > • microsoft office (excel, etc) > > • google search > > • google maps > > • gmail and yahoo mail > > • smartphones > > • space-x (affordable satellite launches - for accurate weather forecasts and GPS) > > • OpenAI (pioneering LLM’s from a product perspective) > > • Visa and Mastercard networks > > • AWS / Azure / GCP > > • Adobe (photoshop, etc) > > • Zoom / Webex (Skype is an exception, created in europe) > > • Salesforce > > • DocuSign > > • AutoCAD > > I can list more if you’d like…this was literally off the top of my head. All of these businesses and products were created in the united states, some with VC funding. They employ hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc. They provide critical business capabilities to businesses around the world. Some are user facing as well. > > As far as critical business software Europe has created Skype, SAP, and i think that’s it? From the hardware side, major kudos for ASML and Airbus. > > The stuff you read about in the news is focused on bad actors and toxic social media junk. thats a small piece of big tech.
Honestly, this comment inadvertently proves the need to quarantine US tech. Almost every product you listed is utter garbage, especially Windows.
There's nothing inherently better about Windows than Linux. Libre Office suit can become much better than MS Office if ot got enough suppoet - support that just goes away to M$ contracts.
Google search has become utter garbage.
Hetzner exists, and more Cloud companies would exist if it weren't for America's Big Tech having a competitive advantage due to their sheer size.
Adobe is a shit company with shit behavior. I'd welcome its implosion anytime. Again, if the billions siphoned away for their licenses was spent on FOSS alternatives, we'd end up with such healthier ecosystem.
Visa and Mastercard are leas innovation and more completely regulated duopoly at this point.
Also, with the exception of SpaceX, I'd gladly welcome the complete implosion of all companies you mentioned. I'd love to watch them burn to cinders, while the world finally breathes free.
ok, but real businesses and governments actually use them to run their business.
How long do you think a typical business would survive without excel? Do you realize how crazy powerful excel is? I hate that tool as an engineer but its utility is immense. I agree windows is junk, yet it somehow ends up in all the critical infrastructure lol. Crazy but that’s what happens. Same with autocad- good luck efficiently designing physical infrastructure like bridges in your country without that tool.
Hetzner is not struggling to compete with AWS or Azure because it’s smaller…it’s because Hetzner has almost no features. They have even less features than DigitalOcean. Hetzner basically offers VPS hosting, elastic block storage, and easy deployment of some common apps. Do they offer any of the building blocks for deploying a high traffic service into production? Or deploying something that requires a lot of distributed components? No. stuff like managed databases, flexible file storage (like S3), and most importantly a managed multi-container deployment. Like fargate, ECS or EKS.
example showing how Volkswagen uses AWS and why it’s not a good fit for Hetzner: https://youtu.be/OLy8CgRn8ts?si=VpOYlelneiGI7XZk
—————-
unrelated, i think the LibreOfficr example is interesting. I think it would be difficult to design a competing product because at this time companies pay for a full suite including: outlook, office, sharepoint, etc. and office is available in the browser with realtime multi user editing too! Maybe the LibreOffice project should pivot in that direction? Perhaps they could offer a cheap online version of their products, as a way to fund continued development, while making the desktop version free?
No innovation in Europe? Who created Linux? Python? ARM? ASML? Outside of IT: BioNTech (first Covid mRNA vaccine), Ozempic from Novo Nordisk? A fee seconds of googling is enough to show how ridiculous this claim is.
The trouble with these examples is that many of them are foundations or open source projects. They don’t employ europeans and provide a direct boost to the european economy. So yes there is definitely innovation but is it translating to JOBS in europe?
Is python a company that hires hundreds or thousands of engineers, product managers, etc? no. Same with Linux. Also Linux was created by a european (torvalds) while he was living and working in the united states, and is now contributed to by engineers all over the world. I’d hardly call that a majority european innovation. A nitpick but I wanted to clarify that.
ASML, ARM, BioNtech and Ozempic are great examples though, i’ll give you that.
This is less a nitpick and more moving the goalpost. GP Talked about innovation, while you argue job creation.
Ah yes, innovation can only emerge from glorious pits of pain and hellfire.
Spotify benefitted from starting in the EU.
