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Incredible to see the 180 both from EU and also from the HN sentiment. HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies, especially Meta. Meta is no perfe
by bitpush 11mo ago
Incredible to see the 180 both from EU and also from the HN sentiment. HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies, especially Meta. Meta is no perfect company, but the amount of 'please stick it to them' was strong (I reckon that is still a bridge too far for a lot of folks here).
Even extreme proponents of big tech villanery in the US (Lina Khan's FTC) is also facing losses (They just lost their monumental case against Meta yesterday).
What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. People stop using Meta products, and then I want to see it die. But not by forcing the hand - that's bad for everyone, especially the enterpreuer / hacker types on this site
- surgical_fire 11mo agoI live in EU. I am totally in support to force Meta down through government's big stick. While they are at it, I hope they do it to the other big techs too. Being a "hacker type" (whatever that means) does not equate to being complacent to these companies abusing their economic power.
- stavros 11mo agoYeah, seconded, and I also live in the EU.
- jonesjohnson 11mo agoThen I propose you should support https://noyb.eu/ https://noyb.eu/ Their track record is pretty good.
- rebolek 11mo agoI wonder what kind of people downvote you. They must have interesting priorities.
- int_19h 11mo agoI'm a hacker type and generally extremely (left) libertarian. But when it comes to megacorps, I have basically zero sympathy. When they are big enough to rival nation-states in economic and political power, they can't complain when said nation-states start to notice. (I would still prefer the world without either, though.)
- 1718627440 11mo agoYeah, I think states need to release that entities as large as them become their competitors. Now we have entities way larger than them.
- __loam 11mo agoIt's pretty telling that people here think enforcement of anti-trust laws that are already on the books is "extreme". The implicit goal of half of tech startups is basically becoming the platform for whatever and getting a soft monopoly, so I guess it's not surprising that that people who are temporarily embarrassed monopolists have these views.
- GardenLetter27 11mo agoLook at what happened to iRobot vs. Roborock though.
- pas 11mo agocan someone explain what happened? how is it relevant to EU laws?
- radicalbyte 11mo agoThere has been a change in the community here over the last decade, we've lost a lot of the hacker spirit and have a larger proportion of "chancers", people who are only in tech to "get rich quick". The legacy of ZIRP combined with The Social Network marketing.
- sandworm101 11mo agoThe hackers are still here, lurking in the shadows. Bananas. They are just tired of being berated by fanboys anytime they criticize the will of the tech bros. There is no fun in typing out a well-researched answer only to face a torrent of one-second "nah, you are wrong" replies mixed in with AI slop. Bananas.
- danem 11mo agoAm I the victim of the algorithm? Because all I see on HN these days is people pessimistic about tech and society. The tenor here is overwhelmingly negative. Where are you seeing anyone defend big tech, tech bros, or any tech in general?
- filoleg 11mo ago> There is no fun in typing out a well-researched answer only to face a torrent of one-second "nah, you are wrong" replies mixed in with AI slop. Bananas. That "AI slop replies" excuse you mentioned would only apply to the past 3 years at most (aka ChatGPT 3.5 release on Nov 30th 2022). While the grandparent comment's take felt true to my perception for at least the past 10-15 years, way before "AI slop replies" were even a remote concern.
- GardenLetter27 11mo agoHackers should know the government is never on your side.
- layer8 11mo agoGrowth hackers aim for regulatory capture.
- yardie 11mo agoI believe the FTC had a case years ago. But the market has moved on. YT took off backed by Alphabet capital. Tiktok took off withe Bytedance capital. There was a time when FB/IG/WA commanded most of social media. And Meta did use that clout in some pretty grotesque ways. Prior to 2020, FTC would have had a much stronger case. But too little too late.
