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If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. In fact, if this

If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. In fact, if this is true, they probably won't even invest in local alternatives for fear of retaliation. That said, the correct response would be to slowly and silently divest from US-based Big Tech, fork whatever can be forked, and invest heavily in local services and infrastructure.

sleepyguy 1y ago
>If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. Past few months? Just look at their response to security and Russian aggression. I lost hope years ago.
bboygravity 1y ago
I'm in EU and maybe my opinion is controversial, but I think there's something very positive for EU citizens about Trump using tarrifs to pressure the EU politically. Why? Because it's basically our only hope of slowing down the evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government. It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP. I feel the US/Trump is our only hope of slowing this down as a guarantee of (future) true democracy at the EU level essentially doesn't exist for us any other way. The EU sees China as an example to follow and I feel Trump/US is the only thing trying to stop EU leadership of going there.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Except Trump is just as authoritarian as China so what difference does it make who they adore?
  - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
    > Except Trump is just as authoritarian as China so what difference does it make who they adore? How do you figure?
    - wkat4242 1y ago
      Oh maybe you haven't seen the news, sorry. The capitol storming and freeing all that participated. Having major cities being taken over by the army. Stifling free press. You know all that good old dictatorship playbook stuff.
      - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
        > The capitol storming and freeing all that participated. I don't have an opinion on that. It is the president's prerogative to pardon whoever he wants, no justification necessary. > Having major cities being taken over by the army. That is the National Guard. Not the same thing as the Army. The Army would be a very bad option should that happen. The cities are not taken over. The mayor/police chief of those cities have no desire to reign in crime, the federal government has to step in. Depending on your political views, this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bottom line is that people much more safer now in DC than they were 2-3 weeks ago. > Stifling free press. For this I have zero information. Link(s)?
        computerthings 1y ago
        [dead]
        myvoiceismypass 1y ago
        > The cities are not taken over. The mayor/police chief of those cities have no desire to reign in crime, the federal government has to step in. Depending on your political views, this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bottom line is that people much more safer now in DC than they were 2-3 weeks ago. I find that the people who make statements like this don't actually live in cities. Its like you got your talking points from Stephen Miller.
        ExoticPearTree 1y ago
        > I find that the people who make statements like this don't actually live in cities. Its like you got your talking points from Stephen Miller. I actually leave in a big city. And I do not know who Stephen Miller is.
- jleyank 1y ago
  Given where Trump seems to be going, depending on him as a saviour of anything suggests fellow traveler status. Or, perhaps, staggering naivety.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  This is not a controversial take. If people can see what their future holds by seeing examples, they can take action regardless of their role in society. Currently we're seeing a global version of a SaaS rugpull, and this should wake people up, if they're not awaken already.
  - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
    I think you see the US as a warning for how the EU could develop in an authoritarian way, and so inoculate it from making the same mistakes. I think the person you replied to thinks that the US is a shining beacon of liberty that is going to force the EU to be less authoritarian.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      You're right, I read their comment wrong. My mistake. But, from the eastern border of the EU, US looks way more authoritarian than EU at this point in time. I like to watch this small excerpt from Frank Zappa interview time to time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fam5wRXcoQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fam5wRXcoQE
    - terminalshort 1y ago
      Shining beacon of liberty, no that's ridiculous, but in this case it is forcing the EU to be less authoritarian.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  I'd rather go to the China model of authoritarianism with working infrastructure (trains, what have you) and a belief in science than to the US model of anti-science regressive authoritarianism where the one percent are the new feudal lords...
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    The big assumption here is that authoritarianism in Europe would get you better infrastructure. My personal belief is that for good infrastructure you want capable local industry (to build it) AND a population that is not too wealthy (because this gives additional infrastructure more relative value, keeps the workforce for building it more affordable and thus citizens less likely to oppose the whole thing). I don't think that having european dictators would really help either of those points, so my infrastructure expectations from neofascism are quite low.
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    You think the "one percent" are anti-science authoritarians? Have you met them?