I don't agree with the exaggeration in the parent comment, but your one counter-example pivoted their workforce expansion to the US after openly criticizing Sweden's business environment. They took issue with the shortage of employee housing due to over-regulated planning restrictions, unfavorable taxation of stock options, and a lack of programming and development education. Those issues (less so education) are applicable throughout the majority of the EU.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-founders-blast-swedens-...
That complaint happened 10 years after they were founded and five years after they launched in the US. By that time, they were already a billion-dollar business.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/spotify-s-t...
Most devs in Sweden would be very happy to get US wages so this feels pretty much like bullshit.
Also, Spotify could open offices in other places in Sweden (or Europe) if they want to be in places with lower CoL than Stockholm.
I can't see how the wages have anything to do with the points in the parent comment but you're never going to get US wages in Sweden as long as the unions are involved
What stops Spotify from paying USA wages in Stocholm or other cities in Europe that offer good quality of living and thus appealing to software developers? Software developer unions are going to say NO? Do such unions exist? Can they control software devs?
Sweden has collective agreements where workplace conditions including pay are decided between the unions and the employers rather than the government interfering in the process. Yes even software devs are covered under this.
Why would they want to move people around the world, deal with the unions who will force them to raise the floor of the local salaries etc when they can just hire the best talent in the US?
I haven't heard that perspective before, can you elaborate?
By my understanding, they didn't have to pay for the exorbitant North American interactive music licenses during their first five year. The EU rates were much more reasonable (plus I think they got grants and govt support?), allowing them to test the market and grow before entering the US.
They also let other companies prove the market had worth in North America, even if those companies failed
Rdio, LastFM, Rhapsody, and Grooveshark all existed well before Spotify entered North America. Some of them actually predate Spotify
That's why there is low risk for them to compete with anyone who didn't get EU funds. Even if the tech is better.
> But politicians such as Vestager don’t get to then act shocked and outraged when tech companies choose to leave.
Much as I dislike Vestager, that is not an accurate description. This appears to be the original source:
https://www.youtube.com/live/GmQ5SsMFbsU?si=IgTi-ezhulsCl6Gp...
That is not someone "shocked" or "outraged" at Apple not bringing the AI features to EU markets. Vestager doesn't give a fuck about whether iOS ships with AI features or not. She is just saying that by citing the DMA as the reason, Apple are pretty much admitting that the features as implemented are anti-competitive. And she is stunned that Apple would be stupid enough to make that admission.
Like, you'd at least expect the Apple C-suite to pretend it's because of some technical reason, or because the cost structure isn't viable to support in Europe, or something other than that it's breaking competition laws.
I think that people outside EU who believe it does not need big tech may be unaware that average salary in EU IT is around 80k, and actually a lot of people (not only IT, but also doctors, for instance) relocate to US/UK/Swiss hoping to make much more money. Its not clear who will be running innovative companies here and how EU is going to compete with China's completely different work ethics.
Big tech didn't create linux or git. Big tech isn't working on Firefox or Kagi.
Big tech created windows, chrome, and ads. Big tech puts ads in everything, everywhere, all the time.
I'd say big tech going away is a good thing. We need more linixes, firefoxes, wnd Kagis.
I used to not understand these aggressive "everything else is shit" articles, as in whats the value proposition for the audience.horra patriotism is not in the market dor analysis. Nowadays i understand better, these articles is the closest thing the us has to systemic self-doubt for deciders.
Nah, not really. The EU will have a thriving tech market. It just won't have ad-supported sites. Because if anyone hasn't noticed, "data privacy" is just targeted ads.
"This company was caught tracking which users visited each page" Yes, for targeted ads.
"Cambridge Analytica was" Yes, for targeted ads.
"3rd party" Yes, targeted ads.
It's all targeted ads. They want to serve you targeted ads. Any attempt to paint "data privacy" as something other than this is irresponsible fearmongering.
Didn't US lose most of its production capability for the same reason? US protected its workers' rights, but there are other places with cheap labor treating the workers like shit, so businesses are using factories in other places, which then build massive expertise at production.
This is similar. EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens for good, but there are also places like US where rights are less protected, or not at all. (and frankly, a sizeable amount of people there don't even give a crap about rights that seem ephemeral for them, like privacy). So naturally businesses go to those places.
It's not poorly designed laws, or at least not just it. It's also a tragedy of commons in a global economy, moving too fast vs too slow, and many other things.
> EU is trying to protect the rights of its citizens for good
Western Europe is not the entire EU.
