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US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing: > The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowin

US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing: > The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards. But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies. Ironically, it's the US who takes stances like the one they claim the EU is taken. E.g.: The US required that TikTok be sold, without actually proving that TikTok was in breach of any actual law. But repeating the same claims gets those claims out into the media, and that's what people hear. So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening.

paxys 1y ago
US corporations are too used to breaking laws as they see fit and getting away with a slap on the wrist, so being asked to follow the rules feels like an attack to them.
- bamboozled 1y ago
  They're also very used to lobbying to get what they want, as soon as that's not possible, they have a tantrum.
- StressedDev 1y ago
  That is not my experience. Every US company I have worked in spent a lot of time training employees to follow the relevant laws. I have even been on teams which had to do work to comply with the European GDPR. The message I have always received is follow the law and don’t break it.
skyyler 1y ago
>So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening. This thing right here terrifies me. The entertainment-information media oligopoly has a tight grasp on public conversations. It feels like a hydra that can't be defeated.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  It can be defeated by talking to people about things. If you are known to be an expert in topic X, and you are saying something different to what the media says about topic X (and which makes more sense), people (who know you and your reputation) are inclined to believe you over the media. This only has a local impact, but global is made of local.
  - skyyler 1y ago
    I do this as much as I can. Between chatrooms and local meets, I spend a significant portion of my time attempting to politely dispel misinformation. It's exhausting, but it's worth it. I want to organise with other people that do this, but I'm not sure how to do that. It feels like our efforts would be multiplied if we started to publish or otherwise spread information.
walkingthisquai 1y ago
Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little
- jakob_endler 1y ago
  thats only kinda right. The DMA does include booking.com as a gatekeeper, which is european. But most gatekeepers (except booking and tiktok) are US-based
  - Aloisius 1y ago
    Booking Holdings is American. They bought booking.com in 2005.
  - bojan 1y ago
    Booking.com was European, is not any more. It is now a subsidiary of Booking Holding (formerly Priceline), based in Connecticut.
    - chgs 1y ago
      That’s of course the reason these types of companies are American - Americans are rich and can buy out foreign companies which are successful.
      - nickff 1y ago
        There are plenty of EU companies that buy into new markets or opportunities, they just fall outside of these laws; Siemens is a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens
- radlad 1y ago
  Isn't the question whether they were set because they were US companies, or because they are dominant gatekeepers on the Internet? 5/7 designated gatekeepers are US companies: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en
throwaway2037 1y ago
I think you make many good points. Slight tangent: Why isn't EU more concerned about TikTok? While it is very difficult to prove, various studies have demonstrated that TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP).
- staunton 1y ago
  > TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP). Does that violate EU law? (Serious question, I really don't know)
  - kome 1y ago
    no, and as far I know it doesn't violate any US law either. the thing against tiktok is not based on law, but based on suspicions.
- pbiggar 1y ago
  Actually, the problem the US had with Tiktok that was it did not censor people from talking about Palestine https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-tiktok-ban-linked-israel-china-insiders-reveal https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-tiktok-ban-linked-isra...
  - Aloisius 1y ago
    The timeline doesn't align for that at all. National security concerns were raised before the Pentagon banned in in 2019, then Trump ordered it to divest in 2020. No doubt that it became an argument by some more recently, but it was just another straw on the already broken camel's back.
- bojan 1y ago
  In my anecdotal experience of one, American platforms are way faster in pushing far-right content on me even though it has to be clear to the algorithm that I don't want such content. TikTok never does that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
fc417fc802 1y ago
Agreed with your first point. Regarding TikTok though the argument was never (AFAIK) that they were actively breaking the law but rather that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests. That's pretty reasonable and largely mirrors China's stance against the US. If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations. They seem to prioritize free trade above all else.
- sapphicsnail 1y ago
  I find this so confusing. Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk are foreigners who are both demonstrably influencing American politics through media they control. What makes Tiktok different?
  - pbiggar 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - madeofpalk 1y ago
    Rupert Murdoch has exclusively been a US citizen for 40 years. But really, what makes Tiktok different is China.
  - dybber 1y ago
    TikTok probably didn’t make friends and pay bribes to the right people.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    The same thing that would make a platform with ties to Russia different. It falls under the influence of a sophisticated geopolitical adversary. Tesla is headquartered and has most operations based in the US. Murdoch's ventures are similar AFAIK. Given how much surveillance modern vehicles do I wouldn't be surprised if imports start being subjected to additional scrutiny at some point. But at least most vehicles can't be used to subtly and intentionally manipulate the owner's perception of the world so I guess the stakes are a bit lower.
Herring 1y ago
That's called gaslighting, and it's a hostile act. Truth is the first casualty of war. If someone is trying to deceive you (or deceive others and ruin your reputation), they are actively exposing you to some kind of risk, usually for their own benefit, which is a hostile act. Recommend you act accordingly.
jerf 1y ago
There is no irony. The EU is targeting US companies. The US is targeting Chinese companies. The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies. China is targeting US companies. China will probably soon be targeting EU companies if they aren't already, which is probably already debatable. And this is not a complete list, it's not even a complete list of the highlights. If they're doing it by legislation, well, the EU has been passing "legislation clearly designed for US companies to be in infringement of" for a while. Maybe you like that. Maybe it's a good thing; after all, the things they're passing laws about are basically just actions only US companies are capable of taking right now. Nevertheless it is clearly targeting. It's just targeting you like. The US has passed such legislation. China does it both with formal legislation and with de facto rules. Free trade is a dead letter. Whether you like that or not is not very relevant to whether or not it is dead. It's dead. Maybe it'll swing back around in a few decades but right now even that is a distant prospect, we're not even done accelerating into the current merchantalist phase of the cycle, let alone decelerating, let alone heading back. (Note "whataboutism" would be an inappropriate response to my point here; that's about "it's ok for us because they do it". My observation is not normative, merely descriptive... everyone is doing it, and they're doing it more rather than less right now.)
- tonyedgecombe 1y ago
  >The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies. They already do, lookup how many European banks have been fined by the US and by how much then compare that to US banks. Everybody plays these games.
mfld 1y ago
Another irony is that the biggest (business) beneficiaries of applied DMA would be other US-based digital services companies like Netflix or Epic.
fooker 1y ago
> The same legislation applies to local companies. It doesn't matter what applies, only what's enforced matters. Laws being selectively enforced for an agenda is a tale as old as the existence of laws.
Braxton1980 1y ago
This is a side note but I don't understand why you called out the media when your quote wasn't from them but reporting a person's opinion
EasyMark 1y ago
I mean I understand they are doing, but also why aren't they fining European and Chinese companies for the same thing?
- afiori 1y ago
  Because the only non-US app/marketplace big enough to be affected by the DMA is tiktok.
toast0 1y ago
> But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies. The iPhone App store existed before this legislation, and I suspect the rest of the targetted things did too. This legislation only applies to companies that have a certain marketshare, which includes no European companies unless you count one that's a subsidiary of a US company. Maybe it's the case that it is reasonable to handicap successful businesses, but this is a handicap that only applies to some businesses, most of which are US (but one is Chinese).
- afiori 1y ago
  Which EU company do you feel should be included in the list? Considering that one of the main criteria is the ability to abuse monopolies.

