4 ms·

EU is just doing a protectionist move (yes, like all countries do). The cynic in me feels this "fighting for your rights!" PR is just to deflect from the embar

by gedy 6y ago

EU is just doing a protectionist move (yes, like all countries do). The cynic in me feels this "fighting for your rights!" PR is just to deflect from the embarrassing questions of why so much brain drain to the US for better pay, and that it's easier to start companies there. I don't think this can all be reduced to "The US tech companies are able to make more money by stealing your data!" as the tech industry is and has been so much more than ad tech.

Aerroon 6y ago
>The cynic in me feels this "fighting for your rights!" PR is just to deflect from the embarrassing questions of why so much brain drain to the US for better pay, and that it's easier to start companies there. It's working. Brexit probably made this easier than ever. Being negative about the EU when it comes to regulation to "protect people's rights" is often simply dismissed. I'm dismayed at the future of the EU when it comes to computing. Not because the situation is dismal right now, but because it doesn't seem to be improving. People don't seem to care in Europe.
- irwt 6y ago
  People in most EU countries are 1) annoyingly conservative when it comes to tech, and 2) the insane bureaucracy and regulations in most EU countries simply does not allow for the formation of a startup sphere. As a result we see 0 innovation in the tech space from Europe's side. I believe that the hostility of EU countries towards foreigners plays also a big role in all this. If you're a non-EU citizen trying to setup a startup in an EU country, you're out of luck. For me as a non-EU citizen living in an EU country, it's just much simpler to start a startup somewhere else than here.
rootsudo 6y ago
I understand your point of view, but also on an American side of things - if only we had this sort of regulatory clamp down as well. The congressional hearings from the CEO's of the tech giants really gave a window into how little culpability they have with regards to what they do, their business model and in general content moderation.
harryf 6y ago
The precedents have been set. China has been forcing tech giants to play by their rules for years. The US is on the edge of banning TikTok and WeChat unless they have US ownership. Facebook is embroiled in legal battles in Australia. And tech giant taxes have long been an issue. So this is set to escalate all round and the EU would be silly not to be prepared.
- dalbasal 6y ago
  bingo! The Tiktok affair is a change of the rules, and the EU generally operates within sight of what is considered reasonable in the US. The gap between China & the US's take on such issues was shrunk remarkably. EU politicians may or may not have the same reasons, but whatever the reasons, it is now OK to break up or force the sale of a tech/media giant and treat it differently because it's foreign.
- gedy 6y ago
  I think this glosses over that TikTok and WeChat are Chinese communication companies, not that they are just foreign tech companies.
csunbird 6y ago
Well, a fresh graduate can get paid $100k in USA, but to get 70k Euros paid annually, as an experienced developer, you have to jump through hoops with HR and management in Europe. Europe will continue to lose their talent to USA, as long as the pitiful salaries do not increase to an acceptable degree.
- harryf 6y ago
  > Europe will continue to lose their talent to USA, as long as the pitiful salaries do not increase to an acceptable degree. I'm not sure that's true - that Europe is losing talent to the US. COVID-19 has the US on blacklists for most of Europe. And before that Trump policies towards foreigners are not exactly encouraging to migrant workers. Meanwhile 70k Euros (82K USD) ignores that you're getting cheap, high quality healthcare, you don't have much student debt (or none at all e.g. Germany). Meanwhile Google, Facebook et al. have been opening engineering offices around Europe, presumably because it's hard to get talent over to the US / cheaper in Europe. > you have to jump through hoops with HR and management in Europe What hoops are these?
  - DenisM 6y ago
    > high quality healthcare In the life of a big-tech worker this is a rounding error.
    - yladiz 6y ago
      What if you don’t work at a “big tech” company?
- chewingeyesclub 6y ago
  Honestly I wonder why there is no brain drain from the US to other parts of the world. Why would anyone want to live in that hellhole.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  > Europe will continue to lose their talent to USA, as long as the pitiful salaries do not increase to an acceptable degree. Do you have any numbers to support that claim ? Afaik h1b visa is only given to 150K people a year, sizeable proportion of them are people from Asia. Even if European developers really wanted to move to the U.S it doesn't seem that easy for them to make the move.
dalbasal 6y ago
Political decisions always have different motivations for different people. That said, I think anti-tech-monopoly sentiment is the prime driver. Speculative, I admit... but so is the protectionist angle. I'm sure both exist. I just the protectionism is smaller. A lot of EE politicians are genuinely alarmed by the power of these companies. They (as politicians) are also personally aware of it. They're elected on Facebook, essentially. The public shares the negative sentiment. If there were some powerful EU competitors that could immediately benefit, I'd suspect the protectionism more. FWIW, IDK if there are many of those embarrassing questions thrown at EU politicians regularly. I would wager that's very far down on their list of "questions I don't want to be asked." It just isn't a live political issue that most people care about, to my knowledge... regardless of whether or not it is a big issue.
rsynnott 6y ago
> I don't think this can all be reduced to "The US tech companies are able to make more money by stealing your data!" as the tech industry is and has been so much more than ad tech. While it can't be, the EU's ambitions on data protection are quite old; the DPD, the GDPR's ancestor, was adopted in 1995, before the consumer internet was a big deal, and ultimately derives from OECD guidelines from _1980_. Similarly, the EU has been interested in competition issues around things like supermarkets for decades; a lot of effort was put into preventing any one chain becoming the Amazon of supermarkets, so it's perhaps not unexpected that Amazon being the Amazon of, er, Amazons would be viewed with suspicion. The stuff mentioned in the article seems to be mostly data protection (as mentioned, something the EU has been interested in for the last 30 years at least) and making it easier for people to move services (again, the EU has had an interest in this for a while, notably with telecoms and more recently banks, as well as long-standing rules around bundling). Honestly, I think the headline is a bit alarmist.

