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Break Up Big Tech: Civil Society Declaration
- fooker 1y agoYeah great way to become dependent on tech stacks backdoored by different big tech companies from another country, or the same ones who move to different countries.
- looperhacks 1y agoThis is a European initiative, we are already backdoored by other companies from other countries. I'd rather work with a company I can take to court/that is governed by policies I can vote for or against.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoYes, the European Union, who so earnestly considered writing a law that forces tech companies to build in backdoors to E2EE because they think only they could get in. You want the European Parliament and every European country to have direct access to everything you type and say? Because that’s where this ends.
- fastball 1y agoHow would Europe break up American tech companies, in practice?
- tacker2000 1y agoThey can fine them or forbid them to do business until it happens. Big tech does a lot of revenue there, i’m sure they wont abandon europe just because of this. See the Apple USB-C case.
- dgfitz 1y agoEurope has been basically begging the US to abandon them for the past few months. Why wouldn’t the US oblige?
- tacker2000 1y agoWhat are you talking about? If you mean the current US administration, what does that have to do with Big Tech?
- dgfitz 1y ago[flagged]
- i80and 1y agoYour point is a perfectly good one -- you don't need to wrap it in that nasty sandwich.
- tacker2000 1y agoNot sure why you are being so hostile and rude. Big tech is about revenue. They are not going to give up a large chunk because europe begs them or trump says they should get out of there. So no, i still dont see any overlap between the motivations of big tech and the us administration.
- usushik 1y ago
- marginalia_nu 1y agoIf Europe wants their own tech companies on par with the American ones, it should first and foremost fix a business climate that caters to such companies emerging. If we drive the American businesses out of Europe without doing so first, we'll more than likely end up even further in the direction of turning the EU into the second coming of the DDR.
- madaxe_again 1y agoThe problem runs deeper than business climate - it’s cultural. Across most of Europe (not all - the Baltic states have produced quite a few unicorns) there’s a pervasive attitude that technology is… icky. Struggling to come up with a better way of putting it, but at best entrepreneurship in tech is met with blank incomprehension, and at worst sneering contempt. People use it, unthinkingly, but to be interested in it, to invest in it, seems to fall into the category of “we must have world peace before we spend money on space exploration”. Yes, this is hand-wavy, but in my experience as a tech entrepreneur in Europe, if you want investment, you talk to the Americans. If you want a growth market, you target the Americans. If you don’t want to be justifying your price tag 20 times a day… you get the picture. Of course there exist incubators, funds, and so-forth, but the money on the table is a pittance compared to the U.S., and again, the culture here is like “why don’t you get a real job, train as a lawyer, a doctor, or a banker, and stop playing video games?” when you’re running a profitable technical startup.
- sofixa 1y ago> Across most of Europe (not all - the Baltic states have produced quite a few unicorns) there’s a pervasive attitude that technology is… icky. Struggling to come up with a better way of putting it, but at best entrepreneurship in tech is met with blank incomprehension, and at worst sneering contempt. People use it, unthinkingly, but to be interested in it, to invest in it, seems to fall into the category of “we must have world peace before we spend money on space exploration”. Generalising a whole continent with such nonsense is... bold. Any data to back this up? Surveys? Anything? There are tons of people in tech, and tech startups all around various European countries. Most don't become unicorns, or get bought out by American giants. But that doesn't mean that people generally find them "icky". Or did you only talk to 80+ year olds in some rural areas in Belarus?
- fastball 1y agoThe Apple USB-C case is requiring a corporation to comply with regulations. Breaking up a company means a subset is being separated from the parent company, in a way where the parent company is no longer deriving value from the (former) subsidiary. In that context, why would Apple say "sure we will sever part of our business to be fully independent" rather than "ok we will no longer operate in Europe"? They lose the business either way, but the first scenario sets a bad precedent for them and encourages other countries/leagues/unions to try the same.
- pmdr 1y agoIt's not a monopoly if it's at least 5 companies /s
- bilbo0s 1y agoLet's be honest about what they're targeting.. the problem is US tech dominance. So Europe sees a need to break that sooner or Later. So yes, the list of companies to rein in has as many companies as they need to affect the security and economic changes the Europeans would like to see. I would say we (the US) should negotiate with them, but considering the negotiating prowess of the current admin, maybe now is not the right time for that?
