6 ms·

This is aimed at the European Union, India and Brazil, who have all recently been mulling Big Tech regulations. It seems to be the reward for the massive suppor

by pu_pe 1y ago

This is aimed at the European Union, India and Brazil, who have all recently been mulling Big Tech regulations. It seems to be the reward for the massive support Trump has been given by the tech sector. It's likely the EU will cave but together with other ongoing threats, this might throw India and Brazil closer to China's orbit.

realusername 1y ago
I don't see why the EU would cave in, Big Tech is more profitable than anything the EU sells to the US and they are paying close to nothing right now. But the EU leadership is so weak now that we never know, even if it doesn't make sense.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  The EU has no leverage. Its own institutions are all 100% Microsoft shops with zero interest in changing that. The US has sanctioned staff at the International Criminal Court meaning MS suspended their Outlook accounts, and the ICC seems to have done .... exactly nothing. The chief prosecutor there had to open up a new personal account at Protonmail instead, although Protonmail keeps talking about leaving Switzerland due to new surveillance laws also so it's unclear how long it'll remain European (and of course Switzerland isn't in the EU anyway). Simply put: can the EU do without US tech? No. Can the EU Commission do without extra tax revenues from US tech? Yes.
  - realusername 1y ago
    The opposite is also true, what Big Tech can do without the EU? It's their most profitable market and it's not like they are going to make up for the loss by selling in China. The US tech industry doesn't have as much leverage as they think they do, the hardest part to replace is the hardware, which mostly isn't built in the US anyways That reminds me of Mark Zukerberg which threatened to leave a while back... and denied it soon after realizing the bluff didn't work.
    - mike_hearn 1y ago
      Where do you get that EU is their most profitable market? When I worked for big tech the US was always the most profitable market, usually followed by the UK. Albeit that was a long time ago. But the EU has economically declined since so I doubt things changed much.
      - general1726 1y ago
        I.e. for Apple EU is 25% of revenue. Try to pull out from there, and shareholders will crucify whole Apple leadership.
        mike_hearn 1y ago
        If they did it unilaterally yes. If they did it at the same time as other companies due to US law, then probably not. More to the point, how many people in the EU use Apple tech and would be furious if it stopped working for them?
        general1726 1y ago
        If it stops working because unilateral action from USA, it will likely create a rally around the flag effect.
        realusername 1y ago
        Apple went as far as giving the keys to their servers to the Chinese government, that gives a clue on how valuable those top markets are.
      - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
        > When I worked for big tech the US was always the most profitable market, usually followed by the UK. Albeit that was a long time ago. But the EU has economically declined since so I doubt things changed much. Again, I've been away from FAANG for a while, but the EU (note that this is 27 countries) was super, super profitable. From an ads perspective, you made money from selling to a bunch of relatively rich consumers (the EU) AND (this is more important), lots of EU companies spent loads of money on US advertisers. This is what pushes up prices and thus revenue in the EU. Yes, the US consumer does spend a lot of money, but their super high revenue from tech is more a function (rather like their equity markets) of lots and lots of foreign money coming in. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to think about what happens to these markets if/when the Europeans stop spending as much money in the US market.
  - jjani 1y ago
    >Simply put: can the EU do without US tech? No. Wrong. The answer is yes, they very much can. Do they want to? No.
    - mike_hearn 1y ago
      No, EU economy would collapse if all US tech was sanctioned tomorrow. Companies and governments have nowhere to migrate their Windows/Office/Outlook/Azure setups to.
      - general1726 1y ago
        Russia is running on Windows too and did not collapsed. It turns out that companies wants to make money and are willing to jump through hoops, sanctions or not. Also you can just use cracked OS (illegal, but if Microsoft is out, it will become abandonware) and create alternative API for cloud services. How hard do you think it would be to create i.e. S3 compatible API? Wait that already exists - https://github.com/jchristn/S3Server https://github.com/jchristn/S3Server And you could continue with whatever Azure, AWS etc offers. In the end, it is just some variation of a REST server.
        mike_hearn 1y ago
        Russia has a homegrown Google competitor in the form of Yandex. It runs its own search engine, mail, cloud services, office suites etc. There isn't an EU equivalent AFAIK. And they had many years to prepare because Russia has been sanctioned in various forms for a long time going back to 2016. Windows is not that important. It's more about Outlook, Office, all the enterprise apps running on US clouds, etc.
        general1726 1y ago
        Which EU cloud providers can easily create knock offs and then let EU services migrate without changing anything on companies side, except just endpoints. Furthermore EU equivalents of Yandex do exist - https://www.seznam.cz/ https://www.seznam.cz/ (Do you see the Yahoo in it?) or French Google: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en https://www.qwant.com/?l=en or equivalent of Google Maps https://mapy.com/en/ https://mapy.com/en/ just have a look here: https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ They are small, sure, but the moment competition is gone, there is no reason for them not to scale
ExoticPearTree 1y ago
> It's likely the EU will cave but together with other ongoing threats, this might throw India and Brazil closer to China's orbit. Win some, lose some. Living in the EU, I really hope the EU bends the knee on this. India and Brazil are part of BRICS, so they don't really need that much of a push to be fully aligned with China on most things.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  Here's a video from the India / China border https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJEiGiGc1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJEiGiGc1I BRICS is a joke.
  - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
    May be a joke, but countries tend to put aside small issues until they create alliances to fend off bigger threats, and then they go back to their issues.
    - terminalshort 1y ago
      Disputed borders are not small issues. They are the issues that make all others look small. It took decades for Canada and Denmark to resolve their dispute over a completely worthless uninhabited arctic rock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island. India and China aren't just going to drop their border dispute over some internet beef with the US.
      - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
        They can put it on ice, pun intended, until they fix their beef with the US.
SanjayMehta 1y ago
Big tech is already under regulations in India, and it’s been growing tougher year on year. Trump has already stuck 50% import duties on Indian products, conveniently exempting pharmaceuticals, of course. The pretext being “Russian oil.” Since the government didn’t budge on oil, they’re hardly likely to budge on tech regulations.
diego_moita 1y ago
> might throw India and Brazil closer to China's orbit. "Might"? Brazil already exports to China almost 3 times the amount it exports to the U.S. And after the recent rise in tariffs against Brazil, China announced an huge increase in soybeans and coffee purchase from Brazil. Because of that the price of US soybeans dropped and American farmers sent an open letter to Trump asking him to not cause trouble.
terminalshort 1y ago
Big tech regulations serve exactly two purposes (real, not stated): 1. Information control for political censorship 2. A source of cash from fines The issue will not drive anyone into anyone else's orbit.
- subw00f 1y ago
  Big tech serves exactly three purposes (real, not stated): - The precarization of work by wage compression and anti-worker rights lobbying (Uber) - The overexploitation of attention for financial (ads) and political gains (tolerance and reach for the ultraliberal, protofascist, neonazi groups and narratives) through American state-sponsored algorithmic manipulation (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) - Assimilationism, erasure of local culture, traditions, identities, to achieve cultural hegemony (Netflix)
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    Big tech serves exactly one purpose. Making money by giving people what they want. In the case of Uber that's great because I will never even think about doing business with the cab cartel again. I don't owe them a damn thing. Nor do I owe my own local culture any loyalty over what I can watch on Netflix. You could argue that the algorithmic feed on social media is a negative, but the idea that there is some underlying agenda is ridiculous. At worst it's like a drug dealer saying "I have what you want... heroin!"
    - wolvesechoes 1y ago
      > Big tech serves exactly one purpose. Making money by giving people what they want Oh, this is not true for a long time. Much better money can be made by making people want.
      - terminalshort 1y ago
        "Look what you made me do." It's no one's fault that you want things that are bad for you. Don't blame the pastry chef for making you want dessert.