by gedy 6y ago

Aerroon 6y ago

>The cynic in me feels this "fighting for your rights!" PR is just to deflect from the embarrassing questions of why so much brain drain to the US for better pay, and that it's easier to start companies there. It's working. Brexit probably made this easier than ever. Being negative about the EU when it comes to regulation to "protect people's rights" is often simply dismissed. I'm dismayed at the future of the EU when it comes to computing. Not because the situation is dismal right now, but because it doesn't seem to be improving. People don't seem to care in Europe.

irwt 6y ago
People in most EU countries are 1) annoyingly conservative when it comes to tech, and 2) the insane bureaucracy and regulations in most EU countries simply does not allow for the formation of a startup sphere. As a result we see 0 innovation in the tech space from Europe's side. I believe that the hostility of EU countries towards foreigners plays also a big role in all this. If you're a non-EU citizen trying to setup a startup in an EU country, you're out of luck. For me as a non-EU citizen living in an EU country, it's just much simpler to start a startup somewhere else than here.

rootsudo 6y ago

I understand your point of view, but also on an American side of things - if only we had this sort of regulatory clamp down as well. The congressional hearings from the CEO's of the tech giants really gave a window into how little culpability they have with regards to what they do, their business model and in general content moderation.

harryf 6y ago

The precedents have been set. China has been forcing tech giants to play by their rules for years. The US is on the edge of banning TikTok and WeChat unless they have US ownership. Facebook is embroiled in legal battles in Australia. And tech giant taxes have long been an issue. So this is set to escalate all round and the EU would be silly not to be prepared.

dalbasal 6y ago
bingo! The Tiktok affair is a change of the rules, and the EU generally operates within sight of what is considered reasonable in the US. The gap between China & the US's take on such issues was shrunk remarkably. EU politicians may or may not have the same reasons, but whatever the reasons, it is now OK to break up or force the sale of a tech/media giant and treat it differently because it's foreign.
gedy 6y ago
I think this glosses over that TikTok and WeChat are Chinese communication companies, not that they are just foreign tech companies.

csunbird 6y ago

Well, a fresh graduate can get paid $100k in USA, but to get 70k Euros paid annually, as an experienced developer, you have to jump through hoops with HR and management in Europe. Europe will continue to lose their talent to USA, as long as the pitiful salaries do not increase to an acceptable degree.

harryf 6y ago
> Europe will continue to lose their talent to USA, as long as the pitiful salaries do not increase to an acceptable degree. I'm not sure that's true - that Europe is losing talent to the US. COVID-19 has the US on blacklists for most of Europe. And before that Trump policies towards foreigners are not exactly encouraging to migrant workers. Meanwhile 70k Euros (82K USD) ignores that you're getting cheap, high quality healthcare, you don't have much student debt (or none at all e.g. Germany). Meanwhile Google, Facebook et al. have been opening engineering offices around Europe, presumably because it's hard to get talent over to the US / cheaper in Europe. > you have to jump through hoops with HR and management in Europe What hoops are these?
- DenisM 6y ago
  > high quality healthcare In the life of a big-tech worker this is a rounding error.
  - yladiz 6y ago
    What if you don’t work at a “big tech” company?
chewingeyesclub 6y ago
Honestly I wonder why there is no brain drain from the US to other parts of the world. Why would anyone want to live in that hellhole.
joelbluminator 6y ago
> Europe will continue to lose their talent to USA, as long as the pitiful salaries do not increase to an acceptable degree. Do you have any numbers to support that claim ? Afaik h1b visa is only given to 150K people a year, sizeable proportion of them are people from Asia. Even if European developers really wanted to move to the U.S it doesn't seem that easy for them to make the move.

dalbasal 6y ago

Political decisions always have different motivations for different people. That said, I think anti-tech-monopoly sentiment is the prime driver. Speculative, I admit... but so is the protectionist angle. I'm sure both exist. I just the protectionism is smaller. A lot of EE politicians are genuinely alarmed by the power of these companies. They (as politicians) are also personally aware of it. They're elected on Facebook, essentially. The public shares the negative sentiment. If there were some powerful EU competitors that could immediately benefit, I'd suspect the protectionism more. FWIW, IDK if there are many of those embarrassing questions thrown at EU politicians regularly. I would wager that's very far down on their list of "questions I don't want to be asked." It just isn't a live political issue that most people care about, to my knowledge... regardless of whether or not it is a big issue.

rsynnott 6y ago

> I don't think this can all be reduced to "The US tech companies are able to make more money by stealing your data!" as the tech industry is and has been so much more than ad tech. While it can't be, the EU's ambitions on data protection are quite old; the DPD, the GDPR's ancestor, was adopted in 1995, before the consumer internet was a big deal, and ultimately derives from OECD guidelines from _1980_. Similarly, the EU has been interested in competition issues around things like supermarkets for decades; a lot of effort was put into preventing any one chain becoming the Amazon of supermarkets, so it's perhaps not unexpected that Amazon being the Amazon of, er, Amazons would be viewed with suspicion. The stuff mentioned in the article seems to be mostly data protection (as mentioned, something the EU has been interested in for the last 30 years at least) and making it easier for people to move services (again, the EU has had an interest in this for a while, notably with telecoms and more recently banks, as well as long-standing rules around bundling). Honestly, I think the headline is a bit alarmist.