Czechia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and the rest of Eastern Europe give plenty of leeway to businesses who bring FDI in.
The Czech government indirectly pushed a former employer of mine to force employees back into the office from remote work by threatening to withhold tax credits they used to establish a tech/outsourcing center in Praha.
Plenty of similar stories in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, etc.
Oh, and the SEZs and Law Firms that the investment agencies made us use were always very closely connected to the incumbent poltical parties (and either indirectly or directly owned by them)
You can take Eastern Europe out of the Warsaw Pact, but you can't take the Warsaw Pact out of Easrern Europe's political and business establishment
They're not rights, they're needs. They don't have space in regulation.
If you want privacy, purchase the privacy conscious option. Don't force the entire market to make ads worthless, forcing companies to charge for things, forcing ME and my adblock to pay for crap I got for free until yesterday.
It’s all European regulation really. The cyber resilience security act is another example. You are compelled to come out with security fixes for the life of the product. If this is embedded hardware this gets increasingly difficult.
Imagine you come out with a secure boot product for the pi. Currently this is considered beta at the moment. In any case it’s quite possible that it could change, making it impossible to provide an update.
So under this regulation do you think anyone will offer any extended warranties ? The small amount of extra money will not be worth the massive extra risk.
15 million euros fine or 2% of your income doesn’t make for a very attractive incentive on platforms where it’s complex and risky to perform low level upgrades for example.
So expect increasingly shorter product lifetimes going forward and more and more products that just won’t be released in Europe, I expect even ones developed by European companies. And what do you think about small players who can’t even afford one court care for example ?
while we use it a lot apple is not our tech market.
No but between Apple and Google they are the foundation of mobility.
And if they are not going to bring AI SDKs to the EU because of the regulatory risk then an entire class of potential startups will never exist.
There as much ai shenanigans going on here in Europe as in US. DMA rules do not apply to startups. GDPR is good and stings larger corporations more than smaller ones.
Apple and Google are holding a beta risky feature and leveraging it as reason to get some sympathy.
Good.
Tech needs to slow down; neither society has caught up, nor quality controls.
1. Pay to play (tax)
2. Comply to play (regulation)
These are big markets with massive winnings even with regulation and tax. Corps can either step aside and let someone else profit or comply and play.
Please don't dissuade them/us from doing so.
It’s interesting to observe how detached the discussion here is from the issues created for Europe due to the DMA. A majority of the comments here make the implicit assumption that the DMA is good because it will penalize big tech companies and force them to change business models in the EU. This is not what is happening or will happen.
What’s really being destroyed by the DMA is Europe’s access to new technologies and services. It’s almost like a self-embargo on the AI building blocks of their future economy.
When Nvidia GPUs are supply constrained do you really think it matters to Nvidia if they need to redirect the small chunk of their supply constrained volume that they were previously selling into France? Who is harmed in this picture? The only EU AI player of note, Mistral, and other EU businesses.
Does it really harm Apple if the DMA forces them to withhold new AI features in Europe? They still earn their device and services revenues. Who is harmed in this picture? EU consumers and businesses.
We’ve now seen within just a couple months, Apple withhold AI features and Meta withhold multimodal AI models from the EU. Expect this cutting off of the EU from new features to become a recurring event over the next year.
DMA-supporting voices are under a serious misapprehension of what the effect of the DMA is and will be over the next few years. It’s cutting off European access (consumer, business & government) to critical technologies which are all being developed outside the bloc.
The DMA violates a number of longstanding principles of good legislation - it is vague, it’s written to enable arbitrary enforcement, it’s penalties are not designed to be proportionate to damages, or even require actual damages in order to be applied, the regulator’s actions stray into actual takings of property (European Commission opinion that Facebook cannot charge a subscription fee for its ad-free offering… so it must operate as a charity? This is a taking of property. European Commission opinion that Apple cannot charge a platform fee for use of its IP? This is a taking of property).
I think the topic is hard to talk about because the EU is technically trying to do the right thing but reality often rewards the conquerors and the US, China etc. (aka the competitors) still believe in the right of tech conquest. They don't stop their companies from taking whatever they want whether it's properly licensed or not. So we are in a situation where the EU is dotting their i's and shaking hands in their moral superiority while not understanding that we have to compete with people who don't care if they steal something or rob you by force. It's similar in all these other areas like the DMA and GDPR... we are competing with markets who simply don't care that they are violating people's privacy and it's more profitable to rob people and sell their stuff. The EU in my opinion has to create regulations that understand this reality and create an even stronger wall for european companies. So please go create these regulations, fine.. but understand that you should make unfair exceptions for european companies.