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      The Koch brothers and there anti climate science propaganda network immediately come to mind, as does the Mercer family and their sponsoring of Breitbart.
      - terminalshort 1y ago
        If I had said "you can't even find 2 extreme outliers among the 3 million 1%ers in the US that are opposed to one particular type of science because of their financial interests" then this would be a reasonable argument. But I didn't say that. And even then, Koch industries is a terrible example. They employ thousands of scientists and engineers.
- jacooper 1y ago
  Trump and free speech in one sentence?! Did you see what they did against protestoors in university campuses or how many people they arrested or deported for just saying their opinion? I want whatever you're on mate.
- thrance 1y ago
  How exactly is the US/Trump preventing the progress of this wave of authoritarianism? They're part of it, dummy. Using all their influence and power to prop up far right parties accross the continent, normalizing insane ideas about population control and ending democracy. There's no getting out of this without a genuine regain of interest in actual liberal values (not speaking of american democrats here), and Trump embodies their exact opposite.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  As Portuguese living in Germany for a few decades, I feel that first we need to sort out the local mess, otherwise the central EU is already lost anyway.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Both are true IMHO. EU has structural domestic problems it keeps ignoring for too long and now it also has external new ones on top: Russia, Trump, etc. Both need fixing. The thing is, EU politicians have been more than asleep at the wheel for over 2 decades now coasting along, and it shows in the mess we are in today: energy polices, tech development, economic growth, unsustainable welfare state, lack of strong defense, etc. All they do is flashy speeches and virtue signaling on the international stage while not actually fixing any problems, just cashing in their paycheques till they can reitre on their generous pensions and leve the mess for the next ones to fix or just keep kicking the can down the road.
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      Current elites are discredited, as is (neo)liberalism, but I don't think we will have any significant shift until a really serious crisis, because overall public still cannot face new reality, and politics is downstream of culture. So it will get worse until it can get better.
      - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        >So it will get worse until it can get better. Sure, the issue is that whenever Europe "got worse" in a serious crisis, it never ended well. Usually millions died, and it was only better after that for a little while. So what do we do?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- pjc50 1y ago
  > evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government Replacing it with a centralized totalitarian US government that we don't even get to vote on. Trump's approach to free speech: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-abc-nbc-broadcast-licenses-b2813617.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
- LunaSea 1y ago
  > Why? Because it's basically our only hope of slowing down the evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government. It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP. The countries already want to it themselves. See the UK for an example.
- sigmar 1y ago
  >It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP. What specific actions has the EU done to ban free speech and control the political narrative? I see the US deporting legal permanent residents when they peacefully protest against US policy[1]. and I see the US searching social media accounts and forbidding private accounts[2] for visa applicants. Both of those seem like Trump is attempting to control political speech more than anything the EU has done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil [2] To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.” https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/06/announcement-of-expanded-screening-and-vetting-for-visa-applicants https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  First, there are no EU citizens. Only citizens of countries that are EU members. Second, no EU-wide regulation can come into being without support from Council, and Council is formed by member countries. As always, people are complaining EU this, EU that, when EU in reality is their own country, among others. It will be your country that will do the censorship etc. If your country is small and weak it has low impact on the international state of affairs, regardless of its membership in the EU. Macron or Merz have much more to say than von der Leyen.
thrance 1y ago
I think the correct response would be to immediately ban Facebook and Twitter, to make the worst oligarchs reconsider their support of Trump and show that Europe means it (one can always dream). I don't believe slow and silent are the correct stances to adopt when the global economy is held at the whims of this egotistical manchild.
- marcinzm 1y ago
  Trump can make drastic course changes much faster than Europe can ever agree on any strategy. Trying to match Trump's approach of drastic responses is a losing strategy for Europe. All Trump has to do is put 200% tariffs on LNG exports right as winter starts or something similar. Democratic governments don't last long when their population literally starts to freeze to death.
  - thrance 1y ago
    Yes, my ban of Twitter and Facebook is pure wishful thinking, I know that. But ultimately, it's a war of attrition, and it's the US vs the World. The US economy is alreay starting to show cracks, I don't think de-escalation is the way.