- kmeisthax 11mo ago> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. That happened a decade ago. Users dropped from Facebook like flies and moved to Instagram. Mark Zuckerberg's response was to buy Instagram. The Obama DOJ waved through what was obviously a blatantly illegal merger. Likewise, Google's only ever made two successful products: Search and e-mail. Everything else was an acquisition. In fact, Google controlled so much of the M&A market that YCombinator (the company that runs this forum) complained in an amicus brief that they were basically being turned into Google's farm league. So long as companies can be bought and sold to larger competitors, no tech company will ever become irrelevant. They'll just acquire and rebrand. The only way to stop this is with the appropriate application of legal force.
- eptcyka 11mo agoWhat about hp, dell, ibm, compaq, sun? Companies are temporary.
- pessimizer 11mo ago> The Obama DOJ waved through what was obviously a blatantly illegal merger. Speaking of buying Instagram[1], it's plain to see that the horrible judges that Obama appointed simply don't believe that antitrust should exist. Exactly what you would expect from the guy who let Citigroup appoint his cabinet[2]. The powers that be at the Democratic party thought that Hillary Clinton was too independent for corporate elites, and she makes a fairly good case that they fixed the primary because they thought he was their best chance to "save capitalism" after the crash. They were right. She even sabotaged her next campaign with her desperate need to show bankers that she was a safe choice (e.g. the secret speech.) > Google's only ever made two successful products: Search and e-mail. Everything else was an acquisition. And search was only successful for 5 minutes, until SEO broke PageRank. Since that one fragile (but smart) algorithm, and the innovation of buying Doubleclick, everything else has been taking advantage of the fact that we don't have a government that functions when it comes to preserving competition in the market. The West loves corporate concentration; it's better when your bribes come from fewer sources, and those sources aren't opposed to each other. [1] James Boasberg; "Meta prevails in historic FTC antitrust case, won’t have to break off WhatsApp, Instagram" https://apnews.com/article/meta-antitrust-ftc-instagram-whatsapp-c36b941a372321e4ecd05e83e0db1678 https://apnews.com/article/meta-antitrust-ftc-instagram-what... [2] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8190 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8190
- 4ndrewl 11mo agoThis is a proposal from the EC. Whether the EU accept it is not clear.
- wkat4242 11mo agoYeah I really hope they don't. It's ridiculous to throw out all the great work they've been doing.
- 4ndrewl 11mo agoNothing's been official published though, so this is largely a kite-flying exercise. You don't need a pop-up to use cookies on your site. You (quite rightly) need to get consent in some form if you're to track my (or your) behavior and sell that to rando third-parties.
- jonkoops 11mo agoIt is good to stress this, most people don't know how the EU works, Europeans included.
- JoshTriplett 11mo ago> HN was cheering on as EU went after Big Tech companies HN is not a hive mind or a monoculture. Every time the EU goes after some company, some people always cheer, some people always boo, and some people will cheer some and boo others based on the impact/nuance of the particular policy or company.
- bitpush 11mo agoThis is accurate, however if you look at any thread you can see an overwhelming consensus of opinion. The diversity of views are not equal - in the sense that there isnt equal number of for and against comments. In most of the threads I have observed about EU action on Big Tech, the overwhelming majority of thoughts are 'for', with perhaps few dissenting thoughts.
- gambiting 11mo agoIt depends what time of the day you log in too. I'm in the GMT time zone, I can literally see a comment go from +20 upvotes in the morning to negative numbers when Americans start waking up. It really shifts your perspective of the site too, because comments move down or even disappear based on the number of votes.
- int_19h 11mo agoI would strongly encourage everyone to read HN with `showdead` enabled (it's in your profile page). There aren't actually all that many downvoted comments, and while mosts are low-level trolling, even with `showdead` you see them at the end of the parent thread and they are greyed out, so it's not all that distracting. But being able to see some of the things that get downvoted / killed unjustly (and then vouch & upvote them) is how you get a better HN.
- 1718627440 11mo agoYou can upvote dead comments? I can't maybe you need to have some amount of karma.
- Aunche 11mo agoHackernews has always been a venture capitalist forum and has always had a significant minority that generally sides with money. I don't think that is substantially different today. Most European regulations seemed to be less about helping regular people and more about protecting European ad firms, many of which are even shadier than big tech.
