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I've spent a couple of decades in the Danish public sector of digitalisation and in the private sector for global green energy. 10 years ago people would've lau

I've spent a couple of decades in the Danish public sector of digitalisation and in the private sector for global green energy. 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. So I would argue that there is more of a crack, but I'm not sure the post-american internet is going to be all that great. Because unlike the open source and decentralised platforms which are taking the place of US tech, the EU is going to regulate the internet. There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Which obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but it's how you can view the EU. With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state. Of course that is how democracy works. You'll have multiple factions working toward their own goals with very different ideologies, and the EU has a lot of that. For the most part what comes out is great, because compromise is how you get things done when there aren't just two sides. For survailance, however, there are really just two sides and the wrong one of them is winning.

anigbrowl 9mo ago
With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state. The US is doing that too, and has been pretty open about it for years.
- rockskon 9mo ago
  Europe wants so very much worse in many cases.
  - zwnow 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - notarobot123 9mo ago
      You don't like the song so you changed the words but you're still singing along to the same tune.
    - modo_mario 9mo ago
      Other than the persistent exceptions (hungary and such) those parties either didn't win or only did so very recently. They were also typically opposed to these kinds of surveillance measures being talked about(of course it's easy to argue they would turn around on this when in power) but it makes this whole argument fall kind of flat. As for the rest.... given that my country Belgium nearly balkanized in the past due to sectarianism and it's influence on politics this kind of stuff was a pretty obvious big downside to the migration of the past 2 decades from the start. (It really does become a ball and chain on every kind of effective policy) Especially since we're a bit ahead of many countries on the migration front too.
      - exceptione 9mo ago
        > They were also typically opposed to these kinds of surveillance measures The mistake one should not make is thinking that those parties have any policy for the common good. People, from journalists to the man on the street, ignore all the lies, the crazy things, the falsehoods refuted by science, the attacks on the rule of law--only to discuss their political marketing flyer like it would constitute any real policy, as if these parties leaderships are sponsored just for that. And when these populists get in power and do the complete opposite of everything they had promised, then the press will miss that, because the press is so easily distracted by the bullshitting clowns. In the mean time, fewer and fewer people believe in democracy anymore. His whole argument is extremely solid. I am sorry.
        modo_mario 9mo ago
        >His whole argument is extremely solid. I am sorry. His argument implies it is because of these parties when again. It's countries where they are not in power leading this charge and this started well before the increase in popularity of said parties. Meanwhile these parties typically vote against. >get in power and do the complete opposite of everything they had promised, then I even acknowledge that in the next sentence.
  - boudin 9mo ago
    What the US built is already dystopian, there's nothing to lose moving away from that. Things like chat control are not a good thing neither, but adding regulation can also be beneficial and lead to interoperable standards. That's where the US failed big time. E.g. things like having standardised chargers seems like a no brainer but it required regulators to step in for it to happen.
  - Phelinofist 9mo ago
    What things do you mean exactly? I'm not following all of that too closely
  - kergonath 9mo ago
    It’s not "the EU" disappearing people in unmarked vans. It is not perfect, but it follows procedures and protocols to a fault. The EU is also not a monolith, it’s different entities with not perfectly aligned interests, some of which representing member states, some of which citizens, again with significant divergence of opinion. The court of justice frequently finds against member states governments, for example. TL;DR: "the EU" does not want things. Different participants want different things and what happens in the end is the result of a consensus building process.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  The us is working to protect consumers too? Or just the surveillance bit?
  - anigbrowl 9mo ago
    Just the surveillance bit. I thought it was obvious given the rapid ongoing dismantling of consumer protections, on rereading I see it is not so clear.
thefz 9mo ago
If you think internet surveillance is an EU first, you will be delighted to read about PRISM
- tjpnz 9mo ago
  Or XKeyscore.
  - input_sh 9mo ago
    Or Carnivore, or Room 641A, or even Project SHAMROCK in the telegram era.
- mk89 9mo ago
  I think nobody in the EU believes that America is the country of freedom and privacy and anonymity. (Boolean and) I guess what the OP meant is that in EU you might have the police knocking at your door for some reasons you don't have in the USA, not because they don't have data about you, but because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass. Twitter, Tiktok, etc could never be created in the current EU.