by pu_pe 1y ago

realusername 1y ago

I don't see why the EU would cave in, Big Tech is more profitable than anything the EU sells to the US and they are paying close to nothing right now. But the EU leadership is so weak now that we never know, even if it doesn't make sense.

mike_hearn 1y ago
The EU has no leverage. Its own institutions are all 100% Microsoft shops with zero interest in changing that. The US has sanctioned staff at the International Criminal Court meaning MS suspended their Outlook accounts, and the ICC seems to have done .... exactly nothing. The chief prosecutor there had to open up a new personal account at Protonmail instead, although Protonmail keeps talking about leaving Switzerland due to new surveillance laws also so it's unclear how long it'll remain European (and of course Switzerland isn't in the EU anyway). Simply put: can the EU do without US tech? No. Can the EU Commission do without extra tax revenues from US tech? Yes.
- realusername 1y ago
  The opposite is also true, what Big Tech can do without the EU? It's their most profitable market and it's not like they are going to make up for the loss by selling in China. The US tech industry doesn't have as much leverage as they think they do, the hardest part to replace is the hardware, which mostly isn't built in the US anyways That reminds me of Mark Zukerberg which threatened to leave a while back... and denied it soon after realizing the bluff didn't work.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    Where do you get that EU is their most profitable market? When I worked for big tech the US was always the most profitable market, usually followed by the UK. Albeit that was a long time ago. But the EU has economically declined since so I doubt things changed much.
    - general1726 1y ago
      I.e. for Apple EU is 25% of revenue. Try to pull out from there, and shareholders will crucify whole Apple leadership.
      - mike_hearn 1y ago
        If they did it unilaterally yes. If they did it at the same time as other companies due to US law, then probably not. More to the point, how many people in the EU use Apple tech and would be furious if it stopped working for them?
        general1726 1y ago
        If it stops working because unilateral action from USA, it will likely create a rally around the flag effect.
        realusername 1y ago
        Apple went as far as giving the keys to their servers to the Chinese government, that gives a clue on how valuable those top markets are.
    - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      > When I worked for big tech the US was always the most profitable market, usually followed by the UK. Albeit that was a long time ago. But the EU has economically declined since so I doubt things changed much. Again, I've been away from FAANG for a while, but the EU (note that this is 27 countries) was super, super profitable. From an ads perspective, you made money from selling to a bunch of relatively rich consumers (the EU) AND (this is more important), lots of EU companies spent loads of money on US advertisers. This is what pushes up prices and thus revenue in the EU. Yes, the US consumer does spend a lot of money, but their super high revenue from tech is more a function (rather like their equity markets) of lots and lots of foreign money coming in. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to think about what happens to these markets if/when the Europeans stop spending as much money in the US market.
- jjani 1y ago
  >Simply put: can the EU do without US tech? No. Wrong. The answer is yes, they very much can. Do they want to? No.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    No, EU economy would collapse if all US tech was sanctioned tomorrow. Companies and governments have nowhere to migrate their Windows/Office/Outlook/Azure setups to.
    - general1726 1y ago
      Russia is running on Windows too and did not collapsed. It turns out that companies wants to make money and are willing to jump through hoops, sanctions or not. Also you can just use cracked OS (illegal, but if Microsoft is out, it will become abandonware) and create alternative API for cloud services. How hard do you think it would be to create i.e. S3 compatible API? Wait that already exists - https://github.com/jchristn/S3Server https://github.com/jchristn/S3Server And you could continue with whatever Azure, AWS etc offers. In the end, it is just some variation of a REST server.
      - mike_hearn 1y ago
        Russia has a homegrown Google competitor in the form of Yandex. It runs its own search engine, mail, cloud services, office suites etc. There isn't an EU equivalent AFAIK. And they had many years to prepare because Russia has been sanctioned in various forms for a long time going back to 2016. Windows is not that important. It's more about Outlook, Office, all the enterprise apps running on US clouds, etc.
        general1726 1y ago
        Which EU cloud providers can easily create knock offs and then let EU services migrate without changing anything on companies side, except just endpoints. Furthermore EU equivalents of Yandex do exist - https://www.seznam.cz/ https://www.seznam.cz/ (Do you see the Yahoo in it?) or French Google: https://www.qwant.com/?l=en https://www.qwant.com/?l=en or equivalent of Google Maps https://mapy.com/en/ https://mapy.com/en/ just have a look here: https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ They are small, sure, but the moment competition is gone, there is no reason for them not to scale

