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> Because it strengthens Europe’s long-term competitiveness, democratic control, and stability. I don't see the point. What makes Europe democratic control som
by jasonvorhe 1y ago
> Because it strengthens Europe’s long-term competitiveness, democratic control, and stability.
I don't see the point. What makes Europe democratic control something to cherish? The chat control plans, the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Digital Services Act, the militarization - none of it seems to be democratic tied to any values surrounding freedom.
- alecsm 1y agoYou have a point but he does too. Without you own search engines (or tech companies in general) you depend on third parties and become basically a puppet.
- Angostura 1y agoIt may be imperfect, but having a system controlled by someone you vote for and can ultimately kick out is better than having a system controlled by another country's political apparatus.
- perihelions 1y agoI disagree. It seems clearly better, as a user, to use an uncensored, un-backdoored service based in a foreign country, then a censored/corrupted service controlled by their own country's government. The former meets the user's requirements, today; the "democracy can fix it!" one is an unrealized promise of the future. If, concrete example, e.g. Kagi doesn't censor or harvest data from or otherwise maltreat its users in any way, then what tangible benefit is it, to the European user, to avoid American-based Kagi, for so-called "sovereignty" reasons? What do they actually need, which is missing, that their democratic government can fix? For this question I'm not counting "other users are using it in a way I don't like"—I'm asking about the user themselves asking on their own behalf.
- Wilder7977 1y agoKagi user here, but one could argue that there is no such thing as un-backdoored service when the US government can knock at Google's door (kagi uses GCP) and ask the data, with little to no accountability or due process. So I agree with you, but the premises are quite restrictive.
- alisonatwork 1y agoThis dilemma might exist if Ecosia was thoroughly censored and corrupted to the point it was completely unfit for purpose, but it isn't, so for now it seems more like a hypothetical concern than a real one. What is a real concern, however, is the American government influencing world events in ways that materially harms people outside of America. That government retains its power through the ongoing global economic dominance of American companies. Ordinary people can't do much to directly affect global affairs, but they can at least choose where to spend their money, so why wouldn't they choose to spend their money with companies who aren't propping up foreign governments that harm them?
- BlackjackCF 1y agoMaterially harms people inside of America too.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pyrale 1y ago> It seems clearly better, as a user, to use an uncensored, un-backdoored service based in a foreign country This point of view I could have understood 20 years ago, but Snowden revelations happened in 2013. Before that, US social media have always been censored according to US social norms. Uncensored, un-backdoored services from a foreign country have never existed. As for sovereignty, considering the current US admin as well as US tech barons have been pushing their horses in several EU elections, it's pretty obvious that services from a foreign country with such policies are an issue.
- rdm_blackhole 1y agoThe European commission cannot be kicked out so your point is invalid.
- layer8 1y agoThe European Parliament elects the president of the European Commission, and has to approve the commissioners of the European Commission. The European Council, who proposes the president and appoints the commissioners, is a representation of the governments of the member states, which are democratically elected as well. By electing their governments and the European Parliament, the European citizens ultimately determine who controls the European Commission, as a form of representative democracy.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoYeah, in theory ans yet, Ursel is still there so whatever.
- layer8 1y agoI don’t like her either, but why do you think that’s undemocratic when a majority of the European Parliament voted for her?
- immibis 1y agoDemocracy is when people vote for things, not when politicians vote for more politicians
- izacus 1y agoNot cow towing to you doesn't make any system undemocratic. It does make you a little tyrant refusing to recognize the will of others.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoHaven't heard that so far. Made me chuckle. - le tyrant
- jasonvorhe 1y agoI haven't really seen major policy changes regarding parties of certain spectrums being voted out. In the end it all coalesces in some statist centrist plutocracy anyways.
- xboxnolifes 1y agoI'd rather use the system controlled by someone without legal jurisdiction over me than someone who does.
- Swenrekcah 1y agoAre you being completely honest here? I agree that the Chat Control plans are bad, however do you think that particular concern is better handled in China or the US? Also note they are not the law specifically because of active democracy. The other points you mentioned I don’t see how they are anti democratic.
