6 ms·

It seems like most of these problems can be alleviated by two actions: 1) don't have servers in Europe 2) don't hire Europeans If Europe wants to regulate th

It seems like most of these problems can be alleviated by two actions: 1) don't have servers in Europe 2) don't hire Europeans If Europe wants to regulate themselves into the stone age, they should be free to do it.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
I don't think that's a valid proposition for most international businesses. Europe is too big a market for this.
- donatj 3y ago
  Their value is largely overstated. Most of continental Europe has very little actual disposable income. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzaiuk8pn7p781.jpg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fz...
  - AnnikaL 3y ago
    Western Europe seems to hover around $20,000 to $30,000 in disposable income, which seems like quite a bit. Certainly it's more than Eastern Europe and Asia have, even if it's less than parts of North America and Oceania.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    It looks like they have more disposable income that every country other than the United States.
  - chmod775 3y ago
    Disposable income is extremely pointless to compare if you want to figure out how much people will have left to pay for your product. Look at actual spending in whichever category you're interested in. To illustrate, let's subtract some spending categories from that disposable income which tech companies generally don't compete for: Germans spend $13713 + $1604 on housing/lodging vs $22624 for Americans, education $255 vs $1226, food $5706 vs $8289, health $1632 vs $5452. So comparatively Americans are already down $14681 of that disposable income, which definitely won't be spent on whatever some American tech darling produces - food, housing, education, and health spending is generally considered more important than getting a Meta Quest headset. At the end of the day US/Germany spend the same amount of money on entertainment/recreation almost to the dollar. France is similar in that regard and together Germany and France are already a market of close to 150 million people. Numbers are from 2021 using the historic EUR/USD exchange rates. The point is: drill down to some category and compare actual spending in it. You'll be surprised how wildly some things vary even between countries that nominally have the same disposable income. US Data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm German Data: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkommen-Konsum-Lebensbedingungen/Konsumausgaben-Lebenshaltungskosten/Tabellen/privater-konsum-d-lwr.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkom...
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  It seems like it depends. If it's just paying fines, like where the EU uses US tech companies as a piggy bank, you can easily compare your revenue to the cost and decide to stay. It's not as much money as it would be otherwise, but with zero-marginal-cost products, it's still worth it. On the other hand, where it would completely break your product, like in the case of installing backdoors into E2EE chat applications, it might not be worth it anymore. Google and Meta survive fine without China, for example.
  - sol91949 3y ago
    And then emerging companies and nations will fill the gap. This may benefit everyone except pre-existing hegemons, suffice to say it’s not in a monopolists interest to allow any other significant marketplace to be dominated by another. This is why we the strategy of isolating China rather than competing directly may backfire. Also why China protecting it’s own internal market is net beneficial for the world in aggregate, whilst perhaps not good for dominant powers (hence the geopolitical u-turn from China good to China bad)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
makeitdouble 3y ago
I don't know how serious this take is or if it's more emotional than not. This is probably the same reaction regulators have around the world, where they'd prefer to have their own walled garden where they apply their own rules and don't need to talk to anyone else. Except when there's lot of money down the line, then they'll do an effort and make exceptions. That's how many US services reacted to GDPR. That's how many Japanese services reacted to VISA/Mastercard ban on sexual content. That's how China is reacting to many things. I think we'll see more and more example of it down the line. On one side, balkanization can probably help to get more diversity and allow local content to thrive with less competition. On the other side, it's basically reversing decades of cultural evolution that happened on the net, which I personally think sucks a lot.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  > the same reaction regulators have around the world, where they'd prefer to have their own walled garden where they apply their own rules and don't need to talk to anyone else I don't like the trend of balkanization, but I have to say that this is kind of suffering from a lack of perspective. What you call "their own walled garden" a lot of people call "national sovereignty", especially people who dislike the fact that the "unregulated" internet was actually regulated by the United States for all intents and purposes, and so "lack of regulation" was equivalent to letting the US run a critical piece of their national infrastructure. It should be understandable that people kinda didn't like that.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    You're right that it comes down to national sovereignty. I'll show my bias: I don't think a complete lack of sovereignty is viable nor desirable. Completely erasing cultures and local specificities won't help, and I agree there is way too much US centralized critical infrastructure. But I prefered a kind of status quo where the big players are in a standstill and can't make bold moves that could destabilize the whole board. Basically the state where the US couldn't abuse too much their position in fear of the other entities calling it quit, and the other entities couldn't completely close their borders in fear of losing too much as they retreat. In recent years we've seen more and more moral/cultural rules getting applied to critical infra (payment, communications etc.), and I guess we're not getting that standstill back anytime soon. That also means we're back to black market style communication, as it was in the earlier decades, when we were looking for a common ground less constrained by national limitations.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
crossroadsguy 3y ago
And alienate an entire continent, where, people are much more likely to fight against such shit and support you?
janosdebugs 3y ago
3) Don't have paying customers in the EU. 4) Get a good lawyer who is well versed in international jurisdiction issues to avoid getting dragged to an EU court anyway. Possibly operate from a non-extradition country.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  There's a reason cookie prompts aren't just in eu, afaik(maybe wrong) the law will cover even eu citizens outside of eu so idk, even if you geoblock the eu you may still have problems)
  - cccbbbaaa 3y ago
    You are wrong, cf. GDPR article 3. The Belgian DPA even ruled that GDPR is unenforceable if the controller is not located in EEA, does not serve anyone in EEA, and does not monitor EU individuals. https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2022 https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - anticensor 3y ago
    Because GDPR-like laws also exist in about 120 countries outside the EEA, some actually stricter than the EU GDPR. The USA is a fringe exception there.
- cccbbbaaa 3y ago
  Stop with the FUD. GDPR is not enforceable if you respect 1-3. https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2022 https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2...
  - janosd 3y ago
    Which would be covered by point 3 in my post. Also, the GDPR is not the only law that can have international ramifications.