  - ben_w 9mo ago
    > because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass. It exists, but it is being selectively ignored by those in charge. Don't assume it will automatically defend you, especially not pre-emptively: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-over-charlie-kirk-meme https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail... https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-challenges-unconstitutional-provisions-rubio-uses-crusade-deport-legal-immigrants https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-challenges-unconst...
  - immibis 9mo ago
    Sure they could. You'd just have to answer subpoenas when the police are trying to identify a user, same as in the USA. You might get a few more of them. Recently a bunch of French people received jail time for repeatedly posting how the president was a pedophile and his wife was a man. Because, you know, harassment is illegal in many European countries. But the only obligation by the service provider, if asked, would be to delete the posts and give the user's IP address. The EU Digital Services Act is actually a much wider liability shield than the USA's Section 230. I suggest reading it. ISPs ("mere conduits") have basically absolutely immunity, and caches merely have to ensure they make an effort to delete the cached object when the original object disappears (i.e. they have a reasonable expiry time) to be immune. Social media, since it's a content publisher, has more obligations, of course, but they are also not that onerous and things like automated scanning are only required if your site is big enough to afford them.
dotandgtfo 9mo ago
There's a clear winner of surveillance in the set of the US government, US companies, and the EU government and EU companies. Not only is the EU miles behind the US, the US is accelerating faster towards more surveillance. Historically PRISM and the US Cloud act. More recently DOGE's recent actions in centralising data and a new crop of private enterprises working on surveillance tech like CCTV facial recognition. I don't see the federal government applying any breaks on this development. However, I note some states are. But we do see clear attempts from the EU attempt to attempt to curb this. E.g. parts of the AI Act. While I'm not enjoying the development certain factions are pushing through in the EU either, it is hyperbole to say that the EU is attempting to make a surveillance state, especially in this context.
- jonathanstrange 9mo ago
  People also sometimes forget in this debate that the NSA is allowed and has a mandate to spy on non-US citizens and companies as they deem fit. Anything is allowed, including mass surveillance and hacking into systems. There are only restrictions when US citizens and companies are involved. European agencies probably have similar permissions but I don't think they have comparable capabilities and they also have and will continue to have smaller budgets.
  - Fnoord 9mo ago
    Do you really think if the NSA is not allowed to do something, that they'll be held accountable? In 2026? I doubt it very much so. The USA sits on a lot of data from EU, and that is a bad situation. We also need to stop selling important companies such as Nexperia (to CN) and Zivver (to USA).
    - throwaway_7423 9mo ago
      > Do you really think if the NSA is not allowed to do something, that they'll be held accountable? In 2026? I know more than a few career lawyers who worked or currently work at NSA. It would blow your mind how rigidly they follow the laws and rules when it comes to US citizens. Of course I don't expect you to believe me because "I said so" or anything like that. I can tell you definitively that when it comes to US citizens NSA is pretty neutered. You may be thinking of the FBI...
nine_k 9mo ago
Open-source software was created by people who wanted to address their own needs, and we're lucky that we share the same needs. Commercial software companies and media companies were and are unhappy about that, because they lost control and profits. Regulated, constrained versions of Internet are being built by governments and some large corporations, to meet their needs. While EU's constraints may look benign (even though they are not), the versions built in PRC, Russia, India, Türkyie are in various degrees openly anti-citizen. As long as citizens' needs (like privacy and unrestricted access) do not align with the ideas of the governments and corporations, we, citizens, are usually the losing side. The fix is obvious: regulations should be liberty-preserving, and for that, governments that are better aligned with our, citizens', interests should be voted in. And here we encounter a hard problem.
- exceptione 9mo ago
  It isn't that hard. A democracy can be maximally liberal, including the internet, up to the Tolerance Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The people that govern Big Tech have said as much as that they don't believe in democracy, they show they don't believe in fair markets, and they are put to work to implement the threats of a crazy but powerful clique, attacking free and social democracies with an endless stream of sponsored garbage. If the EU had any leaders instead of weasels, they would have closed the sewers that brings lies, hate, conspiracy theories and division. If the EU does not act, it will go down, taken apart by the oligarchs.
  - postexitus 9mo ago
    Tolerance Paradox is not a "Tolerance Threshold" - it's a Paradox. You cannot be maximally liberal "up to Tolerance Paradox" - as soon as you are maximally liberal to any threshold, you are no longer liberal - hence the paradox.