- nairboon 1y agoWhile I mostly agree with your raised issues, technically you have mixed up two distinct things: "Europe/European" and EU! "Europe" is larger than the EU and the mentioned European (cultural) values do no necessarily coincide with whatever the EU is doing...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jasonvorhe 1y agoMaybe but then you'll have to explain to people that Russia is also part of Europe and they'll get all weird and irrational.
- gf000 1y agoChat control is bad, but it was voted out multiple times already, and is fundamentally incompatible with several member states' constitutions (based on a comment, didn't read more into it, but I believe Romania and Germany, among others). They just try to push it through when people are occupied with something else, which is very unfortunate (and they (who?) should be punished for it, I would want a society that "cancels" these politicians immediately for supporting such an anti-freedom policy), but that's it. The EU is still a shining beacon of democracy in the world.
- anon191928 1y agooh yeah, democracy with actual, real kingdoms (10 of them or how many?) kings and constitutions that gives real rights to king. Const. that actually puts king above law and says "sacrosanct". what democracy? Yeah some of them have it but not EU and all.
- sandermvanvliet 1y agoMost are constitutional monarchies in which the monarch is a head of state with no or very limited political power. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_in_Europe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchies_in_Europe
- andrepd 1y agoThere's so many actual reasons to complain about lack of democracy at the EU level; constitutional monarchies are certainly not one of them.
- izacus 1y agoYou don't see the point because of a possible law that hasn't even been passed yet? And instead have Trump order you around? Did you think that comparison through? :)
- jasonvorhe 1y agoWhat did Trump change exactly? US companies have been siphoning off data illegally and legally for decades and 5 eyes has everyone involved complicit in that.
- impossiblefork 1y agoMilitarization is necessary. The other stuff is criminality and not-quite-criminality-but-still-enough-that-we-don't-want-them-anyway by a bunch of 'leaders' who we can hope to eventually oust. I also like this as a platform for my own ideas. I think search (also RAG) is shit and that we need longer, higher quality vector representations of texts, and if I develop one I could potentially convince the people running this to try it.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoWeird, I felt quite safe in a major European city for the past decade but now I wake up to the noise of heavily military planes flying above with no clear indication of any foreign troups preparing for an attack. Maybe pick up 1984 again if you actually believe this.
- impossiblefork 1y agoUkraine has been invaded. We wish to prevent the Russians from being able to seize more of it and to restore Ukrainian control of those parts already seized. Furthermore, the US has made military threats against Denmark. Azerbaijan has recently driven out 100,000+ Armenians from Nagorno-Karabach by starvation and artillery bombardment. Georgia has been invaded by Russia in 2008, and now a pro-Russian faction has possibly seized power. Furthermore, we have a military threat from Turkey, which occupies territory of Cyprus and has recently converted churches on Cyprus into mosques and discussed plans for similar things with Armenian cultural monuments in eastern Anatolia. A clean solution to these problems requires an increase in military capability.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoUkraine had their chance of keeping their land but they decided to listen to Boris Johnson and got played by Western interests. Stupid but no militarization will help them regain any of their land and sane voices have been screaming this from the rooftops for the past 3 years only to be called Putin allies and other such nonsense. lol @ that Denmark thing. We shouldn't get involved in local conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia except for facilitating peaceful negotiations. Military investments will only move more money towards the MIC. My heart goes out to Orthodox Christians in Cyprus but this has been going on since mid 1970s and no European military investments will change anything about this. Instead of protecting their borders or investing in existing military equipment it's being sent to Ukraine where it'll get destroyed or get lost in the black market. Investing in actual defense capabilities looks different.
- lmm 1y agoPerfect is the enemy of good. Europe has its flaws but it's still the best game in town.
- emptysongglass 1y agoIt most certainly is not the best game in town (of democracies). All the scariest mass surveillance laws are deliberated and passed in Europe, such as the Online Safety Act in the UK and currently seeing a record number of countries supporting is Chat Control which was proposed by a shadow group whose identities are unknown. Much of what the EU (now speaking EU not Europe) does is deliberated behind closed doors, without any transparency to those outside. I live here, and it is extremely scary where we are all going.