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    Nah. If Trump does that you will see how fast the Nord Stream 1/2 can be fixed.
    - marcinzm 1y ago
      I like how Europe's solution to Trump is to make itself a puppet of an even worse dictator. While expecting the worse dictator to not use that leverage to take over more of Europe. Who will charge 100% tariffs as well since a weak Europe is to their advantage as well.
      - ivan_gammel 1y ago
        This is not what will happen at all. I won’t go here into much detail, but the thing is, there’s a demand in Europe that cannot be fulfilled from other sources for the time being. Europe is not going to fix America or Russia, so it has to trade with them. It is a huge market for both, that cannot be ignored, and access to that market won’t be sold cheap. If they have to compete to sell us gas, great. The lesson has been learned anyway, emission targets will be hit, alternative energy sources will make us much less dependent within next 15-20 years.
llm_nerd 1y ago
>it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led If you have a 27 country bloc and are rationally limited to the actions of the most timid or compromised, it's pretty easy to manipulate the actions of the whole. We know Hungary is effectively a Russia proxy, for instance, and has massively influenced the response to Russia. Similarly a couple of EU leaders (Meloni, Orban) are Trump lickspittles/mini-mes so there again they'll deny any collective response that offends their best pal.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Hungary didn’t do anything that would make a big difference in the outcomes because the West does not have enough power to adequately sanction Russia. The real problem was that EU and USA failed to respond in the first year of war by mobilizing their economies for military production. Ukraine needed shells, tanks, air defense etc in much higher volume than allies could provide. Economic sanctions are face-saving measure for European politicians, because that war has never been seen as ours, yet some token response was necessary. Look at how much “solidarity” Ukrainian refugees receive now in Europe, where Poland started deporting people and Germany is cutting financial help. Europe isn’t cowed or poorly led. You just misunderstand its obscure priorities, which are trade, jobs for Ur-Europeans and climate change (which is a real problem here), while pretending that we care about the rest of the world, peace etc.
  - myrmidon 1y ago
    > You just misunderstand its obscure priorities, which are trade, jobs for Ur-Europeans and climate change Are those obscure priorities though? Putting local employment/wellfare/environment first seems justifiable to me, no? I would argue that EU action has been pretty aligned with their actual citizens interests during this whole conflict: - Kept domestic consequences contained (energy price) - Prevented escalation - Scaled up domestic military readiness especially in border nations - Hurt destabilizing Russian expansionism via sanctions/secondhand arms almost for free I would much prefer a principled, strongly voiced NO to neo-imperialism in the form of massive support and intervention. But would that be in the best interest of most voters? I'd argue no.
lifeisstillgood 1y ago
Cory Doctorow at keynote in Pycon this year said pretty much the same thing - now that tariffs had imposed the cost that US always used as a threat to get their own way, what’s to lose now? I tend to agree but 1. We risk Balkanisation of the internet 2. Enforcing interactivity (sharing posts between instagram and X sounds lovely) but the search and discovery is still the secret sauce - and once you regulate that the only fair way is a time based feed - which will just end looking like a sped up version of the Matrix screen 3. If we do this, we don’t get our own (European) unicorns - what we get is regulated utilities (which let’s face it is the destination of search and posting text or photos). The power of social media is the power of a phone in every frigging pocket of every adult on the planet. So we end up with normcore social media, partly because regulation will ramp down the extreme reactions of the algorithm, and partly because LLMs will replace a lot of queries, and they are mostly normcore because they are based on every written word ever, and that is a huge anti-extremism weighting
- marcinzm 1y ago
  > what’s to lose now? The natural gas supply among other things. Europe has made itself first dependent on Russia and then on the US for the basic survival of its population.
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    You underestimate how fast Europe in crisis can reactivate direct imports from Russia. Trump pushing for peace doesn’t understand that it will also open the way for lifting sanctions on Russian energy sector. If he succeeds but alienates Europe, that will inevitably happen. We are back in the age of realpolitik.
    - marcinzm 1y ago
      Handing over a loaded gun pointed at your head from one dictator to another is hardly a wining strategy. You also underestimate how much Russia and the US are likely colluding.
    - 1y ago
pembrook 1y ago
[flagged]
throw2432234 1y ago
Like any other country that relies on US, is doing so much better! US sucks as an ally! Please do not cover it up under "big tech"! If we would develop local alternatives, there is a good chance US will bomb them!
nikanj 1y ago
It's impossible to divest from US-based Big Tech as long as the average citizen is 100% addicted to Google and Meta products.
- cbg0 1y ago
  They're addicted to the content, not the apps themselves. If they no longer had access to Instagram tomorrow, and had to use another app which offered the same content, most users would switch without looking back.
  - VWWHFSfQ 1y ago
    > use another app which offered the same content The content is not on other apps though. Maybe other apps have other content, but it's not the good content that people want.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  A simple Chinese-style firewall level ban would make it quite simple, actually.
