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'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley'
- rvnx 1y agoAs a first step we should make visas more selective for troublemakers and easier to obtain for highly educated people
- john01dav 1y agoAs part of making visas easier for educated people, make them less restrictive. I have looked into moving to various European countries with my programming skills, but unless I'm already at the top of my field I'm tied to a job for years and prohibited from starting my own business. To me, this isn't worth it. Also, I don't see a strong reason for that restriction -- startups are exactly what they need.
- michaelscott 1y agoI've been in exactly this position and it's honestly insane, assuming Europe is actually interested in promoting startup growth. It's simply not set up from a legislative position to be able to compete with the US or China
- alexey-salmin 1y agoFrench Passeport Talent is quite good. Most types aren't tied to the employer and last 4 years. There's the "Création d’entreprise" option that allows creation of a company but it requires you to invest 30k euros into it.
- IAmBroom 1y ago> it requires you to invest 30k euros into it. That to me is like saying, it requires you to work 40 hours a week at your company. Is that really any kind of hurdle? Most of the entrepeneurs I've known have mortgaged their houses a/o retirement savings.
- alexey-salmin 1y agoI'm not sure if there are any limitations on how exactly you can spend that money. But yes, I also assume this simply means you're capable of paying yourself a salary for a few months which is completely reasonable.
- alibarber 1y agoWith all due respect, there's not a huge shortage of programmers in Europe. What is needed is capital, world leading expertise (yes, top of the field - the people who can command the famous $100M sign on bonuses we hear about), and more risk appetite. If you were, say, an investor ready to fund and grow companies with ready captial, I think your options would be more open.
- michaelscott 1y agoThere is plenty of capital (eye watering amounts in most family offices in fact) and world leading expertise in many fields across Europe. The only factor here is more risk appetite and a culture for that risk in an effort to push industry forward. Europe is incredibly risk averse and is more interested in capital preservation than growth
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago> Europe is incredibly risk averse and is more interested in capital preservation than growth There exist quite a lot of people in European countries who are risk-affine, but these are not necessarily good at handling the insane amount of red tape. Believe me: in Germany, there exist quite a lot of people who would (assuming they could, and this criminal act will never be solved) immediately love to kill the politicians who made these red tape laws, and the bureacrats that enforce them.
- michaelscott 1y agoI can believe this. I've spoken to many European entrepreneurial types that are really struggling with the red tape handcuffs in their countries, and those are people who actually have EU citizenship and for whom the red tape is as lightweight as possible. Being a non-EU in EU is a whole other ball game. It's sad, because Europe really has a lot going for it. It also doesn't HAVE to go the US/China route of course, but if it does it will need to make some very serious changes that go beyond just preaching about doing it from the political pulpit
- alexey-salmin 1y ago
- Klonoar 1y agoI mean the Netherlands basically voids all your issues here via the DAFT treaty. It’s also a well known visa avenue so I feel like you may not have looked hard enough. You’re tied to the Netherlands specifically for a few years, but that’s about the only knock I can see.
- alibarber 1y agoWhat is Europe offering those we need? Lower salary and more taxes? The first thing that springs off everyone's lips is 'healthcare' but the types of people we need aren't exactly going to struggle to afford higher quality than most public services here, wherever else they are.
- dvdkon 1y agoLess mad political culture? Walkable cities? A nicer place to live for your less-wealthy neighbours? I can't think of much else that would impress a rich or soon-to-be-rich person from the US especially. And I don't think offering anything more is a good idea. There's little else a wealthy person can't already just buy in another country, except for maybe looser labour and environmental regulations, and I certainly don't want that.
- joules77 1y agoChinese tech is possible cause Chinese cash is parked in China. Meanwhile most European cash (from pension funds, wealth funds, banks etc) flows into Wall St indirectly funding Big Tech/SV etc.
- ojbyrne 1y agoThe fact that the us$ has dropped 15% vs the Euro in the last 6 months suggest that won’t necessarily hold forever.
- intellectronica 1y agoBannig things as a default solution to everything is what got Europe in trouble in the first place. Zero-sum, back-to-the-trees mentality.
- spacebeer 1y agoIt worked for China, when they banned or restricted what Google, MS, Apple, Facebook can do there
- ronsor 1y agoChina did it early and made growing their domestic industry a priority. Europe has not. This is like trying to close the gate after the horse has already escaped.
- spacebeer 1y agoSo not just EU, but any other region in the world, like Africa, South America, Central Asia should just give up and not try to make a business that could disrupt existing giants?
- togetheragainor 1y agoThey should try fostering more competence and competitiveness, rather than trying to regulate themselves to success.