- lmm 1y ago> It most certainly is not the best game in town (of democracies). Where are you claiming is better then? The problems you point to are real and concerning. I'm still very glad to have an alternative to the US and China.
- crinkly 1y agoIt’s the less bad than America option.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoIs it? Why? Not that I want anything like this but I can't just buy a gun here or question certain historic narratives without the risk of getting arrested.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoMaybe Europe is not for you then, as they prioritize less gun deaths versus easy access to them (in your example). https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-from-firearms https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rates-from-firea... https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-comparison-intl-cmd https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-co...
- jasonvorhe 1y agoThanks for ignoring my question and going straight for the "you can leave if you don't like it" take. Good luck.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoYou can complain about societal values but you cannot change them, as you have no leverage or influence on them at their scale. You can choose where to live though. Live where your values align with those of others. If I want to live in a Mad Max hyper individualist environment where I can max comp and economic success while not caring about those around me, I can choose to be in the US. If I want to live more collectively around people who sacrifice some ideas of what Americans believe to be freedom (firearms, speech in your examples) for the collective good and harm reduction, I can choose to be in Europe. When you ask why, the answer is straightforward: your experience is a function of political governance and what each electorate has collectively chosen. If you want to look at the data, it tells the objective story with regards to outcomes of political governance choices. No disparagement intended, this is a rationalist opinion and mental model. My intent is not to be unkind or dismissive, it is to communicate "Live where you will be happy based on your mental model and belief systems under the assumption that you have no ability to change the system you exist in during a human time horizon." (part time resident of both the US and Europe, high empathy and a desire to leave the world a better place through collective action even at the diminishment of self, so I lean towards Europe)
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago[flagged]
- bootsmann 1y agoIts quite entertaining, every week there is a dozen articles where people derive why the DMA was needed from first principles and yet every time someone posts anything remotely approving of the EU there is endless complaints about this.
- rdm_blackhole 1y agoThat is not why people attack the EU, at least that is not why I am personally hostile to it. I am attcaking it because it has failed to deliver on it's promises. The whole push for digital sovereignty has been going on for years if not decades now and nothing ever materialized. You can go back to the archives of HN to see how many articles have been shared along the years regarding the EU's attempt to start their own versions of FAANG/MANGA companies. You can even go back to last year to see when the so called Draghi report was being talked about and see how much progress has been made to address the issues that he raised. Then there is also the fact that the EU does not miss one occasion to publicly criticize countries that violates human rights like China and Russia all the while it's own commission is trying to exert major control on social media via the DMA and remove privacy for all citizens in Europe in order to "save the children". Do anyone really think that EU cares about your privacy more than the US? But when you bring any of these points, the EU supporters come back with, well that's because there is not enough EU. Listening to them, we should all just be happy to be a federation where countries become provinces that are managed by bureaucrats in Brussels. Now, that may be what certain people want but I am not one of them.
- diggan 1y ago> to any values surrounding freedom The quoted part doesn't say anything about "freedom", are you sure that maybe your perspective (coming from the US I guess?) matches with the values Europeans want? Personally, I want more of my computing, in every sense, to be closer to me. Ideally in Spain, but OK within EU too, so if there are no search indexes run by EU entities, then that's something we should improve.
- smallnix 1y agoWhen the axe came to the forest, the trees said: at least the handle is one of us.
- tgv 1y ago> What makes Europe democratic control something to cherish? First, the claim is that it strengthens democratic control. I can't see how you could be against that. Second, the more, the merrier. In this case, more search indices means more search freedom. If your country censors something, you can try another index. But only if that index actually exists, and falls under different rules.
- voxleone 1y agoYou raise a fair point. Equating 'digital sovereignty' with democracy isn't straightforward, and there’s a risk of it becoming just another technocratic project. But as a step toward diversified infrastructure and more democratic tech, it seems worthwhile to me. It’s also about breaking monopolies and creating alternatives, whether they’re perfect or not.
- bootsmann 1y agoThe militarization of Europe is not tied to any value surrounding freedom? I’m sorry but have you been sleeping under a rock?