paxys 1y ago

US corporations are too used to breaking laws as they see fit and getting away with a slap on the wrist, so being asked to follow the rules feels like an attack to them.

bamboozled 1y ago
They're also very used to lobbying to get what they want, as soon as that's not possible, they have a tantrum.
StressedDev 1y ago
That is not my experience. Every US company I have worked in spent a lot of time training employees to follow the relevant laws. I have even been on teams which had to do work to comply with the European GDPR. The message I have always received is follow the law and don’t break it.

skyyler 1y ago

>So we see a dissonance between what the media says (and many people believe) and what's really happening. This thing right here terrifies me. The entertainment-information media oligopoly has a tight grasp on public conversations. It feels like a hydra that can't be defeated.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
It can be defeated by talking to people about things. If you are known to be an expert in topic X, and you are saying something different to what the media says about topic X (and which makes more sense), people (who know you and your reputation) are inclined to believe you over the media. This only has a local impact, but global is made of local.
- skyyler 1y ago
  I do this as much as I can. Between chatrooms and local meets, I spend a significant portion of my time attempting to politely dispel misinformation. It's exhausting, but it's worth it. I want to organise with other people that do this, but I'm not sure how to do that. It feels like our efforts would be multiplied if we started to publish or otherwise spread information.

walkingthisquai 1y ago

Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little

jakob_endler 1y ago
thats only kinda right. The DMA does include booking.com as a gatekeeper, which is european. But most gatekeepers (except booking and tiktok) are US-based
- Aloisius 1y ago
  Booking Holdings is American. They bought booking.com in 2005.
- bojan 1y ago
  Booking.com was European, is not any more. It is now a subsidiary of Booking Holding (formerly Priceline), based in Connecticut.
  - chgs 1y ago
    That’s of course the reason these types of companies are American - Americans are rich and can buy out foreign companies which are successful.
    - nickff 1y ago
      There are plenty of EU companies that buy into new markets or opportunities, they just fall outside of these laws; Siemens is a good example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens
radlad 1y ago
Isn't the question whether they were set because they were US companies, or because they are dominant gatekeepers on the Internet? 5/7 designated gatekeepers are US companies: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en

throwaway2037 1y ago

I think you make many good points. Slight tangent: Why isn't EU more concerned about TikTok? While it is very difficult to prove, various studies have demonstrated that TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP).