pzo 1y ago
the best would be some kind of movement from the bottom that customers start to divest at least from some services. Help closest family and direct friends to: - install Firefox/Zen as main browser - install uBlock Origin - switch to Brave Search / Qwant for search engine - switch to signal for IM for communicating with your parents and loved one (still use WhatsApp elsewhere) - help family setup passkeys using Bitwarden EU - advocate that they don't need to buy the latest android but can get 2nd hand e.g. motorola edge+ (2023) and help setup your parents linageos - when switching router pick one with openwrt support and setup AdGuard on the router (some asus routers already have such things build in)
- csomar 1y ago
  So divest from American big tech to … new American startup tech? Remind me again of who came up with the phrase “don’t be evil”.
  - pzo 1y ago
    Most of those are open source. Even if not perfect this is still better than doing nothing and still better than perfect but not user friendly.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > Help closest family and direct friends to: - buy european processors like ... (?) - buy european motherboards like ... (?) - buy european RAM like ... (?) - buy european SSD/harddrives like ... (?) - buy european graphics cards like ... (?) Trully a road to independence. /s
  - pzo 1y ago
    So is better to do nothing because we cannot divest everything right now? You start by divesting partners that are getting complicated (this year US). Apple divest its supplies by using many different partners and stop using one if they having problem with one. EU can for sure get a most of those you mentioned from South Korea and Japan who are also having issues with US. At least with those countries EU has stronger hands than with US.
fluidcruft 1y ago
One thing I don't know is the extent to which this stuff goes on all the time but just doesn't typically get air on news. In the past I remember hearing about stories about things hitting (I think) WTO courts. That's much higher up the escalation chain. It seems like to some extent there is an interested audience for this right now so the threshold for what is reportable has shifted. That doesn't necessarily mean anything has actually changed.
- csomar 1y ago
  Bingo. Same stuff was happening under previous administrations but it was quiet. There is no advantage to airing your laundry. Take the Indian case, by having the deal aired, Indian politicians have had to look tough. The US could have gotten a better deal by making the threat behind closed diplomatic channels. Amateur hour at the white house. (Or shall I say Trump hour?)
ExoticPearTree 1y ago
> That said, the correct response would be to slowly and silently divest from US-based Big Tech, fork whatever can be forked, and invest heavily in local services and infrastructure. Europe at least has missed the last couple of trains on this. No one has trillions of dollars to spend and catch up with the US tech sector.
deadbabe 1y ago
> If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. This is a good thing, because a lot of European led regulation has been pretty terrible.
terminalshort 1y ago
But then why hasn't that happened already? The US tech sector didn't develop out of any centralized plan. It's purely a creature of chaos and self interest. What makes you think an equivalent can be formed by central planning? Even if it could, the actions of the EU in regards to censorship show that such a beast would be 1000x worse than the US tech companies it intends to replace.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  That's why I can guarantee you that the EU will not block or eradicate US big-tech from Europe since such a massive trade war with the US will set it back technologically, economically and politically, but it will instead enter into a silent partnership with big-tech where "we'll let you monetize the EU userbase, and in return you'll spy on EU citizens for us through your datacenters here, turning in anyone who protests against us, censor anything we tell you to under "hate speech" laws, and push our propaganda to the top of the algorithm, this way we both win: you get to make money, and we get to keep our seats in power". Basically it will be outsourcing the traditional government censorship, oppression and propaganda work to the tech private sector because it's 1000x more efficient that the government at this, and it also helps keep the image of those in power clean since if they get caught they can throw big-tech under the bus with some fines. It's literally the perfect setup. How do I know this? Is it because I'm clairvoyant or have a tinfoil hat on? No, it's because US big-techs like Apple literally did the same deal for the CCP in China, so now that the can of worms has been opened, all the other countries want the same deal with big-tech. And if you think the EU leadership is somehow morally above these types of practices, boy you couldn't be more wrong. Their unscrupulous use of Israeli Pegasus spy-ware and Palantir surveilance-ware proves they're not, they're cut from the same cloth as the rest. They'll gladly copy the CCP great firewall and give it a coat of blue paint with some gold stars on it and say it's for "protecting your democracy".
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    > And if you think the EU leadership is somehow morally above these types of practices There is no such thing as EU leadership, other than the governments of the 27 members. So it's kinda unlikely that the above would happen (certainly possible but I reckon it's pretty low probability).
duxup 1y ago
From the outside it seems like there's no real "leadership" in Europe. I fear that this slowly but surely sets up a sort of "we need our own strong man" vibe over time...