- paulryanrogers 11mo ago> ...more about protecting European ad firms, many of which are even shadier than big tech. Where can I read more about that phenomenon?
- Aunche 11mo agoThere are lots of companies like this: https://zeotap.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Zeotap_-Time-to-Embrace-Universal-ID.pdf https://zeotap.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Zeotap_-Time-t...
- microtonal 11mo agoWhat I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. People stop using Meta products, and then I want to see it die. The problem is that with a nearly infinite amount of money, you are not going to get irrelevant on merit. You just buy up any company/talent that becomes a threat. They have done that with Instagram and WhatsApp (which was and is really huge in Europe etc.).
- bitpush 11mo agoDidnt the judge rule literally yesterday that this wasnt illegal. This was one of Lina Khan's signature lawsuits, and judge didnt agree even a single one of FTC's arguments.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- xvector 11mo agoWhere can I read more about this? Quick search turns up nothing for me
- WorldMaker 11mo agohttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/meta-wins-monopoly-trial-convinces-judge-that-social-networking-is-dead/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/11/meta-wins-monopo...
- bitpush 11mo agohttps://www.theverge.com/news/823191/meta-ftc-antitrust-trial-ruling https://www.theverge.com/news/823191/meta-ftc-antitrust-tria... It is actually a monumental case ruling, and for some reason it wasnt reported or discussed here. Lina Khan's FTC has lost both their marquee cases now (Google, Meta) > Meta won a landmark antitrust battle with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday after a federal judge ruled it has not monopolized the social media market at the center of the case.
- HWR_14 11mo ago> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. That's impossible. The network effects are too strong. Facebook may die, or even Instagram, but WhatsApp is so intermeshed with the majority of the world that it can only be taken out by a government.
- tdrz 11mo agoI uninstalled WhatsApp last year after I sent a message to my most important contacts that I'm switching to Signal. In the mean time, I convinced a grand total of 2 people to install Signal so we can talk. Also, I realized that actually not being part in some of the WhatsApp groups that I left behind has quite a lot of advantages! Yes, the network effects are very strong, but each of us has the possibility of making a small sacrifice for this thing to change.
- pseudalopex 11mo agoSocial connections can be a large sacrifice.
- int_19h 11mo agoYou might have convinced 2 people to install Signal, but the real test is whether they will still be using it a year from now. My own experience from going Signal-first for a while was that it doesn't stick for most.
- EarlKing 11mo agoFacebook is filled with billions of people I have no reason to speak to, ergo its network effects for me are zero, and its value to me is zero. Other services have similar zero or negative value, and hence I don't use them either. As much as some around here would like to believe that network effects are a moat that effectively allow social media to be immortal, experience has shown that not to be the case. Facebook is dying a slow, lingering death. It is not the place you go to find trendsetters and people of import, but, at best, to go check up on grandma. Facebook will die when grandma finally kicks the bucket and there isn't anyone to replace her because they're all on Discord.
- Spivak 11mo agoWell yeah, the GPDR was great in theory and a huge win for privacy advocates until it did jack shit in practice. It turned out to have zero teeth and everyone just found ways to keep business as usual while 'complying' with the law.
- Spunkie 11mo agoI think it's ridiculous to say GDPR did "jack shit". I now have the ability to withdraw consent for tracking/marketing cookies on every major companies website I visit. An option that was near non-existent before GDPR.
- Spivak 11mo agoThat wasn't even the GPDR and it did even less for user privacy.
- pas 11mo agowhat was it then? why it did less for user privacy?
- Spivak 11mo agoIt was the 2002 ePrivacy Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Directive What the law wanted: putting regulatory friction on tracking cookies by requiring collecting consent will make sites do less tracking. What the law did: endless cookie banners. What the law wanted: ending the torrent of people's inboxes filling with ads. What the law did: nothing because they caved to the industry and let people send ads anyway. actual spammers never followed the law anyway and real companies who ship ads weren't at all burdened by an existing customer relationship requirement. What the law wanted: companies will stop keeping your personal information on their servers forever. What the law did: nothing because they again caved to the industry and it just got added to the cookie banner consent screen or the company just said they kept the data for "value add" services like personalization.