Let european companies that are situated here violate these regulations and make this explicit: As long as the US and China do not have equivalent regulations, EU companies are explicitly allowed to steal US and chinese content. Yes really, make that very explicit. Make laws with the full understanding of what reality we are living in. We are dealing with competitors who will take our last shirt by force, not friends and "partners" as they so lovingly put it in their press releases.
Yes yes, we took away Apple's money funnel...
Let me go find the thinnest violin, to match this thinly veiled tantrum.
As always, empty space will be filled sooner or later. The question is, filled with better or worse?
Think of regulation as a higher form of tech.
Then ask yourself how exactly the architects were self-medicating.
I think it already did.
I am an avid reader of Show HNs. And I remember many that became successful businesses. But not a single European one.
All the "startups" that I see here in Europe are very classical businesses. They build software tools for local enterprises.
It seems nobody in Europe is building something for the open web. Maybe because nobody here understands all the regulations that come with it. The GDPR alone is 100 pages of legal mumbo jumbo.
Most show HNs are just some shitty wrapper around OpenAI APIs these days, from what I've noticed. "Searching for papers with AI!" Doesn't exactly sound like the next Google to me, but maybe I'm just out of touch.
"Why use Dropbox when I can use rsync or FTP" [0]
- HN in 2007
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
I wish there was more to the US tech industry than social networks and ads.
I've noticed that European Show HNs tend to be open-source projects rather than startups. Not interpreting, just noticing.
That's probably not a regulation issue that's mostly hitting US big tech, though.
European schools and universities tend to drill people towards employment and not to take too many risks so starting companies isn't as widespread and considered too bureaucratic.
Then there's the issue of multiple currencies and not every checkout SaaS supporting all of them and their various options of payment (afaik), which limits reach. That's a problem the US, India, China and Russia don't have.
Interesting they start the article using Apple. *In general* Apple has(had?) a reputation for creating smart and useful products which work in surprisingly simple and convenient ways. Apple is dogmatic (and aggressive), but the goal has been _something great_. Drawn into the article, you ask yourself--Why is the EU handcuffing Apple? The article wouldn't have the same momentum if you started with, say, Facebook. The rules described are perverse (ex. Twitter/X's blue checkbox). The imagined outcome is a shocking lack of products which people enjoy freely elsewhere in the world.
Then I started thinking of this through the lens of B2B SaaS software I use in small business every day. The outside of the box makes promises. Sales reps make promises. Demos abound. Contracts are signed. Setup fees are paid. Setup manhours are invested. And then you start using these services and products. Support issues go unresolved--not supported at this time--and go on the 'wish list' void. What you thought of as a solution to your business needs turns to questions of sunk cost. Total frustration resulting from the obviously profit seeking economizing decisions not described on the box--devil is in the details. Who is the more naive? Businesses for having purchased these products or the companies who develop and market them as industry solutions (vs. just another product with hidden cost-benefit determinations)?
Now think of the B2C environment the article is talking about where there are known deceptive practices working to profit on user's personal privacy. I have to laugh. Seems fitting to read about naive regulation against the decisions of manufacturers and developers making abhorrent conditions in the consumer market. I see the same frustrated naive decisions of business owners trying to get out of contracts for bad products and services they have chosen.
I would hope that the EU regulates a silicon-valley style tech market out of existence. That the US is more than happy to let their megacorporations go wild as long as it benefits their economy doesn't mean that others need to do do the same.
Europe is very afraid, too much protectionism for the people. It will solve itself when it most definitely back fires in the form of the actual harm showing up because of it
If only
You know you're out of good arguments when you have to defend the eX-Twitter's blue checkmark fiasco
No they won't but okay.
I wonder if Silicon Valley lobbyists are deliberately sabotaging the Eurozone regulatory environment. Technically there’s no reason why almost all huge Western tech companies have to be located in the US. European cost of labor in this space is much lower, and access to markets is much better, since they’re on the same continent. Their ineptitude in high tech can’t be coincidental
I have noticed all the comments on HN now are pro socialist and pro regulation. I remember a time when they were mostly pro libertarian. What changed? Are these AI generated comments to push a specific viewpoint?