- ClumsyPilot 1y agoMost US industries are owned by 1/2/3 oligopolies. The only way to compete is to create your own monopolies.
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- can16358p 1y agoI have no sympathy for US, and I know I'm going to be downvoted to hell from EU-conservatists, though: Don't expect anything comparable to US big tech with all those innovation-stifling regulations that EU has. If Europe wants to do anything that can compete with US big tech, they should get rid of those regulations first.
- hugs 1y agohave a specific regulation in mind?
- brookst 1y agoNot the person you’re replying to, but the main problem is the “thought that counts” approach. The EU gives you regulations about spirit and intent, and the only way you know if you’re in compliance is either getting fined after the fact or spending many millions of dollars engaging regulators to negotiate features before the ship, and even if you have the time and money to do that, their recommendations aren’t binding (they can still fine you). It creates a better-safe-than-sorry culture where companies would be crazy to take huge financial risks to ship advanced tech in a market that’s about 15% of the world.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- can16358p 1y agoBasically everything around data in EU. Make one small "mistake" (which would be perfectly OK in SV) and you're done: millions in fines so you either go bankrupt or go to jail. Almost no one, naturally, wants to take risk.
- bootsmann 1y agoThe youngest FAANG company was 15 years old by the time GDPR was put in place.
- bambax 1y ago> If we take the influence in the field of politics and human and privacy rights truly seriously, a ban on American tech in Europe is crucial, according to this scholar. In addition, we must work to create a European Big Tech industry. This is inconsistent. If Europe must ban American Big Tech because of human and privacy rights (something I tend to agree with) then it should not create anything in its stead, and actively prevent a European Silicon Valley from ever happening. It's extremely unlikely European business people are better than Americans. Once they become powerful enough, chances are they will be even more evil.
- brookst 1y agoIt’s the classic “we must regulate pi=3” problem. They want the benefits of the tech without the capitalistic intent or unwanted side effects. The European regulatory regime is specifically designed to prioritize social welfare (as defined by regulators) over technological advance. Just look at Spotify: technically stagnant, but a lobbying and regulatory powerhouse.
- _zagj 1y ago> If Europe must ban American Big Tech because of human and privacy rights Isn't the EU currently trying to force encryption back-doors?
- alibarber 1y agoIndeed - it reminds me of a story I heard about potential Lithium deposits being found in Sweden. Initially this would be a good thing because it would help Europeans build and drive more electric cars which are a good thing because they are less polluting and rely less on oil from unstable places. Of course, it was swiftly pointed out that it would be impossible to mine it and meet the stringent environmental standards that we have in Europe, because we're good and care for the world. Fine to trash the environment in China though. Similarly, hands have been wrung in Finland because they banned importing Russian timber for obvious reasons, but this meant potentialy cutting down more Finnish wood and failing to meet environmental obligations. Aparently if you cut down trees a bit to the East it's ok for the environment.
- mihaaly 1y agoMore and bigger isolationism and forcing a model that worked in very different circumstances (legal, financial, cultural) does not sound smart.
- DataDaemon 1y agoI can't wait for another startup attaching caps to bottles
- moomin 1y agoYou need to spend more time looking at your suppliers when they come from politically unstable regimes. That’s international procurement 101. The only real argument is about what, economically and practically, can be done about it.
- anticomp2345 1y agoThen America must ban and tariff anticompetitive Europe. Tit for tat.
- deadbabe 1y agoIf you want a European Silicon Valley, you need American style values. European investors are risk averse cowards who could never imagine putting down vast sums of money for pre-revenue, pre-profit type companies. That’s why you never get the big wins, and why you’ll never attract the big winners. They’ll just go to America.
- throwacct 1y agoOnly the EU? Most of the world is like that.
- deadbabe 1y agoThat’s why the rest of the world falls behind the United States in tech entrepreneurship.
- potato-peeler 1y agoMuch of the companies/startup’s and vc’s are dominated by immigrants coming in from europe and asia. That ecosystem was fueled by immigrants before them. The only reason people seek out this geography is most global media attention is given here. There is nothing special about US in itself that makes it lucrative for any one to stay. No wonder these calls of promoting local ecosystems in their original geography is heard again and again.
- deadbabe 1y ago[flagged]
- IAmBroom 1y ago> There is nothing special about US in itself that makes it lucrative for any one to stay. Aside from increased average wages, more amenable environment to starting businesses, a gigantic pool of natural resources, no (current and past) threat of military invasions or coups, and so on. You're proposing that the only reason people immigrate here is because they heard about the US on the TV. We can argue whether it's "nicer" to live in Madrid or New York City, but most would-be immigrants and past immigrants came here to escape famine, impoverishment, oppression, and the like.