marcus_holmes 3y ago

I don't think that's a valid proposition for most international businesses. Europe is too big a market for this.

donatj 3y ago
Their value is largely overstated. Most of continental Europe has very little actual disposable income. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzaiuk8pn7p781.jpg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fz...
- AnnikaL 3y ago
  Western Europe seems to hover around $20,000 to $30,000 in disposable income, which seems like quite a bit. Certainly it's more than Eastern Europe and Asia have, even if it's less than parts of North America and Oceania.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It looks like they have more disposable income that every country other than the United States.
- chmod775 3y ago
  Disposable income is extremely pointless to compare if you want to figure out how much people will have left to pay for your product. Look at actual spending in whichever category you're interested in. To illustrate, let's subtract some spending categories from that disposable income which tech companies generally don't compete for: Germans spend $13713 + $1604 on housing/lodging vs $22624 for Americans, education $255 vs $1226, food $5706 vs $8289, health $1632 vs $5452. So comparatively Americans are already down $14681 of that disposable income, which definitely won't be spent on whatever some American tech darling produces - food, housing, education, and health spending is generally considered more important than getting a Meta Quest headset. At the end of the day US/Germany spend the same amount of money on entertainment/recreation almost to the dollar. France is similar in that regard and together Germany and France are already a market of close to 150 million people. Numbers are from 2021 using the historic EUR/USD exchange rates. The point is: drill down to some category and compare actual spending in it. You'll be surprised how wildly some things vary even between countries that nominally have the same disposable income. US Data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm German Data: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkommen-Konsum-Lebensbedingungen/Konsumausgaben-Lebenshaltungskosten/Tabellen/privater-konsum-d-lwr.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkom...
jdminhbg 3y ago
It seems like it depends. If it's just paying fines, like where the EU uses US tech companies as a piggy bank, you can easily compare your revenue to the cost and decide to stay. It's not as much money as it would be otherwise, but with zero-marginal-cost products, it's still worth it. On the other hand, where it would completely break your product, like in the case of installing backdoors into E2EE chat applications, it might not be worth it anymore. Google and Meta survive fine without China, for example.
- sol91949 3y ago
  And then emerging companies and nations will fill the gap. This may benefit everyone except pre-existing hegemons, suffice to say it’s not in a monopolists interest to allow any other significant marketplace to be dominated by another. This is why we the strategy of isolating China rather than competing directly may backfire. Also why China protecting it’s own internal market is net beneficial for the world in aggregate, whilst perhaps not good for dominant powers (hence the geopolitical u-turn from China good to China bad)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