Actually if europe builds tech working well and delivering within regulations and the us sink into ccc capitalism caused civilunrest,europas overregulated tech may be the last man standing and the one trusted by the world for stability.
The most telling feature of the DMA is that it doesn't include Spotify.
Spotify would not be compliant under the DMA for the same reason why the EU has charged Meta with non-compliance:
>Under Article 5(2) of the DMA, gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between designated core platform services and other services, and if a user refuses such consent, they should have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative. Gatekeepers cannot make use of the service or certain functionalities conditional on users’ consent.
- Source: EC statement¹
However the EU doesn't deem there to be any gatekeepers for music.² YouTube has over 80 million music subscribers. To avoid this obvious conflict they label "YouTube" as a video sharing site, deliberately ignoring one of the largest drivers of youtube traffic is music videos. Something which Google themselves advertise.³
If the EU cared about privacy and user harm they'd make the DMA protections apply to every business, not just big foreign ones.
Spotify's ads website actually brags about how it targets and tracks users and the various 3rd party data companies they partner with to extend that beyond Spotify.⁴
It's clear as day that the EU doesn't care about user harm or privacy, they just want that money for themselves. A view that is buttressed by what they're trying to do to encrypted chat communications.
¹ https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...
² https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en
³ https://www.youtube.com/trends/records/
⁴ https://ads.spotify.com/en-US/goals/audience-targeting/ https://ads.spotify.com/en-US/partner-directory/
I thought it was common knowledge that EU regulations target big foreign companies while ignoring big domestic ones?
If they truly cared about monopolies/duopolies, they'd target LVMH, Luxottica.
I note this because they're constantly lying that their goals are for the protection of users, when their actions send a different message.
Here's the direct Twitter quote from Thierry Breton regarding the charge against Meta:
The #DMA is here to give back users the power to decide over their #data #Meta has forced millions of users across EU into a binary choice : “pay or consent”. In our preliminary conclusion this is a breach of the DMA. Today we take an important step to ensure Meta complies.
https://x.com/ThierryBreton/status/1807715743129043342
Meanwhile Spotify, all data brokers and any other non-DMA'd companies can take and exchange private user data. I believe the rule should apply to all companies because I don't see the point of "protecting" users from a handful of companies when that is a drop in the ocean of data collectors.
He also makes strange bed fellows, such as frequently advocating for Fortnite, the game title which the FTC found to be deliberately tricking children into unwanted purchases, then killing their Fornite accounts in retaliation should they obtain a refund.¹
https://x.com/ThierryBreton/status/1766167580497117464
¹ https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/... Note this fine is finalised because Epic didn't challenge the FTC's claims.
If there is one thing we need to be afraid of, it is, that we don't regulate tech giants enough. That they can continue to exploit people. Maybe also, that GDPR continues to be violated by 90% of companies, because they think they will get away with it.
The core issue with the DMA is that there is no kind of pre-vetting or assurances available. This is combined with a very wide set of interpretations from a vague set of texts. We've already seen the DMA being waged against a scenario which Margrethe Vestager¹ herself had originally stated would be an ideal outcome of the DMA.²
When 10% of global revenue is on the line it makes adequate sense to tread carefully with EU releases until there is some legal precedent. (And 20% if the EU finds that compliance isn't being met.)
Margrethe Vestager has stated that withholding features is proof of anti-competitive behaviour. Such a statement would be hilarious if it wasn't so obviously preordained, and patently tone-deaf from the consequences of her own statements.
So what's the end game for the EU? In theory this should allow local and small competitors to fill the void since they're not beholden to the DMA. My expectation is that it'll just be the EU perpetually several steps behind the rest of the world and some types of tech involvement only available via US-based purchases/import basis.
¹ Margrethe Vestager: "I would like to have a Facebook in which I pay a fee each month, but I would have no tracking and advertising and the full benefits of privacy." https://www.euractiv.com/section/competition/interview/vesta...
² Facebook and Instagram’s ‘pay or consent’ ad model violates the DMA, says the EU https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/1/24189796/eu-meta-dma-viola...
That's hilarious to see Apply trying to punish Europeans for standing up for their rights.
Good luck with that, we don't care for your "intelligence".