sleepyguy 1y ago

>If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. Past few months? Just look at their response to security and Russian aggression. I lost hope years ago.

bboygravity 1y ago

I'm in EU and maybe my opinion is controversial, but I think there's something very positive for EU citizens about Trump using tarrifs to pressure the EU politically. Why? Because it's basically our only hope of slowing down the evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government. It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP. I feel the US/Trump is our only hope of slowing this down as a guarantee of (future) true democracy at the EU level essentially doesn't exist for us any other way. The EU sees China as an example to follow and I feel Trump/US is the only thing trying to stop EU leadership of going there.

wkat4242 1y ago
Except Trump is just as authoritarian as China so what difference does it make who they adore?
- ExoticPearTree 1y ago
  > Except Trump is just as authoritarian as China so what difference does it make who they adore? How do you figure?
  - wkat4242 1y ago
    Oh maybe you haven't seen the news, sorry. The capitol storming and freeing all that participated. Having major cities being taken over by the army. Stifling free press. You know all that good old dictatorship playbook stuff.
    - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
      > The capitol storming and freeing all that participated. I don't have an opinion on that. It is the president's prerogative to pardon whoever he wants, no justification necessary. > Having major cities being taken over by the army. That is the National Guard. Not the same thing as the Army. The Army would be a very bad option should that happen. The cities are not taken over. The mayor/police chief of those cities have no desire to reign in crime, the federal government has to step in. Depending on your political views, this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bottom line is that people much more safer now in DC than they were 2-3 weeks ago. > Stifling free press. For this I have zero information. Link(s)?
      - computerthings 1y ago
        [dead]
      - myvoiceismypass 1y ago
        > The cities are not taken over. The mayor/police chief of those cities have no desire to reign in crime, the federal government has to step in. Depending on your political views, this is a good thing or a bad thing. Bottom line is that people much more safer now in DC than they were 2-3 weeks ago. I find that the people who make statements like this don't actually live in cities. Its like you got your talking points from Stephen Miller.
        ExoticPearTree 1y ago
        > I find that the people who make statements like this don't actually live in cities. Its like you got your talking points from Stephen Miller. I actually leave in a big city. And I do not know who Stephen Miller is.
jleyank 1y ago
Given where Trump seems to be going, depending on him as a saviour of anything suggests fellow traveler status. Or, perhaps, staggering naivety.
bayindirh 1y ago
This is not a controversial take. If people can see what their future holds by seeing examples, they can take action regardless of their role in society. Currently we're seeing a global version of a SaaS rugpull, and this should wake people up, if they're not awaken already.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  I think you see the US as a warning for how the EU could develop in an authoritarian way, and so inoculate it from making the same mistakes. I think the person you replied to thinks that the US is a shining beacon of liberty that is going to force the EU to be less authoritarian.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    You're right, I read their comment wrong. My mistake. But, from the eastern border of the EU, US looks way more authoritarian than EU at this point in time. I like to watch this small excerpt from Frank Zappa interview time to time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fam5wRXcoQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fam5wRXcoQE
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    Shining beacon of liberty, no that's ridiculous, but in this case it is forcing the EU to be less authoritarian.
saubeidl 1y ago
I'd rather go to the China model of authoritarianism with working infrastructure (trains, what have you) and a belief in science than to the US model of anti-science regressive authoritarianism where the one percent are the new feudal lords...
- myrmidon 1y ago
  The big assumption here is that authoritarianism in Europe would get you better infrastructure. My personal belief is that for good infrastructure you want capable local industry (to build it) AND a population that is not too wealthy (because this gives additional infrastructure more relative value, keeps the workforce for building it more affordable and thus citizens less likely to oppose the whole thing). I don't think that having european dictators would really help either of those points, so my infrastructure expectations from neofascism are quite low.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  You think the "one percent" are anti-science authoritarians? Have you met them?
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    The Koch brothers and there anti climate science propaganda network immediately come to mind, as does the Mercer family and their sponsoring of Breitbart.
    - terminalshort 1y ago
      If I had said "you can't even find 2 extreme outliers among the 3 million 1%ers in the US that are opposed to one particular type of science because of their financial interests" then this would be a reasonable argument. But I didn't say that. And even then, Koch industries is a terrible example. They employ thousands of scientists and engineers.
jacooper 1y ago
Trump and free speech in one sentence?! Did you see what they did against protestoors in university campuses or how many people they arrested or deported for just saying their opinion? I want whatever you're on mate.
thrance 1y ago
How exactly is the US/Trump preventing the progress of this wave of authoritarianism? They're part of it, dummy. Using all their influence and power to prop up far right parties accross the continent, normalizing insane ideas about population control and ending democracy. There's no getting out of this without a genuine regain of interest in actual liberal values (not speaking of american democrats here), and Trump embodies their exact opposite.
pjmlp 1y ago
As Portuguese living in Germany for a few decades, I feel that first we need to sort out the local mess, otherwise the central EU is already lost anyway.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Both are true IMHO. EU has structural domestic problems it keeps ignoring for too long and now it also has external new ones on top: Russia, Trump, etc. Both need fixing. The thing is, EU politicians have been more than asleep at the wheel for over 2 decades now coasting along, and it shows in the mess we are in today: energy polices, tech development, economic growth, unsustainable welfare state, lack of strong defense, etc. All they do is flashy speeches and virtue signaling on the international stage while not actually fixing any problems, just cashing in their paycheques till they can reitre on their generous pensions and leve the mess for the next ones to fix or just keep kicking the can down the road.
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    Current elites are discredited, as is (neo)liberalism, but I don't think we will have any significant shift until a really serious crisis, because overall public still cannot face new reality, and politics is downstream of culture. So it will get worse until it can get better.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      >So it will get worse until it can get better. Sure, the issue is that whenever Europe "got worse" in a serious crisis, it never ended well. Usually millions died, and it was only better after that for a little while. So what do we do?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 1y ago
> evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government Replacing it with a centralized totalitarian US government that we don't even get to vote on. Trump's approach to free speech: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-abc-nbc-broadcast-licenses-b2813617.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
LunaSea 1y ago
> Why? Because it's basically our only hope of slowing down the evolution towards a centralized totalitarian EU government. It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP. The countries already want to it themselves. See the UK for an example.
sigmar 1y ago
>It's pretty obvious that the EU wants to ban free speech (online) ASAP and fully control the public political narrative ASAP. What specific actions has the EU done to ban free speech and control the political narrative? I see the US deporting legal permanent residents when they peacefully protest against US policy[1]. and I see the US searching social media accounts and forbidding private accounts[2] for visa applicants. Both of those seem like Trump is attempting to control political speech more than anything the EU has done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil [2] To facilitate this vetting, all applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas will be instructed to adjust the privacy settings on all of their social media profiles to “public.” https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/06/announcement-of-expanded-screening-and-vetting-for-visa-applicants https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...
wolvesechoes 1y ago
First, there are no EU citizens. Only citizens of countries that are EU members. Second, no EU-wide regulation can come into being without support from Council, and Council is formed by member countries. As always, people are complaining EU this, EU that, when EU in reality is their own country, among others. It will be your country that will do the censorship etc. If your country is small and weak it has low impact on the international state of affairs, regardless of its membership in the EU. Macron or Merz have much more to say than von der Leyen.