- voxlax 1y agoIt´s in the best interest of the people in the US to have the dominance of those corporations broken, before those companies eliminate democracy.
- socalgal2 1y agoThey only mention google which of the big tech companies is the one closest to losing their dominant position to AI. Even their own AI is gutting their own business. Apple, the company that truly wants to control everything, isn't even mentioned
- neepi 1y agoI don’t get the Apple side of this. Yeah they are assholes but only hardware assholes. You can easily leave if you want without consequence. Social media big tech is where everyone communicates which is a much bigger and much more damaging problem. Literally some people only communicate via one vendor with no interoperability.
- gameman144 1y ago> Literally some people only communicate via one vendor with no interoperability. Doesn't iMessage fit this bill to a tee? (Where the vendor in question also locks you into the hardware, not just the software?)
- Yeri 1y agoiMessage isn't really popular in Europe. Whatsapp is.
- bilbo0s 1y agoNo one uses iMessage in Europe.
- makingstuffs 1y agoiMessage is insignificant outside of the US
- Turskarama 1y agoWhat are you talking about, the internet basically is google at this point. Apple mostly just sells consumer hardware and the software to go with it, they're huge but they don't have half of all tech companies relying on them.
- zoobab 1y agoAntitrust barely works, when it's not a monopoly it's an oligopoly. And remedies are often pocket money. For Microsoft Windows, antitrust authorities and courts did not do anything.
- int_19h 1y agoThis is very much not true. Microsoft was forced into publishing a lot of documentation through anti-trust, which is why e.g. Office document formats or SMB protocol are published (and used for interop by projects such as Samba). The problem was not enough anti-trust, not that it doesn't work.
- __loam 1y agoWe slap these people on the wrist and you declare nothing we do works. No wonder.
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y agoWe've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. Guess we should just let companies go hogwild and create a cyberpunk dystopia.
- benchly 1y agoOr worse, destabilize society to the point of catastrophic collapse like the Accelerationists depicted in Mountainhead, though that film was pulling punches.
- fifticon 1y agoIt partially used to work, but a lot of the legal underpinnings were dismantled in the late 90's, and parts of it possibly also in the reagan era. Right now, MS is doing again with Edge, what they were already slapped rather harshly for, back in the 90's.
- swiftcoder 1y ago> MS is doing again with Edge, what they were already slapped rather harshly for, back in the 90's The situation feels a little bit different, given that they in this case the ones going up against a deeply-entrenched web monopoly, with a fork of that monopoly's own codebase...
- untitled2 1y agoHow about just don't use their services and boycott their tech stacks at work? I know, it requires some brain use and more than just shouting at the cloud, but it's doable.
- Turskarama 1y agoA few individuals doing that is meaningless. Individual action only matters if you can get a critical mass of people on board. It also ignores the reality of the prisoners dilemma, in that a service can be bad for society over all but within that society it is better to use it than to not. Everyone driving around huge cars is a clear example of this. When a scenario like this is identified the correct thing to do is regulate it with law.
- jamesblonde 1y agoGreat points. No idea why you are being downvoted.
- YetAnotherNick 1y agoWhy do you want to be not "meaningless"? If they don't like something that they don't have to use, they are free to do that. How is breaking up big tech going to solve anything. Also big companies are easiest to regulate and all the countries regulate them all the time. If you have 100 different TikToks, they threaten democracy even more as the profit incentive push towards extremism in any case.
- untitled2 1y agoBe the change you want to see in the world. And lead by example. And forget the lemmings - you can help only these who want to get helped. Frankly, your call to 'critical mass' reminds me of sjw and leftist propaganda.
- microtonal 1y agoWhy not do both, change your own patterns and change the regulatory frameworks to make capitalism benefit society? Though I would go as far as saying: use regulatory frameworks to save capitalism. A market where a small set of winners takes all is not functioning capitalism anymore.
