4 ms·

The EU is not going to build its own Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, AWS etc. Anytime the lack of “influential European tech companies” come up, the best

The EU is not going to build its own Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, AWS etc. Anytime the lack of “influential European tech companies” come up, the best anyone can do is money losing/barely profitable Spotify. And the data doesn’t back your idea up that Europe is moving away from any of those companies. The EU is moving its dependence away from the US military industrial complex admittedly.

wkat4242 1y ago
I guess not no, but we don't need those, really. We definitely don't want carbon copies of those companies because they are causing a lot of what's wrong with this world. What we need is more ethical companies that understand the EU market. No paying with our data, no manipulative algorithms. We've been pushing for that for years but Trump has been the turning point, now people are really on board with the idea that leaving US services is better. It will take time to build local alternatives but I'm sure they will come. We have time. You can see that companies like Microsoft are really shaken up when they're starting appeasement projects like those vows to actually protect our data (though those promises are weak because they remain bound to US law) And this goes hand in hand with the defense initiatives. IT is important though to society to be considered a critical asset.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost. And even a simplified version of AWS shouldn’t be impossible to build that’s “good enough” [1] or another search engine that’s good enough (Google) and Google search sucks these days anyway. But Europe is not going to be able to replicate the ecosystem of Android like China did and definitely not Apple on the high end or MS for operating systems. [1] before anyone replies that I don’t understand the complexity of AWS, I have been working with AWS technologies exclusively for over 7 years including a former 3+ year stint at AWS.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    Meta subsidizes a very large proportion of the world’s communication (in the form of Whatsapp/Instagram/Facebook). Even if 98% of it is unnecessary garbage, the functionality for that last 2% has provided a ton of utility to billions of people.
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Except they make money so they don't subsidise it. They get paid for it but through our data. Which is what we don't want here in Europe anyway.
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        Subsidy in this context was meant to convey that all the bandwidth and infrastructure that allows for global communication for billions of people is paid for by the advertising Meta sells, money that obviously disappears if Meta disappears.
        wkat4242 1y ago
        That doesn't mean we won't have money to pay for it though. All that advertiser money comes from the consumer too. Companies pay it to sell things, and to make a profit they factor it into the price. We're paying for it, we just don't pay Meta directly. If meta would disappear we would either buy less and have more money to pay for communication (and doing more towards saving the planet as well!). We'd probably choose things to buy more on actual need and quality rather than marketing BS.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      With RCS being widely adopted even by Apple, do you really need WhatsApp anymore?
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    > I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost. Well yes and no. Facebook, no. The concept of facebook as it was when it was first released was an interesting one to me. Staying in touch with your friends, I've lived in several countries so I have friends all over the world. This is nice. However they perverted it when they dropped the old timeline and moved to the algorithmic feed. It became useless to me then. I do see a benefit to facebook-like services though, just ethical ones. But what I do like about facebook, or rather meta now, is the investment they have done in VR. It's still full of data collection I'm sure, but to me VR is a very interesting tech and it really needed that to get off the ground. Right now it's not really moving along because "AI" stole all the hype limelight but it will come again, just like AI has had some false starts itself.

wkat4242 1y ago

I guess not no, but we don't need those, really. We definitely don't want carbon copies of those companies because they are causing a lot of what's wrong with this world. What we need is more ethical companies that understand the EU market. No paying with our data, no manipulative algorithms. We've been pushing for that for years but Trump has been the turning point, now people are really on board with the idea that leaving US services is better. It will take time to build local alternatives but I'm sure they will come. We have time. You can see that companies like Microsoft are really shaken up when they're starting appeasement projects like those vows to actually protect our data (though those promises are weak because they remain bound to US law) And this goes hand in hand with the defense initiatives. IT is important though to society to be considered a critical asset.

scarface_74 1y ago
I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost. And even a simplified version of AWS shouldn’t be impossible to build that’s “good enough” [1] or another search engine that’s good enough (Google) and Google search sucks these days anyway. But Europe is not going to be able to replicate the ecosystem of Android like China did and definitely not Apple on the high end or MS for operating systems. [1] before anyone replies that I don’t understand the complexity of AWS, I have been working with AWS technologies exclusively for over 7 years including a former 3+ year stint at AWS.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Meta subsidizes a very large proportion of the world’s communication (in the form of Whatsapp/Instagram/Facebook). Even if 98% of it is unnecessary garbage, the functionality for that last 2% has provided a ton of utility to billions of people.
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Except they make money so they don't subsidise it. They get paid for it but through our data. Which is what we don't want here in Europe anyway.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      Subsidy in this context was meant to convey that all the bandwidth and infrastructure that allows for global communication for billions of people is paid for by the advertising Meta sells, money that obviously disappears if Meta disappears.
      - wkat4242 1y ago
        That doesn't mean we won't have money to pay for it though. All that advertiser money comes from the consumer too. Companies pay it to sell things, and to make a profit they factor it into the price. We're paying for it, we just don't pay Meta directly. If meta would disappear we would either buy less and have more money to pay for communication (and doing more towards saving the planet as well!). We'd probably choose things to buy more on actual need and quality rather than marketing BS.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    With RCS being widely adopted even by Apple, do you really need WhatsApp anymore?
- wkat4242 1y ago
  > I agree that no one needs Facebook and if it disappeared off of the face of the earth, nothing of value would be lost. Well yes and no. Facebook, no. The concept of facebook as it was when it was first released was an interesting one to me. Staying in touch with your friends, I've lived in several countries so I have friends all over the world. This is nice. However they perverted it when they dropped the old timeline and moved to the algorithmic feed. It became useless to me then. I do see a benefit to facebook-like services though, just ethical ones. But what I do like about facebook, or rather meta now, is the investment they have done in VR. It's still full of data collection I'm sure, but to me VR is a very interesting tech and it really needed that to get off the ground. Right now it's not really moving along because "AI" stole all the hype limelight but it will come again, just like AI has had some false starts itself.