thrance 1y ago

I think the correct response would be to immediately ban Facebook and Twitter, to make the worst oligarchs reconsider their support of Trump and show that Europe means it (one can always dream). I don't believe slow and silent are the correct stances to adopt when the global economy is held at the whims of this egotistical manchild.

marcinzm 1y ago
Trump can make drastic course changes much faster than Europe can ever agree on any strategy. Trying to match Trump's approach of drastic responses is a losing strategy for Europe. All Trump has to do is put 200% tariffs on LNG exports right as winter starts or something similar. Democratic governments don't last long when their population literally starts to freeze to death.
- thrance 1y ago
  Yes, my ban of Twitter and Facebook is pure wishful thinking, I know that. But ultimately, it's a war of attrition, and it's the US vs the World. The US economy is alreay starting to show cracks, I don't think de-escalation is the way.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Nah. If Trump does that you will see how fast the Nord Stream 1/2 can be fixed.
  - marcinzm 1y ago
    I like how Europe's solution to Trump is to make itself a puppet of an even worse dictator. While expecting the worse dictator to not use that leverage to take over more of Europe. Who will charge 100% tariffs as well since a weak Europe is to their advantage as well.
    - ivan_gammel 1y ago
      This is not what will happen at all. I won’t go here into much detail, but the thing is, there’s a demand in Europe that cannot be fulfilled from other sources for the time being. Europe is not going to fix America or Russia, so it has to trade with them. It is a huge market for both, that cannot be ignored, and access to that market won’t be sold cheap. If they have to compete to sell us gas, great. The lesson has been learned anyway, emission targets will be hit, alternative energy sources will make us much less dependent within next 15-20 years.