    - exceptione 9mo ago
      > you are no longer liberal - hence the paradox. It seems you define liberal in a rigid way. What I tried to convey is that for any Tolerance to exist, it has room to tolerate anything except Anti-Tolerance, as part of its essence. Paradox isn't a contradiction ("you are no longer liberal"), it is something that might seem like a contradiction. But maybe we agree about that and my wording was confusing.
ljsprague 9mo ago
>There is a saying about how US citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Almost always easier to pick a new company than a new government.
- bayindirh 9mo ago
  > Almost always easier to pick a new company than a new government. As long as the company you left doesn't buy the company you just picked.
- wongarsu 9mo ago
  That's what democracy is supposed to fix
- kergonath 9mo ago
  As long as you have decent antitrust regulation with teeth and you ignore all natural monopolies.
Traubenfuchs 9mo ago
For computers we have linux, ok, but how are iOS and Android being replaced?
- hulitu 9mo ago
  > For computers we have linux US has it. There are some non-US contributors, but, the Linux Foundation is in US, Linus is in US, kernel.org is in US.
- wongarsu 9mo ago
  The EU is slowly weakening Google's grasp on Android, for example by evening the playing field for app stores. You can get google-free Android devices from both Chinese manufacturers and the Netherlands (Fairphone). They aren't terribly attractive right now, but that could quickly change if the demand exists At that point Google would probably turn even more hostile to the open source nature of Android, leading to some sort of fork
  - graemep 9mo ago
    Google is tightening their grip on Android. They are going to effectively kill of alternative app stores by requiring them to use Google's developer verification (there have been discussions on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569371 ). Many countries are introducing things such as age verification and ID apps that require Google Android. A lot of bank apps will only work with Google Android. This is why Fairphone offers a Google Android option, an I would guess that is what most people use. There are lots of other problems. As discussed recently the HSBC app will not work if you have installed any software at all from another app store.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
- hex-m 9mo ago
  "Google-free" FOSS Android-builds (Graphene, /e/, iodé) are available today and usable for most tasks. Just make sure your government IDs and banking apps don't depend on proprietary Google-only features.
sujsjsv 9mo ago
You won’t ever be able to use anything but Microsoft and other American products. I feel sorry for you. Mr Trump and Lindsey are laughing directly at your face, it seems.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
  [dead]
u_sama 9mo ago
>There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. This is a Danish blindspot, Europeans do not trust their governments in large (France is fractured, Southern Europe has endemic corruption, Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out) and this is in part the source behind the flare up of "far-right" movements in the continent. The infamous EU chat law doesnt help either, and all the abuses of Germany in their misuse of hate speech to punish speech is not a positive development. We do not have real alternatives to most American tech services, and administrations are unwilling to move to Linux based alternatives. The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.
- disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
  > The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them. They don't need to though, just require all government software to be released under a free software license, with limited exceptions for national security. The US does very well in software, so the EU should commoditise their complement and focus on free software services. This is both cheaper than the current services, and produces lots of employment for EU based tech people (probably at less money though, unfortunately). This is basically what China is doing with their open weights models.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- Hizonner 9mo ago
  > Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out ... and those parties would be even more authoritarian if they got in. Which they might in part because of the reaction. It's possible to get fucked from both ends...
hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago
The idea that EU surveillance is greater than US surveillance is almost certainly mistaken. In fact, a huge reason that the EU is looking to move away from U.S. commercial providers is that they can’t guarantee they won’t be giving the U.S. govt information about EU users even if they setup completely independent EU based entities. The reason why it might appear that the EU is more heavy handed is because the EU is actually passing limited tailored laws, publicly, that explicitly state the limitations of those laws. The US govt, on the other hand, has already passed broad blanket laws that allow them to get any data from any U.S. corporate entity with the flimsiest of warrants which those entities are not even legally allowed to publicly reveal. The U.S. govt doesn’t need to pass any surveillance laws because they already essentially have unlimited power over the data being collected by US corporations.
- TylerLives 9mo ago
  What about censorship?
  - akie 9mo ago
    What the US media (and Elon Musk) call EU censorship is actually a request to follow EU rules if they want to operate in the EU market. What, exactly, is controversial about that?