ExoticPearTree 1y ago

> It's likely the EU will cave but together with other ongoing threats, this might throw India and Brazil closer to China's orbit. Win some, lose some. Living in the EU, I really hope the EU bends the knee on this. India and Brazil are part of BRICS, so they don't really need that much of a push to be fully aligned with China on most things.

terminalshort 1y ago
Here's a video from the India / China border https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJEiGiGc1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJEiGiGc1I BRICS is a joke.
- ExoticPearTree 1y ago
  May be a joke, but countries tend to put aside small issues until they create alliances to fend off bigger threats, and then they go back to their issues.
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    Disputed borders are not small issues. They are the issues that make all others look small. It took decades for Canada and Denmark to resolve their dispute over a completely worthless uninhabited arctic rock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island. India and China aren't just going to drop their border dispute over some internet beef with the US.
    - ExoticPearTree 1y ago
      They can put it on ice, pun intended, until they fix their beef with the US.

SanjayMehta 1y ago

Big tech is already under regulations in India, and it’s been growing tougher year on year. Trump has already stuck 50% import duties on Indian products, conveniently exempting pharmaceuticals, of course. The pretext being “Russian oil.” Since the government didn’t budge on oil, they’re hardly likely to budge on tech regulations.

diego_moita 1y ago

> might throw India and Brazil closer to China's orbit. "Might"? Brazil already exports to China almost 3 times the amount it exports to the U.S. And after the recent rise in tariffs against Brazil, China announced an huge increase in soybeans and coffee purchase from Brazil. Because of that the price of US soybeans dropped and American farmers sent an open letter to Trump asking him to not cause trouble.

terminalshort 1y ago

Big tech regulations serve exactly two purposes (real, not stated): 1. Information control for political censorship 2. A source of cash from fines The issue will not drive anyone into anyone else's orbit.

subw00f 1y ago
Big tech serves exactly three purposes (real, not stated): - The precarization of work by wage compression and anti-worker rights lobbying (Uber) - The overexploitation of attention for financial (ads) and political gains (tolerance and reach for the ultraliberal, protofascist, neonazi groups and narratives) through American state-sponsored algorithmic manipulation (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter) - Assimilationism, erasure of local culture, traditions, identities, to achieve cultural hegemony (Netflix)
- terminalshort 1y ago
  Big tech serves exactly one purpose. Making money by giving people what they want. In the case of Uber that's great because I will never even think about doing business with the cab cartel again. I don't owe them a damn thing. Nor do I owe my own local culture any loyalty over what I can watch on Netflix. You could argue that the algorithmic feed on social media is a negative, but the idea that there is some underlying agenda is ridiculous. At worst it's like a drug dealer saying "I have what you want... heroin!"
  - wolvesechoes 1y ago
    > Big tech serves exactly one purpose. Making money by giving people what they want Oh, this is not true for a long time. Much better money can be made by making people want.
    - terminalshort 1y ago
      "Look what you made me do." It's no one's fault that you want things that are bad for you. Don't blame the pastry chef for making you want dessert.