makeitdouble 3y ago

I don't know how serious this take is or if it's more emotional than not. This is probably the same reaction regulators have around the world, where they'd prefer to have their own walled garden where they apply their own rules and don't need to talk to anyone else. Except when there's lot of money down the line, then they'll do an effort and make exceptions. That's how many US services reacted to GDPR. That's how many Japanese services reacted to VISA/Mastercard ban on sexual content. That's how China is reacting to many things. I think we'll see more and more example of it down the line. On one side, balkanization can probably help to get more diversity and allow local content to thrive with less competition. On the other side, it's basically reversing decades of cultural evolution that happened on the net, which I personally think sucks a lot.

Analemma_ 3y ago
> the same reaction regulators have around the world, where they'd prefer to have their own walled garden where they apply their own rules and don't need to talk to anyone else I don't like the trend of balkanization, but I have to say that this is kind of suffering from a lack of perspective. What you call "their own walled garden" a lot of people call "national sovereignty", especially people who dislike the fact that the "unregulated" internet was actually regulated by the United States for all intents and purposes, and so "lack of regulation" was equivalent to letting the US run a critical piece of their national infrastructure. It should be understandable that people kinda didn't like that.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  You're right that it comes down to national sovereignty. I'll show my bias: I don't think a complete lack of sovereignty is viable nor desirable. Completely erasing cultures and local specificities won't help, and I agree there is way too much US centralized critical infrastructure. But I prefered a kind of status quo where the big players are in a standstill and can't make bold moves that could destabilize the whole board. Basically the state where the US couldn't abuse too much their position in fear of the other entities calling it quit, and the other entities couldn't completely close their borders in fear of losing too much as they retreat. In recent years we've seen more and more moral/cultural rules getting applied to critical infra (payment, communications etc.), and I guess we're not getting that standstill back anytime soon. That also means we're back to black market style communication, as it was in the earlier decades, when we were looking for a common ground less constrained by national limitations.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

crossroadsguy 3y ago

And alienate an entire continent, where, people are much more likely to fight against such shit and support you?

janosdebugs 3y ago

3) Don't have paying customers in the EU. 4) Get a good lawyer who is well versed in international jurisdiction issues to avoid getting dragged to an EU court anyway. Possibly operate from a non-extradition country.

Moldoteck 3y ago
There's a reason cookie prompts aren't just in eu, afaik(maybe wrong) the law will cover even eu citizens outside of eu so idk, even if you geoblock the eu you may still have problems)
- cccbbbaaa 3y ago
  You are wrong, cf. GDPR article 3. The Belgian DPA even ruled that GDPR is unenforceable if the controller is not located in EEA, does not serve anyone in EEA, and does not monitor EU individuals. https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2022 https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- anticensor 3y ago
  Because GDPR-like laws also exist in about 120 countries outside the EEA, some actually stricter than the EU GDPR. The USA is a fringe exception there.
cccbbbaaa 3y ago
Stop with the FUD. GDPR is not enforceable if you respect 1-3. https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2022 https://gdprhub.eu/index.php?title=APD/GBA_(Belgium)_-_161/2...
- janosd 3y ago
  Which would be covered by point 3 in my post. Also, the GDPR is not the only law that can have international ramifications.