    - leishman 9mo ago
      What’s controversial is that EU rules force censorship.
      - twixfel 9mo ago
        It's not that controversial, every single country has limits on speech, including the US. So European countries control a little bit more than the US, largely when it comes to racial abuse and other hate speech. So? The American model when combined with social media and the internet appears to have disastrous outcomes, judging by who has been elected there. It clearly worked in the past, but not any more. Americans supposedly being outraged at other free, democratic countries (often in reality both more free and democratic than the US) having different laws regarding speech is really just a smoke screen for what they really want: for their social media companies and billionaires to completely control our media, so that we end up just as fucked up and insane as they are. In the end if we allow Americans to poison our countries, we will lose our freedoms and democracies. Why would we allow that? What do you expect? P.S. it's cringe to cry about lack of free speech in Europe as if we've changed. We never, ever had 100% free speech in Europe. Stop trying to hark back to some free speech utopia that literally never existed. This is the continent that up until 110 years ago was overwhelmingly ruled by kings and queens and indeed we are in many ways far more conservative than you are. Get over it and stop trying to turn us into you.
TacticalCoder 9mo ago
> ... 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, ... If, at long last, Trump doing insane things can help get rid of that piece of undescribable turd that Windows is in the EU, please just please Trump: go take the Groenland. As an EU citizen I'm gladly giving Groenland up (even if it's not in the EU but belongs to Denmark which is, itself, in the EU) if in exchange I don't ever have to see a computer running Windows ever again in Europe.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago
  > As an EU citizen I'm gladly giving Groenland up (even if it's not in the EU but belongs to Denmark which is, itself, in the EU) Nitpicky, but I guess ultimately it kind of/might matter: Greenland belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark (Danish Realm), not Denmark. Denmark (often called Denmark Proper) is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which also Faroe Islands belong to. Denmark is in Europe + EU, Kingdom of Denmark isn't in EU, but main part of it is indeed in Europe. I think if Greenland was actually part of Denmark, it too would be part of EU, as I don't think you can selectively "unmark" specific territories in a country to not be in EU if the country itself is in EU. But since Greeland isn't actually a part of Denmark, it isn't part of the EU.
  - VorpalWay 9mo ago
    > Denmark is in Europe + EU, Kingdom of Denmark isn't in EU, but main part of it is indeed in Europe. Main part by population. By area, not so.
    - embedding-shape 9mo ago
      Was thinking more by "rule" than anything, since it is a monarchy after all. Folketing is located in Copenhagen.
  - kergonath 9mo ago
    > I think if Greenland was actually part of Denmark, it too would be part of EU, as I don't think you can selectively "unmark" specific territories in a country to not be in EU if the country itself is in EU. Yes, you can. Plenty of overseas territories span the complete gamut between autonomous regions outside the EU and overseas EU regions. Each one is a special case and has specific reasons why there are inside or outside the EU.
aleph_minus_one 9mo ago
> There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Which obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but it's how you can view the EU. I would rather say for quite a lot of people in Germany it's that they neither trust the Federal Government nor the EU government nor the US-American tech companies.
- graemep 9mo ago
  > I would rather say for quite a lot of people in Germany it's that they neither trust the Federal Government nor the EU government nor the US-American tech companies. I think that is a healthy attitude. I am British and do not trust my government or big tech (regardless of where it is based). IMO governments are easily lobbied to utimately tend to take the side of big business.
graemep 9mo ago
> Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. Who has actually done it? What are you going to use instead? You could move servers off MS cloud platforms (although very little has actually happened and there seems to be very few places with a firm commitment to do it) but I am very sceptical that anyone is going to move client devices to anything other than MS, Apple and Google controlled OSes.
miroljub 9mo ago
[flagged]
- stuartloxton 9mo ago
  The european parliament is elected by citizens, and the council is formed of the heads of state of each member country (which would have been elected in the way each country decides). Which part with direct power isn't elected?
- Attrecomet 9mo ago
  That is, of course, a deeply misleading characterization. You might as well start ranting about the EUSSR in your next comment. The US regime is deeply undemocratic, cleptocratic and corrupt, but delegating democratically elected power isn't undemocratic in itself.
- gambiting 9mo ago
  >>Unlike national governments, EU ruling regime is not elected by EU citizens. It literally is. What a deeply misinformed and frankly misleading take.
css_apologist 9mo ago
> With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state. You say this with no irony as an american..
anthk 9mo ago
iOS was always irrelevant in Europe. No regulation was needed, ever. It was useless.
linus8989 9mo ago
[dead]