staunton 1y ago
> TikTok pushes more content favoring the Chinese Government (CCP). Does that violate EU law? (Serious question, I really don't know)
- kome 1y ago
  no, and as far I know it doesn't violate any US law either. the thing against tiktok is not based on law, but based on suspicions.
pbiggar 1y ago
Actually, the problem the US had with Tiktok that was it did not censor people from talking about Palestine https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-tiktok-ban-linked-israel-china-insiders-reveal https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-tiktok-ban-linked-isra...
- Aloisius 1y ago
  The timeline doesn't align for that at all. National security concerns were raised before the Pentagon banned in in 2019, then Trump ordered it to divest in 2020. No doubt that it became an argument by some more recently, but it was just another straw on the already broken camel's back.
bojan 1y ago
In my anecdotal experience of one, American platforms are way faster in pushing far-right content on me even though it has to be clear to the algorithm that I don't want such content. TikTok never does that.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

fc417fc802 1y ago

Agreed with your first point. Regarding TikTok though the argument was never (AFAIK) that they were actively breaking the law but rather that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests. That's pretty reasonable and largely mirrors China's stance against the US. If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations. They seem to prioritize free trade above all else.

sapphicsnail 1y ago
I find this so confusing. Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk are foreigners who are both demonstrably influencing American politics through media they control. What makes Tiktok different?
- pbiggar 1y ago
  [flagged]
- madeofpalk 1y ago
  Rupert Murdoch has exclusively been a US citizen for 40 years. But really, what makes Tiktok different is China.
- dybber 1y ago
  TikTok probably didn’t make friends and pay bribes to the right people.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  The same thing that would make a platform with ties to Russia different. It falls under the influence of a sophisticated geopolitical adversary. Tesla is headquartered and has most operations based in the US. Murdoch's ventures are similar AFAIK. Given how much surveillance modern vehicles do I wouldn't be surprised if imports start being subjected to additional scrutiny at some point. But at least most vehicles can't be used to subtly and intentionally manipulate the owner's perception of the world so I guess the stakes are a bit lower.

Herring 1y ago

That's called gaslighting, and it's a hostile act. Truth is the first casualty of war. If someone is trying to deceive you (or deceive others and ruin your reputation), they are actively exposing you to some kind of risk, usually for their own benefit, which is a hostile act. Recommend you act accordingly.

jerf 1y ago

There is no irony. The EU is targeting US companies. The US is targeting Chinese companies. The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies. China is targeting US companies. China will probably soon be targeting EU companies if they aren't already, which is probably already debatable. And this is not a complete list, it's not even a complete list of the highlights. If they're doing it by legislation, well, the EU has been passing "legislation clearly designed for US companies to be in infringement of" for a while. Maybe you like that. Maybe it's a good thing; after all, the things they're passing laws about are basically just actions only US companies are capable of taking right now. Nevertheless it is clearly targeting. It's just targeting you like. The US has passed such legislation. China does it both with formal legislation and with de facto rules. Free trade is a dead letter. Whether you like that or not is not very relevant to whether or not it is dead. It's dead. Maybe it'll swing back around in a few decades but right now even that is a distant prospect, we're not even done accelerating into the current merchantalist phase of the cycle, let alone decelerating, let alone heading back. (Note "whataboutism" would be an inappropriate response to my point here; that's about "it's ok for us because they do it". My observation is not normative, merely descriptive... everyone is doing it, and they're doing it more rather than less right now.)

tonyedgecombe 1y ago
>The US is or soon will be targeting EU companies. They already do, lookup how many European banks have been fined by the US and by how much then compare that to US banks. Everybody plays these games.

mfld 1y ago

Another irony is that the biggest (business) beneficiaries of applied DMA would be other US-based digital services companies like Netflix or Epic.

fooker 1y ago

> The same legislation applies to local companies. It doesn't matter what applies, only what's enforced matters. Laws being selectively enforced for an agenda is a tale as old as the existence of laws.

Braxton1980 1y ago

This is a side note but I don't understand why you called out the media when your quote wasn't from them but reporting a person's opinion

EasyMark 1y ago

I mean I understand they are doing, but also why aren't they fining European and Chinese companies for the same thing?

afiori 1y ago
Because the only non-US app/marketplace big enough to be affected by the DMA is tiktok.

toast0 1y ago

> But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation. The same legislation applies to local companies. The iPhone App store existed before this legislation, and I suspect the rest of the targetted things did too. This legislation only applies to companies that have a certain marketshare, which includes no European companies unless you count one that's a subsidiary of a US company. Maybe it's the case that it is reasonable to handicap successful businesses, but this is a handicap that only applies to some businesses, most of which are US (but one is Chinese).

afiori 1y ago
Which EU company do you feel should be included in the list? Considering that one of the main criteria is the ability to abuse monopolies.