llm_nerd 1y ago

>it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led If you have a 27 country bloc and are rationally limited to the actions of the most timid or compromised, it's pretty easy to manipulate the actions of the whole. We know Hungary is effectively a Russia proxy, for instance, and has massively influenced the response to Russia. Similarly a couple of EU leaders (Meloni, Orban) are Trump lickspittles/mini-mes so there again they'll deny any collective response that offends their best pal.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
Hungary didn’t do anything that would make a big difference in the outcomes because the West does not have enough power to adequately sanction Russia. The real problem was that EU and USA failed to respond in the first year of war by mobilizing their economies for military production. Ukraine needed shells, tanks, air defense etc in much higher volume than allies could provide. Economic sanctions are face-saving measure for European politicians, because that war has never been seen as ours, yet some token response was necessary. Look at how much “solidarity” Ukrainian refugees receive now in Europe, where Poland started deporting people and Germany is cutting financial help. Europe isn’t cowed or poorly led. You just misunderstand its obscure priorities, which are trade, jobs for Ur-Europeans and climate change (which is a real problem here), while pretending that we care about the rest of the world, peace etc.
- myrmidon 1y ago
  > You just misunderstand its obscure priorities, which are trade, jobs for Ur-Europeans and climate change Are those obscure priorities though? Putting local employment/wellfare/environment first seems justifiable to me, no? I would argue that EU action has been pretty aligned with their actual citizens interests during this whole conflict: - Kept domestic consequences contained (energy price) - Prevented escalation - Scaled up domestic military readiness especially in border nations - Hurt destabilizing Russian expansionism via sanctions/secondhand arms almost for free I would much prefer a principled, strongly voiced NO to neo-imperialism in the form of massive support and intervention. But would that be in the best interest of most voters? I'd argue no.

lifeisstillgood 1y ago

Cory Doctorow at keynote in Pycon this year said pretty much the same thing - now that tariffs had imposed the cost that US always used as a threat to get their own way, what’s to lose now? I tend to agree but 1. We risk Balkanisation of the internet 2. Enforcing interactivity (sharing posts between instagram and X sounds lovely) but the search and discovery is still the secret sauce - and once you regulate that the only fair way is a time based feed - which will just end looking like a sped up version of the Matrix screen 3. If we do this, we don’t get our own (European) unicorns - what we get is regulated utilities (which let’s face it is the destination of search and posting text or photos). The power of social media is the power of a phone in every frigging pocket of every adult on the planet. So we end up with normcore social media, partly because regulation will ramp down the extreme reactions of the algorithm, and partly because LLMs will replace a lot of queries, and they are mostly normcore because they are based on every written word ever, and that is a huge anti-extremism weighting

marcinzm 1y ago
> what’s to lose now? The natural gas supply among other things. Europe has made itself first dependent on Russia and then on the US for the basic survival of its population.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  You underestimate how fast Europe in crisis can reactivate direct imports from Russia. Trump pushing for peace doesn’t understand that it will also open the way for lifting sanctions on Russian energy sector. If he succeeds but alienates Europe, that will inevitably happen. We are back in the age of realpolitik.
  - marcinzm 1y ago
    Handing over a loaded gun pointed at your head from one dictator to another is hardly a wining strategy. You also underestimate how much Russia and the US are likely colluding.
  - 1y ago

pembrook 1y ago

[flagged]

throw2432234 1y ago

Like any other country that relies on US, is doing so much better! US sucks as an ally! Please do not cover it up under "big tech"! If we would develop local alternatives, there is a good chance US will bomb them!

nikanj 1y ago

It's impossible to divest from US-based Big Tech as long as the average citizen is 100% addicted to Google and Meta products.

cbg0 1y ago
They're addicted to the content, not the apps themselves. If they no longer had access to Instagram tomorrow, and had to use another app which offered the same content, most users would switch without looking back.
- VWWHFSfQ 1y ago
  > use another app which offered the same content The content is not on other apps though. Maybe other apps have other content, but it's not the good content that people want.
saubeidl 1y ago
A simple Chinese-style firewall level ban would make it quite simple, actually.