anigbrowl 9mo ago

With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state. The US is doing that too, and has been pretty open about it for years.

rockskon 9mo ago
Europe wants so very much worse in many cases.
- zwnow 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - notarobot123 9mo ago
    You don't like the song so you changed the words but you're still singing along to the same tune.
  - modo_mario 9mo ago
    Other than the persistent exceptions (hungary and such) those parties either didn't win or only did so very recently. They were also typically opposed to these kinds of surveillance measures being talked about(of course it's easy to argue they would turn around on this when in power) but it makes this whole argument fall kind of flat. As for the rest.... given that my country Belgium nearly balkanized in the past due to sectarianism and it's influence on politics this kind of stuff was a pretty obvious big downside to the migration of the past 2 decades from the start. (It really does become a ball and chain on every kind of effective policy) Especially since we're a bit ahead of many countries on the migration front too.
    - exceptione 9mo ago
      > They were also typically opposed to these kinds of surveillance measures The mistake one should not make is thinking that those parties have any policy for the common good. People, from journalists to the man on the street, ignore all the lies, the crazy things, the falsehoods refuted by science, the attacks on the rule of law--only to discuss their political marketing flyer like it would constitute any real policy, as if these parties leaderships are sponsored just for that. And when these populists get in power and do the complete opposite of everything they had promised, then the press will miss that, because the press is so easily distracted by the bullshitting clowns. In the mean time, fewer and fewer people believe in democracy anymore. His whole argument is extremely solid. I am sorry.
      - modo_mario 9mo ago
        >His whole argument is extremely solid. I am sorry. His argument implies it is because of these parties when again. It's countries where they are not in power leading this charge and this started well before the increase in popularity of said parties. Meanwhile these parties typically vote against. >get in power and do the complete opposite of everything they had promised, then I even acknowledge that in the next sentence.
- boudin 9mo ago
  What the US built is already dystopian, there's nothing to lose moving away from that. Things like chat control are not a good thing neither, but adding regulation can also be beneficial and lead to interoperable standards. That's where the US failed big time. E.g. things like having standardised chargers seems like a no brainer but it required regulators to step in for it to happen.
- Phelinofist 9mo ago
  What things do you mean exactly? I'm not following all of that too closely
- kergonath 9mo ago
  It’s not "the EU" disappearing people in unmarked vans. It is not perfect, but it follows procedures and protocols to a fault. The EU is also not a monolith, it’s different entities with not perfectly aligned interests, some of which representing member states, some of which citizens, again with significant divergence of opinion. The court of justice frequently finds against member states governments, for example. TL;DR: "the EU" does not want things. Different participants want different things and what happens in the end is the result of a consensus building process.
lostlogin 9mo ago
The us is working to protect consumers too? Or just the surveillance bit?
- anigbrowl 9mo ago
  Just the surveillance bit. I thought it was obvious given the rapid ongoing dismantling of consumer protections, on rereading I see it is not so clear.