- fergie 1y agoEurope has a number of loopholes for the accumulation of wealth that have traditionally been used by the aristocracy. These apparently only become problematic to the signatories when members of the bourgeoisie, for example tech entrepreneurs, start using them as well. There is a general need for taxation on wealth rather than labor in western societies. Its silly to single out big tech companies, which are actually an example of capitalism and free markets doing good: creating and rewarding the best products.
- addcommitpush 1y agoWhat is the split between aristocrats and bourgeois among the wealthiest Europeans? Looking at the richest Europeans [0], they all seem to be bourgeois. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Europeans_by_net_worth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Europeans_by_net_worth
- seydor 1y agoFighting insanity with more insanity: Asking the EU to force break up american corporations. There is a simple path to EU sovereignity, china has already done it: Ban US services in order to spring up local alternatives. Tech is inherently monopolistic due to network effects and infinite scaling. then you won't have to bother with "big tech". But all of that would require doing actual work, and judging by the list of signatories, they don't want to do it.
- unknownaxioms 1y ago[dead]
- sofixa 1y ago> Tech is inherently monopolistic due to network effects and infinite scaling Social media, yes. There are no network effects on most other "big tech" mono/oligopolies - using Google vs Bing vs Kagi or Claude.ai vs ChatGPT vs Gemini or Android vs iOS (other than in the US) or BackMarket vs Amazon vs AliExpress, etc.
- gpt5 1y agoEconomies of scale are essentially a form of network effect (which is defined as a phenomenon where product gains value as more people use it). In addition, every example you had benefits from traditional network effects: Amazon is a two sided marketplace with sellers and buyers. Google connect searchers to websites, who in return allow Googlebot to scrape them freely (unlike your IP) - and also rank results by the way other users clicked.
- harvey9 1y agoThere are product ecosystems for b2b, and availability of skilled staff is often greater for big brand tools. I would like to see more use of and contribution to foss in Europe.
- npteljes 1y agoI agree with you. Amazon and Ali are not good examples though, as they are subject of the network effect still: the more people are on there, the more desirable they are. But the rest are not subject to it, almost at all. Other different synergies, yes, but not the network effect specifically.
- awongh 1y agoI'm not against this in principle but I am a little skeptical that it would actually work in this case- I think search could be a good case for this (Google) but it's also in the process of being disrupted by LLMs so I feel like it's becoming less relevant. One thing that I do believe could be relevant is regulation that forces open the platforms- social media and messaging as an open standard. Now that the technical underpinnings of it are well understood I don't know why we couldn't have an open standard for making posts that my real friends could see and rich-media standard for me sending messages and being in group messages. It's ridiculous that we're locked into these messaging platforms that want to show us ads when the tech to run these things is well understood and should be commodified in a more open market. The cost of switching should be near zero.
- fifticon 1y agoThese communication platforms are a source of power and control, there are big interests involved who do not want to let this opportunity for power slip between their fingers.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agoAnd you think OpenAI (long rumored to be an interested buyer of Chrome) is less of an interest?
- dgellow 1y agoYou’re not actually locked, and the open protocols exist
- awongh 1y agoYou're locked in because everyone else is already on the closed one and the switching costs are too high. If the big companies were legally required to allow you to migrate your group texts onto another platform with a push of a button then I would say you're not locked in anymore. Companies would complain that "it's not technically possible"- but of course we all know it's completely doable.
- logicchains 1y agoEurope can't even build its own tech companies and now it's trying to destroy foreign ones. Fundamentally the European cultural hostility to business and change is not compatible with a modern tech economy, and it'll continue to fall further and further behind the US and Asia, as GDP per capita in western Europe remains stagnant. A question to Europeans here, why do you believe that the bureaucracy that's been so completely ineffective at facilitating the growth of modern tech companies in Europe, should be given even more power and control?
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoI didn't realise Spotify, Revolut, Wise, Nokia, and Mistral weren't tech companies. Of course you haven't heard of some of them because you're in the US, which is still struggling with the concept of instant bank payments, paid leave, and non-lethal health care. And the gloriously unbureaucratic IRS still expects some communications to arrive by fax.