- ho_schi 1y agoHow about regulating Big Tech? Which was done with AT&T before Reagan and caused UNIX, C, Open-Source and Open-Documentation. And encouraging and requiring open-source software development in Europe, founded by non-profit organizations and government. With requirements and control. The base for solution is readily available with Linux and BSD. Our politicians and CEOs only think in short terms. As consumers do :( We can ban or tax things, like shipping Laptops with proprietary operating-systems. Declare, that the pre-installed operating-system must be open-source with {GPL, MIT, BSD} and fulfill standards. If not? Fine. Ship it without an operating-system. And teach kids at school about scale of software and vendor lock-in. Every monopoly starts with being lazy and just grasping the first solution...
- ecb_penguin 1y ago[flagged]
- sshine 1y ago> this anti-consumer, anti-business viewpoint will help noone It helps regulators. And it does protect consumers, in some ways. Although it protects the common good more, which people may disagree about. It just also removes a lot of choices, because the level of compliance makes production not affordable. For example, the EU imposes a lot of rules on electric kettles; safety, eco design / power limitation (saving 4.8--8.7 TWh per year), restriction of hazardous substances. These are perfectly reasonable requirements. Perfectly reasonable death by bureaucracy. You can't easily buy a toxic kettle that might explode and will keep water constantly boiling in the EU. But also, it functions as a market barrier. I'm not sure what factors contribute exactly, but it's practically impossible to get an electric kettle with anything but a bimetallic thermometer, which eventually wears down. Doesn't matter the price. Whereas kettles in China have all kinds of fancy materials (e.g. glass) that don't respect eco design and can be programmed in all sorts of eco unfriendly ways.
- sublinear 1y agoHow are those ideas anti-consumer or anti-business? For a very long time now the operating system has been an app delivery platform for both businesses and consumers, not an innovative technology in itself. Most apps are already built on more open source than proprietary code. Most infrastructure is already running linux. The purpose of regulation would simply be to better maintain these relationships with foundational pieces of software. I don't think even AT&T ever owned copper mines. Imagine a world where the quality of copper in your city was so terrible that you couldn't make a call ~15% the time because of hand wringing about cost or pseudo-philosophizing about big bad government overreach. That's the world we're living in right now with cybersecurity incidents, businesses unintentionally reinventing the wheel, consumers being duped into scams, etc.
- _zagj 1y agoSounds like a great way to turn public opinion in the US against continued US participation in NATO.
- saubeidl 1y agoNATO is a US imperialist project that solely exists to protect US interest. If the US doesn't want free power projection, that's fine, but it's not much of a threat against a continent that is full of nuclear or and nuclear-latent states.
- xyzzy9563 1y ago[flagged]
- slowmovintarget 1y ago> Van der Sloot: “We now see the political interference by Russia and by Big Tech itself in elections in Europe, the rise of AI, and the fact that Europe is totally dependent on America in this context. In my opinion, the only way to protect our European values is to ban all American technology in Europe within five years, not only for consumers but also for government authorities and companies. At the same time, we need to bridge the technological gap because we remain vulnerable as long as we are dependent on foreign technology.” So bog standard protectionism is what he's advocating for. He should have a discussion with economists as he's making assumptions outside his expertise, I suspect.
- ClumsyPilot 1y agoUS has plenty of protectionism, including recent 300% tax on bombardier, and pushing Europe to implement bans or tariffs on Chinese competitors of US corporations.
- IAmBroom 1y agoYes, and it's stupid when applied here, as well.
- fvdessen 1y agoHere's an interesting, related European history tidbit; Most of the popular old school European Comics are from Belgium; Tintin, The Smurfs, Asterix, Lucky-Luke, etc. That doesn't mean they were all made by Belgians, there were French and Italian authors. The reason they were based in Belgium, is because American Comic books where banned in Belgium. This is an artefact from the second world war, the American comic books were banned by the nazis. But the after-war catholic government kept the policy going for a while. In other countries, the market was flooded with American comics such as Picsou Magazine, so there were little room for other kind of comics. The Belgian market, while small, was enough to give an audience and thus work for Non-American comic authors. The ban didn't last long, but was enough to kickstart an entire industry that would eventually get good enough to compete on its own. This fact is little documented, I learned it while studying comic book drawing in Belgium. The teacher was then complaining about the flood of Japanese Manga, which in his opinion would kill the European comic industry, as they were subsidised by a captive Japanese audience. Much of the cultural industry in France now only survives because of laws mandating that at least half the products sold must be French. And so is it with other European countries. But unfortunately those very same laws are preventing the growth of a pan European industry.