thefz 9mo ago

If you think internet surveillance is an EU first, you will be delighted to read about PRISM

tjpnz 9mo ago
Or XKeyscore.
- input_sh 9mo ago
  Or Carnivore, or Room 641A, or even Project SHAMROCK in the telegram era.
mk89 9mo ago
I think nobody in the EU believes that America is the country of freedom and privacy and anonymity. (Boolean and) I guess what the OP meant is that in EU you might have the police knocking at your door for some reasons you don't have in the USA, not because they don't have data about you, but because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass. Twitter, Tiktok, etc could never be created in the current EU.
- ben_w 9mo ago
  > because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass. It exists, but it is being selectively ignored by those in charge. Don't assume it will automatically defend you, especially not pre-emptively: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-over-charlie-kirk-meme https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail... https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-challenges-unconstitutional-provisions-rubio-uses-crusade-deport-legal-immigrants https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-challenges-unconst...
- immibis 9mo ago
  Sure they could. You'd just have to answer subpoenas when the police are trying to identify a user, same as in the USA. You might get a few more of them. Recently a bunch of French people received jail time for repeatedly posting how the president was a pedophile and his wife was a man. Because, you know, harassment is illegal in many European countries. But the only obligation by the service provider, if asked, would be to delete the posts and give the user's IP address. The EU Digital Services Act is actually a much wider liability shield than the USA's Section 230. I suggest reading it. ISPs ("mere conduits") have basically absolutely immunity, and caches merely have to ensure they make an effort to delete the cached object when the original object disappears (i.e. they have a reasonable expiry time) to be immune. Social media, since it's a content publisher, has more obligations, of course, but they are also not that onerous and things like automated scanning are only required if your site is big enough to afford them.

dotandgtfo 9mo ago

There's a clear winner of surveillance in the set of the US government, US companies, and the EU government and EU companies. Not only is the EU miles behind the US, the US is accelerating faster towards more surveillance. Historically PRISM and the US Cloud act. More recently DOGE's recent actions in centralising data and a new crop of private enterprises working on surveillance tech like CCTV facial recognition. I don't see the federal government applying any breaks on this development. However, I note some states are. But we do see clear attempts from the EU attempt to attempt to curb this. E.g. parts of the AI Act. While I'm not enjoying the development certain factions are pushing through in the EU either, it is hyperbole to say that the EU is attempting to make a surveillance state, especially in this context.

jonathanstrange 9mo ago
People also sometimes forget in this debate that the NSA is allowed and has a mandate to spy on non-US citizens and companies as they deem fit. Anything is allowed, including mass surveillance and hacking into systems. There are only restrictions when US citizens and companies are involved. European agencies probably have similar permissions but I don't think they have comparable capabilities and they also have and will continue to have smaller budgets.
- Fnoord 9mo ago
  Do you really think if the NSA is not allowed to do something, that they'll be held accountable? In 2026? I doubt it very much so. The USA sits on a lot of data from EU, and that is a bad situation. We also need to stop selling important companies such as Nexperia (to CN) and Zivver (to USA).
  - throwaway_7423 9mo ago
    > Do you really think if the NSA is not allowed to do something, that they'll be held accountable? In 2026? I know more than a few career lawyers who worked or currently work at NSA. It would blow your mind how rigidly they follow the laws and rules when it comes to US citizens. Of course I don't expect you to believe me because "I said so" or anything like that. I can tell you definitively that when it comes to US citizens NSA is pretty neutered. You may be thinking of the FBI...