- geraneum 11mo ago> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. Why? Is META relevant only on merit?
- energy123 11mo agoCan contract killers become irrelevant on merit, or does it take government intervention?
- g-b-r 11mo agoMeta's only merit is having a lot of users and keeping them hooked at any cost. It might surprise you, but success is not always rooted in having done great things for the world
- DocTomoe 11mo agoThe 180 does not surprise me at all. GDPR and associated laws are a perfect example of the old 'Good intentions, unintended consequences'-pattern we see in laws all the time. The results of the GDPR (and the unrelated Cookie Directive) on my everyday professional life are what made me - an European - from a flag-waving European-Unity-proponent to a heavy critic that dreams of a Dexit. And I know I am not the only one - public opinion is shifting - some because of cookie banners, some because of driving licenses, some because manufactuers have started to neuter their devices when sold to Europe, taking away features available everywhere else in the world, some because of the ridiculous VAT reporting regime that hits European businesses once they hit a 100k gross income mark, some for yet other reasons. And now they are trying hard to get the de-minimis-rule taken away, increasing trouble and cost for anyone who does cross-eu-border trading. It's only been a matter of time even Brussles remembered that ultimately, their throne is built on sand, and that Europe has a history of getting rid of unreasonable leadership.
- pas 11mo agocan you please explain the driving licenses part?
- DocTomoe 11mo agoI'm not as miffled about that as others, but in Germany, licenses used to be forever (unless you yourself gave it back OR there was a court order, e.g. for a traffic-related crime). Enter the EU, and now licenses come with a renewal date, which is considered mostly a cash grab as you now have to buy a new copy every few years. A few weeks ago, there even was an attempt to have air-traffic-style medicals beginning at 60, which, in a society that becomes both older AND worse at public transit, was highly unpopular. You may think that's a little thing. The issue is: these little compound. And every time they come around the corner with a new regulatory clown act, people remember ... when lighting bulbs were a few cents instead of the energy-saving 10-euro new bulbs mandated by brussles ... when we were forbidden to have powerful vacuum cleaners or showerheads (yes, the new ones are not really worse, but they sound worse), ... and a hundred other little annoyances. Not to mention that national governments like to blame Brussles for stuff they wanted, but which were highly unpopular. "Unfortunately, we cannot do anything, it was an EU decision (which we openly supported)". And eventually, people become eurocritic. Which is one of the reasons why people start to vote for right-wing, eurocritic to anti-EU parties.
- SamDc73 11mo ago> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. People stop using Meta products, and then I want to see it die. But not by forcing the hand - that's bad for everyone, especially the enterpreuer / hacker types on this site I honestly don’t get why so many people jump to the whole "we need the government to save us or we’re doomed" argument. To me, it's simple: put your money where your mouth is. I can’t stand Meta, so I just don’t use their products.
- aniviacat 11mo agoTo many (especially younger) people, giving up Meta products would make them a social outcast. Some industries naturally tend torwards monopolies. In social networks, this effect is very strong.
- oersted 11mo agoThe thing is that it didn't work for that objective. It didn't seem to have any meaningful impact on all on the Metas and Googles out there. They control the user base and people depend on their products, it was trivial for them to get full consent like they've always done with their Terms & Conditions. At the same time, it was a heavy burden for data-oriented EU startups like mine. I've spent a few hundred hours dealing with GDPR, it felt like it was designed to stick it to the big companies without any thought on how it would affect the rest. And it's been a low-level but ever present friction for users.
- lanthissa 11mo agoso what it like working at meta?
- carefulfungi 11mo ago> What I really want to see is Meta getting irrelevant ON MERIT. Me too. But losing on merit requires an (at least somewhat) fair marketplace.