- longfingers 1y agoI apreciate getting an explanation for the Belgian Comics. Lua and Brazil seems like a fascinating one to me too. Financially independent clouds seems very straight forward but I'm not sure what the regulatory environment would look like to have whole different programming language ecosystems emerging.
- Gys 1y agoYour comment made me do some research and I found this on wikipedia, which very much proves your point: the 'dumping' of US comics was hurting the local Belgium comics. Interestingly, the quote below is only in https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgische_strip https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgische_strip - only in the Dutch version of the wikipedia article, not in the English version. > In 1936 verscheen het stripblad Bravo, dat voornamelijk vertaalde Amerikaanse strips bracht. Ook het in 1938 gecreëerde Robbedoes publiceerde aanvankelijk veel Amerikaanse strips. De lage kostprijs van de Amerikaanse strips verhinderde voor een groot deel dat Belgische auteurs kansen krijgen. In de loop van de jaren 1930 verschenen er ook steeds meer strips in het katholieke blad Zonneland / Petits Belges. > Door de Tweede Wereldoorlog viel de aanvoer van Amerikaanse strips stil en Belgische auteurs als Jacques Laudy, Sirius en E.P. Jacobs kregen meer kansen. Translated: > In 1936, the comic magazine Bravo was launched, which mainly published translated American comics. Robbedoes, created in 1938, also initially published many American comics. The low cost of American comics largely prevented Belgian authors from getting a chance. During the 1930s, more and more comics appeared in the Catholic magazine Zonneland / Petits Belges. > Due to the Second World War, the supply of American comics came to a halt and Belgian authors such as Jacques Laudy, Sirius, and E.P. Jacobs were given more opportunities.
- bestham 1y agoI would love to see what innovation could happen if privacy and sustainability was paramount in tech. That the user of the product or service was not the product to be sold or mined. There are only a handful of companies worldwide with that ethos. Many of them are not European. As a European I fully support the regulation of US tech in the EU. We are using US tech, but it has some inherit fundamental humans rights and competition problems that EU regulators want to address. I do not expect that EU will become innovative in a way to compete with US or Asia.
- jbverschoor 1y agoIt can't.. However.... What about ASML just bans the rest of the world and creates a global silo, ups the price and adds crazy licensing, and then the EU adds tariffs? Grab em by the what again, mr Trump?
- chermi 1y agoI suggest you read about the history of asml, where the tech came from...
- jbverschoor 1y agoPlease enlighten me
- p2detar 1y agoThis kind of outlines AI tech, but I'd like to see how a ban will work with players like Microsoft. I think it's close to impossible. Microsoft's tentacles are so deeply entangled into European business that thinking about imposing a ban on their products and services almost makes me laugh. A ban without preparing for mass migration to alternatives first is going to end in a disaster for European business. I don't see the will to take on such risks. Let's start from there. edit: typos
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y agoBan "Big Tech" from Europe: ok Create another "Silicon Valley": why One could argue Europe learned its lessons about surveillance states
- Woodi 1y agoNot true. Why ban companies ? But Europeans MUST ban data transfer! Like yesterday! And that is literal but temporary shutdown of american Big Tech. Logic. And I know eg. Australia tried something. Also european spy agencies don't want it because they are literal 3rd Word institutions if we talk new technologies and getting stream of data is easier. Shut data transfer now. We are not integrated yet.
- throwaway328 1y agoYes, because the problem isn't that Europeans are being abused, the problem is that they're being abused by Americans! Instead, let's develop a local system of abusing people, so Europeans can be abused by Europeans, as it should be. Or maybe the issue is this whole notion of "tech" as a top-down thing where companies impose products on idiots? Maybe another Silicon Valley is precisely the opposite of what we need. Maybe solutions would look more like - how can Europe end the exploitation of the (mostly American, sure) big tech companies dominating them, while simultaneously encouraging the growth of user-first tools. Interoperability laws would be a good start, as Cory Doctorow has been insisting. NLnet and initiatives like it are a good step in this direction too, pump money into projects who want to upend these relations. These movements will have a hard time really going far if the big tech companies' relationships with governments in European countries isn't addressed politically. Therein lies the real thorny issue, I think.
- mckravchyk 1y agoThe same Europe that introduces Cyber Resilience Act? Good luck. Imagine how many businesses will not be created because no one wants to risk burdening themselves with obligatory by law, 5 years of security maintenance of the product. It does not just suffice that you risk failing, you risk having to maintain it for years after the potential business failure.