nine_k 9mo ago

Open-source software was created by people who wanted to address their own needs, and we're lucky that we share the same needs. Commercial software companies and media companies were and are unhappy about that, because they lost control and profits. Regulated, constrained versions of Internet are being built by governments and some large corporations, to meet their needs. While EU's constraints may look benign (even though they are not), the versions built in PRC, Russia, India, Türkyie are in various degrees openly anti-citizen. As long as citizens' needs (like privacy and unrestricted access) do not align with the ideas of the governments and corporations, we, citizens, are usually the losing side. The fix is obvious: regulations should be liberty-preserving, and for that, governments that are better aligned with our, citizens', interests should be voted in. And here we encounter a hard problem.

exceptione 9mo ago
It isn't that hard. A democracy can be maximally liberal, including the internet, up to the Tolerance Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance The people that govern Big Tech have said as much as that they don't believe in democracy, they show they don't believe in fair markets, and they are put to work to implement the threats of a crazy but powerful clique, attacking free and social democracies with an endless stream of sponsored garbage. If the EU had any leaders instead of weasels, they would have closed the sewers that brings lies, hate, conspiracy theories and division. If the EU does not act, it will go down, taken apart by the oligarchs.
- postexitus 9mo ago
  Tolerance Paradox is not a "Tolerance Threshold" - it's a Paradox. You cannot be maximally liberal "up to Tolerance Paradox" - as soon as you are maximally liberal to any threshold, you are no longer liberal - hence the paradox.
  - exceptione 9mo ago
    > you are no longer liberal - hence the paradox. It seems you define liberal in a rigid way. What I tried to convey is that for any Tolerance to exist, it has room to tolerate anything except Anti-Tolerance, as part of its essence. Paradox isn't a contradiction ("you are no longer liberal"), it is something that might seem like a contradiction. But maybe we agree about that and my wording was confusing.

ljsprague 9mo ago

>There is a saying about how US citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Almost always easier to pick a new company than a new government.

bayindirh 9mo ago
> Almost always easier to pick a new company than a new government. As long as the company you left doesn't buy the company you just picked.
wongarsu 9mo ago
That's what democracy is supposed to fix
kergonath 9mo ago
As long as you have decent antitrust regulation with teeth and you ignore all natural monopolies.

Traubenfuchs 9mo ago

For computers we have linux, ok, but how are iOS and Android being replaced?

hulitu 9mo ago
> For computers we have linux US has it. There are some non-US contributors, but, the Linux Foundation is in US, Linus is in US, kernel.org is in US.
wongarsu 9mo ago
The EU is slowly weakening Google's grasp on Android, for example by evening the playing field for app stores. You can get google-free Android devices from both Chinese manufacturers and the Netherlands (Fairphone). They aren't terribly attractive right now, but that could quickly change if the demand exists At that point Google would probably turn even more hostile to the open source nature of Android, leading to some sort of fork
- graemep 9mo ago
  Google is tightening their grip on Android. They are going to effectively kill of alternative app stores by requiring them to use Google's developer verification (there have been discussions on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45569371 ). Many countries are introducing things such as age verification and ID apps that require Google Android. A lot of bank apps will only work with Google Android. This is why Fairphone offers a Google Android option, an I would guess that is what most people use. There are lots of other problems. As discussed recently the HSBC app will not work if you have installed any software at all from another app store.
  - deleted 9mo ago
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hex-m 9mo ago
"Google-free" FOSS Android-builds (Graphene, /e/, iodé) are available today and usable for most tasks. Just make sure your government IDs and banking apps don't depend on proprietary Google-only features.

sujsjsv 9mo ago

You won’t ever be able to use anything but Microsoft and other American products. I feel sorry for you. Mr Trump and Lindsey are laughing directly at your face, it seems.