- abc123abc123 1y agoRevolut has ties to russia, and nokia wasted a lead in cellphones and is now a shadow of its former self. Spotify, yeah, you can count the nr of jobs Spotify has created and compare it with the nr of jobs google has created. Then you can count how manny spotifys are needed to make up the difference. Wake up, europe is dying and its the fault of socialism.
- sofixa 1y agoWhy do people always shift the goal posts like this? - Initial claim: "Europe doesn't have tech companies" - Rebuttal listing a bunch - "No, but look at market cap or number of jobs, it's not the same!" Which is it, does Europe not have tech companies, or are they just smaller than the US? Because if it's the later, that's trivial to explain why - Europe is a continent where the biggest countries have less than 1/5 the population of the US. A tech company in France (e.g. Doctolib) has a significant curve to serve customers in other European countries - translation, different laws and regulations, sometimes currency, different market expectations. It's really really not comparable, and I wish more Americans have the basic logical capacity to realise that.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Mistletoe 1y agoI would put forth the assertion that Big Tech is more damaging than Standard Oil or US steel ever were. Altering the human mind at will is so much more dangerous than higher oil or steel prices ever could be.
- fifticon 1y agoI'm willing to call them equally bad. Making the world inhospitable through global warning, is pretty high on the list in my view..
- kortilla 1y agoNeither of those were concerns for US steel or standard oil breakups.
- blibble 1y agobig tech on their way to speedrunning that too, with the AI data centre buildout https://esgnews.com/ai-boom-drives-150-surge-in-indirect-emissions-at-major-tech-firms-un-warns/ https://esgnews.com/ai-boom-drives-150-surge-in-indirect-emi...
- hosteur 1y agoYou don’t think global warming would happen regardless of oil being sold by a monopoly or not?
- immibis 1y agoBig oil conglomerates spent a shitload of money pushing the global warming hoax hoax and it worked. Small mom-and-pop oil companies (if that could ever be a thing) wouldn't.
- blackqueeriroh 1y agolol, “altering the human mind at will” is a pretty wild claim. Without people choosing to open phones? Computers? Spending hours on the internet a day?
- corpzo 1y ago[dead]
- keiferski 1y agoAs an American living in Europe for the last decade: there are actually quite a few small tech companies that are quite strong in their regions. I’m thinking of companies like Allegro.pl, which IMO is better than Amazon. The problem seems to be that there is no real coherence to expanding local companies beyond their origin countries. Partially because of other competitors, which each country wants to promote their own, and partially because the whole infrastructure for serving ~30 states is a headache. IMO major benefits would come from investing heavily into translation AI tech. Europe will never have one main language, and so it won’t have the single unified cultural market that China or the US have. But that can be reduced dramatically to make it as seamless as possible.
- soco 1y agoNow if there was some kind of interoperability standard... but anyway yes I can confirm: most "local" cloud providers are much too local for the taste of big consumers, and those big consumers (banks, insurances...) usually dictate the market direction. What is also helping is the amount of paperwork the big tech can provide to cya reasons - apparently the smaller folks aren't trusted to compete on the legal fronts.
- yu3zhou4 1y agoAllegro is really a top notch service, they already scaled to other EU countries, I hope they will go global one day. Same for BLIK (instant payments with a numeric code) and InPost (very quick packages delivery to package machines all over the country)
- keiferski 1y agoBLIK is awesome and really makes American payment systems seem like a generation behind.