pzo 1y ago

the best would be some kind of movement from the bottom that customers start to divest at least from some services. Help closest family and direct friends to: - install Firefox/Zen as main browser - install uBlock Origin - switch to Brave Search / Qwant for search engine - switch to signal for IM for communicating with your parents and loved one (still use WhatsApp elsewhere) - help family setup passkeys using Bitwarden EU - advocate that they don't need to buy the latest android but can get 2nd hand e.g. motorola edge+ (2023) and help setup your parents linageos - when switching router pick one with openwrt support and setup AdGuard on the router (some asus routers already have such things build in)

csomar 1y ago
So divest from American big tech to … new American startup tech? Remind me again of who came up with the phrase “don’t be evil”.
- pzo 1y ago
  Most of those are open source. Even if not perfect this is still better than doing nothing and still better than perfect but not user friendly.
hulitu 1y ago
> Help closest family and direct friends to: - buy european processors like ... (?) - buy european motherboards like ... (?) - buy european RAM like ... (?) - buy european SSD/harddrives like ... (?) - buy european graphics cards like ... (?) Trully a road to independence. /s
- pzo 1y ago
  So is better to do nothing because we cannot divest everything right now? You start by divesting partners that are getting complicated (this year US). Apple divest its supplies by using many different partners and stop using one if they having problem with one. EU can for sure get a most of those you mentioned from South Korea and Japan who are also having issues with US. At least with those countries EU has stronger hands than with US.

fluidcruft 1y ago

One thing I don't know is the extent to which this stuff goes on all the time but just doesn't typically get air on news. In the past I remember hearing about stories about things hitting (I think) WTO courts. That's much higher up the escalation chain. It seems like to some extent there is an interested audience for this right now so the threshold for what is reportable has shifted. That doesn't necessarily mean anything has actually changed.

csomar 1y ago
Bingo. Same stuff was happening under previous administrations but it was quiet. There is no advantage to airing your laundry. Take the Indian case, by having the deal aired, Indian politicians have had to look tough. The US could have gotten a better deal by making the threat behind closed diplomatic channels. Amateur hour at the white house. (Or shall I say Trump hour?)

ExoticPearTree 1y ago

> That said, the correct response would be to slowly and silently divest from US-based Big Tech, fork whatever can be forked, and invest heavily in local services and infrastructure. Europe at least has missed the last couple of trains on this. No one has trillions of dollars to spend and catch up with the US tech sector.

deadbabe 1y ago

> If the past few months have taught us anything, it's that Europe is so cowed and poorly-led that they'll knuckle-under and submit to whatever. This is a good thing, because a lot of European led regulation has been pretty terrible.

terminalshort 1y ago

But then why hasn't that happened already? The US tech sector didn't develop out of any centralized plan. It's purely a creature of chaos and self interest. What makes you think an equivalent can be formed by central planning? Even if it could, the actions of the EU in regards to censorship show that such a beast would be 1000x worse than the US tech companies it intends to replace.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
That's why I can guarantee you that the EU will not block or eradicate US big-tech from Europe since such a massive trade war with the US will set it back technologically, economically and politically, but it will instead enter into a silent partnership with big-tech where "we'll let you monetize the EU userbase, and in return you'll spy on EU citizens for us through your datacenters here, turning in anyone who protests against us, censor anything we tell you to under "hate speech" laws, and push our propaganda to the top of the algorithm, this way we both win: you get to make money, and we get to keep our seats in power". Basically it will be outsourcing the traditional government censorship, oppression and propaganda work to the tech private sector because it's 1000x more efficient that the government at this, and it also helps keep the image of those in power clean since if they get caught they can throw big-tech under the bus with some fines. It's literally the perfect setup. How do I know this? Is it because I'm clairvoyant or have a tinfoil hat on? No, it's because US big-techs like Apple literally did the same deal for the CCP in China, so now that the can of worms has been opened, all the other countries want the same deal with big-tech. And if you think the EU leadership is somehow morally above these types of practices, boy you couldn't be more wrong. Their unscrupulous use of Israeli Pegasus spy-ware and Palantir surveilance-ware proves they're not, they're cut from the same cloth as the rest. They'll gladly copy the CCP great firewall and give it a coat of blue paint with some gold stars on it and say it's for "protecting your democracy".
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > And if you think the EU leadership is somehow morally above these types of practices There is no such thing as EU leadership, other than the governments of the 27 members. So it's kinda unlikely that the above would happen (certainly possible but I reckon it's pretty low probability).

duxup 1y ago

From the outside it seems like there's no real "leadership" in Europe. I fear that this slowly but surely sets up a sort of "we need our own strong man" vibe over time...