Oh the irony of this article being covered by a consent screen that starts with:
„We & our 735 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store and access personal data on your device.“
Normally I wouldn't upvote a reply like this, but here in the US I got this one instead:
> There appears to be a technical issue with your browser
> This issue is preventing our website from loading properly. Please review the following troubleshooting tips or contact us at support@foreignpolicy.com.
I had to disable Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection in order to proceed. This is the first time since that feature was rolled out that I've had to remember where they put that disable switch.
EDIT: This isn't just a generic error handler, there's a specific piece of code that detects if their analytics provider loaded or not and shows that message if it didn't load. More details here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41082004
Whenever something changes on the screen while reading Reader Mode gets activated immediately and without remorse.
Do you think it was deliberate or just a general reaction to an uncaught exception somewhere in the ad part of the app?
This is the code that does it:
Looks like the code comes from their analytics provider: https://piano.io/Link to the source: https://foreignpolicy.com/_static/??-eJy1lNtuwjAMhl9oIYCQGBf...
Piano really needs to be blocked harder by adblockers, they're currently underblocked by most public lists. Disgusting surveillance machine.
The experience mirrors mine
There are a lot of websites that make your phone boil in your hand with the amount of trackers, js and other crap
Yes the cookie banners are annoying. But not more than the sign up ones, the maling list ones, the "Summer sale" ones, etc
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They can use any cookies required for providing services without having to ask users at all.
They do need to ask for cookies meant to siphon off people's data for all other purposes.
While adtech may be the most profitable part of tech industry, it's by far not the only part. Everything from advanced electronics to genomics to super-strong materials to reusable spacecraft is the "technology sector", and its parts are tightly intertwined.
If only the media had consolidated/unionized to be at the size scale of tech companies extracting advertising value from their reporting…
This is the "innovation" the article is also talking about though, so it's great they give an example.
The Human Brain Project's final 3 year period could have actually delivered a platform for actually modeling real human brain data, and GDPR totally blew that possibility out of the water: no one had the budget to take on the legal risk, and everything was finished up with synthetic/augmented datasets or done "locally".
our colleagues in the US and China are chuckling, so we'll just move our science there.
It's not like europe has any viable economic future left anyways. They've regulated, taxed and sanctioned their own industries out of existence and tourism is an excessively poor substitute economically. Good luck having high-tech industry or market without domestic support for it.
Pretty much only thing Europe is consistently producing nowadays is new legislations (EU and national, which are enforced incoherently and at the times contradictory)
Quite frankly I would prefer no tech industry over today's large, unregulated, monopolistic and aggressive tech industry. I feel like my life has not significantly improved at all relative to the enormous growth of the US tech industry in the last ten years, I'm no happier today than I was back then. Almost all of the gains have gone to a concentrated elite that I am not part of. Lately I've been looking at my phone and devices and other tech toys and asking "was any of this worth it?".
Pretty sure they already did that. Isn’t their flagship SAP? Lol
did goon lawyers in Silicon Valley write this?
Foreign Policy is pearl-clutching because they've seen what actually enforced antitrust law looks like for the first time since Borke and Reagan ratfucked it.
The thing is, the tech business is uniquely conducive to generating monopolies, for a handful of reasons. The biggest being we're a copyright industry. Congress made the mistake of putting software under the same legal framework as Mickey Mouse, so the monopoly tech companies have over interoperability is government granted, has little bounds on its power, and lasts forever. And when tech and creative industries got together to enforce those legal rights through software, we got DMCA 1201, an awful law that gives anyone with a valid copyright veto rights over technological progress. The only way you get shit done in the tech industry is to get acquired so that you have enough market power to license and collaborate.
Outside of copyright we have online services firms like Google and Facebook, who operate primarily through surveillance capitalism. In prior media landscapes, if you wanted to sell to New York Times readers, you had to buy inventory in the Times. Today, you ask Google and Facebook to put ads on anyone who went on nytimes.com in the past week, which is just as lucrative for the ad buyer but Google and Facebook can pay the other sites less than what an actual NYT ad would command. Targeted advertising moves money away from a diverse and distributed group of publishers towards a pair of ad networks who know exactly everything about everyone at all times.
Facebook absolutely could be 'paid for' through nontargeted ads, but it makes Facebook a far less valuable business if they can't siphon data off you and sell it to other companies. Hell, Apple already proved this: iOS 14 moved ad tracking to opt-in[0], so nobody opted in, and Facebook had a revenue hit.