- veunes 1y agoEven basic things like payment systems, logistics, and consumer protection rules vary a lot
- sylware 1y agoIn order to do that, you have to consider the technical plane, or big tech will work around everything, maliciously: we need _lean_ open source software (including the SDK) and protocols, stable in time. This will foster real-life citizen/local/commercial alternatives. This is actually hard and dynamic to do, people in charge will face acute lobbying and pressure, and they have to bath in technical sauce all the time. For instance the web: noscript/basic (x)html for all dominant/critical online services, where reasonable. Or you will be jailed into the 2.5 engines of the whatng cartel. A few years back I could buy thingies with wallet codes using lynx/links/elinks/netsurf/w3m/etc web browsers on amazon.fr... now you MUST have a whatng web engine... how convenient... and recently, noscript browsers (which have a "non famous" user agent string), won't be able to perform a search on google anymore... Video streaming sites can put text ads (clearly identified) into a 2D HTML document and can provide HLS/dash/etc <video>&|<audio> URLs (and can inject ads into the video stream if they want to) which the browser will send to a media player. Chatting? One-time-usage IRC bridge URL with optional custom IRC commands which the browser will send to a IRC client? Namely, you can augment this noscript/basic (x)html portal with some "web APIs" or even leaner(simpler?) protocols, with proper online publication and definition ofc. The same attention should be given to the usage of PDF too. Generating a PDF with only utf-8 text should be "easy" and it is actually not really the case. And the list goes on. And you cannot 'break up' US companies, but you can make them "behave" if they want to do business in EU, and don't forget they have the backing of funds with thousands of billions of $ and they already have their own billions, in other words: there is ZERO, Z-E-R-O, economic competition here as they can spend out of business everybody (what they usually do over cycles of ~5-10 years or even longer) or "buy" anybody (until properly "disabled", then they are thrown away). Don't forget about EU companies and gov administrations too... those can be straighten with much more convincing. Basically the benchmark is the following: where appropriate, it should be "reasonable" for a few average devs/one average dev, with a lean SDK (including the programming language), to write real-life alternatives (citizen/local/commercial).
- maizeq 1y agoI would encourage everyone to check out the other two major priorities of this movement. Of particular importance I think is the removal of recommender systems and opaque algorithms from feeds, which can and have been powerful instigators of misinformation, propaganda and discord.
- throwaway984393 1y ago[dead]
- veunes 1y agoWhile monopoly power is an issue, fragmentation could also lead to unintended consequences (think privacy/security fragmentation or entrenching local gatekeepers). I'm skeptical this kind of structural breakup would magically “fix” the internet, but stronger and more consistent enforcement of existing competition and privacy laws seems like a good starting point
- zetsurin 1y ago>privacy/security fragmentation giant big tech data leak:https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-billion-passwords-apple-facebook-203204594.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-billion-passwords-apple-facebo... yesterday?
- bluecalm 1y agoThey keep mentioning Google ad monopoly and how it "unfairly sucks revenue from publishers, killing journalism and the news media, while forcing consumers to pay more through an “adtech tax” to industry middlemen.". Those publishers don't have to be listed by Google, they can opt out, right? Let's assume Google disappears, how are publishers getting more money that they are getting now? Do they envision some publishers' owned search engine more efficient than Google which people flock to once other options are removed? Can someone convince me that Google is actually bad for traditional publishers/journalists?
- crest 1y agoIf the Google and their ad + search monopoly went away tomorrow all the publishers would start on equal footing. Opting out while Google still runs its monopoly just kills your medium.
- bluecalm 1y agoOk, so they start on equal footing but how is that good for them? People will just watch their favorite influencers on Youtube/Insta/TikTok. They know how to find those already. I mean, how do you envision those businesses (traditional publishers) getting money in a world without Google? I mean specific steps. Are they going to code their own search engine? Advertise on radio and tv so people can find them? I just don't see a scenario that is better for them than the current situation materializing.
- owebmaster 1y agoGoogle did not invent search or the internet, my friend.
- bluecalm 1y agoYeah but they are the best at it. If other players take the market it will be less profitable to advertise with them and thus there will be less money for publishers unless you believe somehow someone makes more efficient search/ad combination than Google is able to right now.
- talkingtab 1y agoAn accurate diagnosis of a problem is crucial. The problem addressed here is real. The diagnosis is wrong. Big Tech enables the problem and certainly is associated with it. Societies rely on "messaging" to adapt. When messaging is broken, so is the society. The messaging in our social societies is now driven by targeted "advertising". Or more accurately propaganda: "communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade". And certainly the big tech (here's looking at you Google and FaceBook et al) business model is propaganda. As is the business model of the Washington Post (here's looking at you Jeff Bezos) and the New York Times. If the messaging in a society is used to persuade rather than listen things break. A simplistic model of is social insects. If ants can't leave a pheromone trail, or if some ants lead misleading trails, the colony will die. It will not be able to adapt. Breaking up big tech is appealing, but it does not change the fact that we now "live" in the internet and that the current internet is a gigantic propaganda machine.