- jasonvorhe 1y agoYou're gonna tell me that Russia is going to stand in Poland soon or what? Then yeah, I'll prefer the rock to whatever sources you're relying on.
- unionpivo 1y agoWe are getting fucked by USA because we do not feel strong enough without them. Everybody is blaming Ursula for the deal with Trump, like it was her decision. The individual countries politicians made the call, she is just a convenient scape goat (Probably precisely why her position was created for, to push things politicians know will be unpopular). Politicians (leaders of EU states) have and do have all the power to give her the marching orders. We are getting fuck on a lot of things because we feel the need to rely on USA. With better/bigger militaries ourselves, USA will have les leverage.
- solarkraft 1y agoThe alternative is capitalistic/corporate control, which has proven to not work well.
- johannes1234321 1y agoFor me as a European despite all the flaws it gives me more democratic influence than America or China. There i got no vote at all. And then, in a global comparison EU isn't that bad for what it is - a union of independent countries with quite different culture and history.
- JFingleton 1y agoWhen the UK was in the EU, hardly anyone I know voted in the EU elections, and equally they weren't covered by the media. I believe there was so little interest in the EU elections and it felt so far removed from the uk that I'm not sure it really counted as "democratic" (perhaps someone will correct me here?). I'm hoping voters in European countries feel differently, I suspect not though.
- johannes1234321 1y ago> hardly anyone I know voted in the EU elections, and equally they weren't covered by the media. I believe there was so little interest in the EU elections The choice about not voting is easily a sign of democracy, than a sign of no democracy. An autocratic system would either prevent people from voting or arrange votes leading to high support. However there is indeed a problem: For one the parliament is weak. It has no right if initiative and no right of budget. These rights are with the elected governments of the member states, who control the commission and firm the council. However even those are (if we ignore Hungary and that complexity) democratically elected and can face votes of confidence over their actions (based on national law) The other big issue are the topics the EU deals with. Those are mostly complex trade related things, where not being an expert or having special interest in a segment hardly interest the people. The "interesting" topics like taxation, health care, education, social benefits, inner security, ... are within national politics. And even topics where EU powers overlap are discussed from national perspective. Which directly leads to the third issue. EU is multinational and multilingual thing. A commissioner or MEP can give a fabulous speech, but most people only hear a badly dubbed version, partially even with being double translated (first from, say, Bulgarian to German, then from German to Portuguese) which makes it really hard to debate. Now saying "it's complicated" hiding eyes and turning around is an option, but even Germany itself is too weak to play in the international field against US (especially with the current political situation) or China. If they can't find a common stand, they will not behold against t the big countries. For a few small counties aside, like Switzerland and UK there is some room to benefit from the big neighbor but be special, but Europe falling apart weakens all. Which is the final point: The EU is the best structure we had in a few millenia where we didn't have all those different countries fighting and going to war, but we're we have defined ways to negotiate, vote and execute decisions. There is lots of room to improve, with different priorities by everybody, but better than other things we had.
- juandsc 1y agoIt's pretty bad, but it's ours. Europe has a lot of critical infrastructure that depends on third parties. We rely far too much on USA and China. United States could ban the EU tomorrow from using windows causing a huge problem, we also can't produce our own semiconductors. We need technological independence at this point.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoNone of that is going to happen the way the EU operates right now. All this talk is just cope with nothing to show for.
- juandsc 1y agoI suspect this reply may be for someone else? I read what I said, I read this and it doesn't make sense to me because I didn't say anything would happen.
- immibis 1y agoThe USA already banned The Hague (the metonymous court for international war crimes, not the city) from using Microsoft products. They did this because they knew they and their allies committed war crimes and don't want to be subject to the court, so they decided to impede its functioning as much as they can. This actually happened and is still happening right now.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoSo? The EU is all in on the Genocide. I'm not a US apologist since it's quite clear that they're almost all in support of thos genocide but Microsoft shutting down mail accounts is not the same as "the US" doing so.
- immibis 1y agoHuh? The US forced all US companies, of which Microsoft is one, on penalty of prison time for the CEO, to stop doing business with the court.