Europe is not inhospitable to tech, but it is inhospitable to tech monopolization, which is predominantly how American firms operate. And to be honest, I don't think Europe is wrong to do this. In fact, I want America's government to start doing the same thing. I want a government that acts less like a rubber stamp for a handful of megacorporations and more like the villains in an Ayn Rand novel.
Do you want to see what the alternative is? Simple: the end of democracy. Trump was just a preview. Democracy is not a given, it requires distributed political power, which requires distributed wealth and economic power. If a handful of firms can centralize economic power to themselves, then they become the economy, and they can start pulling the strings politically. We already saw this with oil in the 70s, but basically every American industry works this way. The only vestige of democracy left is that sometimes industries have conflicting economic interests and that sometimes the working class hurls an orange brick through everyone's windows.
[0] Unless you're Apple, who can still track you. Related note: Google is basically being forced to keep third-party cookies in Chrome because they dragged their feet on removing them for far too long.
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"In the future, everyone will see how right I am". Sure thing bud.
My point was about the repetitious and not-very-insightful arguments made now whenever this topic comes up, including in this very discussion.
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Short of the EU directly designing products there's always going to be ambiguity. Most of the "controversy" over GDPR and DMA appears to be completely artificial and caused by malicious compliance.
DMA was specifically designed to be flexible i.e. ambiguous:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4411743
They have some valid gripes but then they get to:
Or consider the recent charges the EU levied against X. Under Elon Musk’s ownership, anyone can now purchase a blue check with a paid subscription, whereas blue checks were previously reserved for notable figures. EU regulators singled out the new system for blue checks as a deceptive business practice that violates the bloc’s Digital Services Act.
What are they thinking?? The blue check mark is supposed to mean verified. They changed it to simply mean paid subscription. They took a symbol of trust and utterly ripped out the trust part. I don't care how much you publicize it, that's not acceptable.
Would he be ok with my going and purchasing a SSL certificate for www.x.com???
Don't be naive. It was never a symbol of trust. At most it was a symbol of prominence or notability as decided by a biased, unaccountable group of Twitter employees. Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies.
The new X Community Notes system is far superior for establishing trust.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/biden-clai...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-05-22/elon-m...
Fundamentally just because a software feature worked a certain way at one time doesn't create an obligation for tech companies to keep it working the same way. Whether you consider that acceptable is entirely irrelevant.
> Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies.
So? The point of the old blue checkmark wasn't to assure me that what the account said was true. It was to provide some assurance that the account was really the account of the prominent or notable person with that name.
By "the new X community notes system" do you mean the same one that existed and was entirely developed before Elon bought Twitter?
It was a symbol of trust in identity, not trust in veracity. Same as SSL certificates.
Nah, it was never a symbol of trust in identity. A lot of those accounts were actually managed by social media staff, not by the "verified" people themselves. It was always just a meaningless vanity mark.
If the person chooses to have others manage it that's their business. That doesn't change the basic nature--it's saying this is who it claims it is.
As someone described it: You know that https://www.satan.com is actually Satan but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to sell your soul there.
>Many of the old blue check mark accounts routinely posted inaccurate information or outright lies.
There are always going to be misinformation. It's crazy to think a company or any committee can determine these for us though. It's not even logical yet alone practical. then you need to determine whether said entity made any judgment errors in assessing a person or claim. Those who demand centralized 'truth' authorities are useful idiots for power seeking authoritarians.
It's not a certificate, it's a blue mark on a site that tell's you user is verified through payment. It should never be a symbol of trust, as twitter or anyone can't assess the trustworthiness of individuals :)
>as twitter or anyone can't assess the trustworthiness of individuals
You need to rethink what was being implied. Twitter CAN assess whether or not you can trust that the person that owns the account is who they say they are. That's what the blue checkmark was. It was NOT implying that the person was trustworthy.
Eliminating goggle, apple and meta could only be regarded as a good thing...
Throw out bozo too for the win-win...
The efficacy of bureaucratic destruction is explicit in warfare guidance [0]. We pretend peacetime is different. It’s not.
So among non-EU-dwellers, let’s raise a glass to our fallen competitors and erstwhile comrades. Better than Nordstreaming them, or at least more subtle. Onward, toward a new vassal-state future!
edit: It appears that EU subjects are distraught, or the topic is too raw. Let me know!
[0] https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=750070