- ethbr1 1y agoConsolidated tech definitely contributes to the phenomenon though, given platforms with substantial market share mandate revenue spend on them. If there were 100 equal market share ad space providers, what Google does wouldn't have the same impact it does now. I mean, look at the lobotomized hellscape YouTube's engagement-optimized algorithm has turned its monetized content into, to say nothing of the broader internet, as proof its monopoly hasn't been for the greater good.
- namedthing0 1y ago[dead]
- bluecalm 1y agoI considered coming to Mr. Pedro Sanchez' country to do business there. I would even come to one of the poorest regions not to contribute to the housing crisis as I like the weather, fresh food and emptiness of it. >>3% tax on my global wealth every year (in effect it's more like 4.5% because there is also significant capital gain tax) >>60% tax on a semi-decent tech salary >>25%+ capital gain tax for my investors (if I find any) >>people don't speak English, many of them are proud of it >>scheduling anything with anybody is impossible, the concept of being on time doesn't exist >>Bureaucracy is slow, full of paperwork, can't be done online, can't be done in English, the result depends on clerk's mood on a given day >>if someone comes to my house when I am away I can't kick them out, need to find another house and keep paying bills for the new occupa(s)nts I am sure that once they kick Google out they will make some innovation fund where many government officials find work. Then the money is going to be transferred to the newly sprung industry of innovation grant appliers. It will be a lot of money for a lot of people. In the middle of it a new search engine arises - made by a disgruntled European in Singapore.
- Garcia98 1y agoAs a Spaniard who was about to take a well-deserved siesta, I found these points so blatantly inaccurate that I had to get up and address them. >>3% tax on my global wealth every year (in effect it's more like 4.5% because there is also significant capital gain tax) This only affects multi-millionaires, and even then, your numbers are wrong. The national wealth tax only applies to net worth over €3M. The top rate of 3.5% is only for assets over €10.7M. And some regions like Madrid and Andalusia offer a 100% exemption from the regional tax. >>60% tax on a semi-decent tech salary False. The top income tax bracket is ~47% on earnings over €300K, which is far beyond a "semi-decent" salary here. More importantly, as a foreigner, you can use the "Beckham Law" to pay a flat tax of 24% on your first €600K of income for six years. >>25%+ capital gain tax for my investors (if I find any) You're cherry-picking the highest rate again. It's a progressive tax starting at 19%. It only exceeds 25% on gains over €200K. Besides, if your investors are not in Spain, they are taxed in their country of residence under its tax treaties with Spain. >>people don't speak English, many of them are proud of it We are not French, we won't scold you for trying to speak English. While not everyone is fluent in rural areas, people will genuinely try their best to help you, even if it's through Google Translate. >>scheduling anything with anybody is impossible, the concept of being on time doesn't exist You're confusing social life with professional life. Yes, we might be 15 minutes late for a beer, but in a business context, being late is just as unprofessional here as it is in London or New York. >>Bureaucracy is slow, full of paperwork, can't be done online, can't be done in English, the result depends on clerk's mood on a given day Spanish bureaucracy is as slow as in anywhere else, but it is indeed digitized. You are required to file your tax forms (available in English btw) digitally, and you can register a business, get your SSN, etc., with a digital certificate from your computer. I've only had to show up in person once in the last five years to register my address after moving to a new city. >>if someone comes to my house when I am away I can't kick them out, need to find another house and keep paying bills for the new occupa(s)nts This is just rage bait. What you are describing, someone entering your primary home, is trespassing, a criminal offense. The police will have them evicted within 48 hours. The infamous "okupa" issue applies to properties that are clearly abandoned or second homes left empty for years, not your actual residence.
- oldjim798 1y agoCan't come soon enough. Anything that is bad for big tech's business models is good for society. Break'em up, regulate them, ban algorithmic feeds, anything to reduce the impact these firms have on our world.