cindyllm 9mo ago
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u_sama 9mo ago

>There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. This is a Danish blindspot, Europeans do not trust their governments in large (France is fractured, Southern Europe has endemic corruption, Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out) and this is in part the source behind the flare up of "far-right" movements in the continent. The infamous EU chat law doesnt help either, and all the abuses of Germany in their misuse of hate speech to punish speech is not a positive development. We do not have real alternatives to most American tech services, and administrations are unwilling to move to Linux based alternatives. The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.

disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
> The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them. They don't need to though, just require all government software to be released under a free software license, with limited exceptions for national security. The US does very well in software, so the EU should commoditise their complement and focus on free software services. This is both cheaper than the current services, and produces lots of employment for EU based tech people (probably at less money though, unfortunately). This is basically what China is doing with their open weights models.
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Hizonner 9mo ago
> Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out ... and those parties would be even more authoritarian if they got in. Which they might in part because of the reaction. It's possible to get fucked from both ends...

hshdhdhj4444 9mo ago

The idea that EU surveillance is greater than US surveillance is almost certainly mistaken. In fact, a huge reason that the EU is looking to move away from U.S. commercial providers is that they can’t guarantee they won’t be giving the U.S. govt information about EU users even if they setup completely independent EU based entities. The reason why it might appear that the EU is more heavy handed is because the EU is actually passing limited tailored laws, publicly, that explicitly state the limitations of those laws. The US govt, on the other hand, has already passed broad blanket laws that allow them to get any data from any U.S. corporate entity with the flimsiest of warrants which those entities are not even legally allowed to publicly reveal. The U.S. govt doesn’t need to pass any surveillance laws because they already essentially have unlimited power over the data being collected by US corporations.

TylerLives 9mo ago
What about censorship?
- akie 9mo ago
  What the US media (and Elon Musk) call EU censorship is actually a request to follow EU rules if they want to operate in the EU market. What, exactly, is controversial about that?
  - leishman 9mo ago
    What’s controversial is that EU rules force censorship.
    - twixfel 9mo ago
      It's not that controversial, every single country has limits on speech, including the US. So European countries control a little bit more than the US, largely when it comes to racial abuse and other hate speech. So? The American model when combined with social media and the internet appears to have disastrous outcomes, judging by who has been elected there. It clearly worked in the past, but not any more. Americans supposedly being outraged at other free, democratic countries (often in reality both more free and democratic than the US) having different laws regarding speech is really just a smoke screen for what they really want: for their social media companies and billionaires to completely control our media, so that we end up just as fucked up and insane as they are. In the end if we allow Americans to poison our countries, we will lose our freedoms and democracies. Why would we allow that? What do you expect? P.S. it's cringe to cry about lack of free speech in Europe as if we've changed. We never, ever had 100% free speech in Europe. Stop trying to hark back to some free speech utopia that literally never existed. This is the continent that up until 110 years ago was overwhelmingly ruled by kings and queens and indeed we are in many ways far more conservative than you are. Get over it and stop trying to turn us into you.

TacticalCoder 9mo ago

> ... 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, ... If, at long last, Trump doing insane things can help get rid of that piece of undescribable turd that Windows is in the EU, please just please Trump: go take the Groenland. As an EU citizen I'm gladly giving Groenland up (even if it's not in the EU but belongs to Denmark which is, itself, in the EU) if in exchange I don't ever have to see a computer running Windows ever again in Europe.

embedding-shape 9mo ago
> As an EU citizen I'm gladly giving Groenland up (even if it's not in the EU but belongs to Denmark which is, itself, in the EU) Nitpicky, but I guess ultimately it kind of/might matter: Greenland belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark (Danish Realm), not Denmark. Denmark (often called Denmark Proper) is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which also Faroe Islands belong to. Denmark is in Europe + EU, Kingdom of Denmark isn't in EU, but main part of it is indeed in Europe. I think if Greenland was actually part of Denmark, it too would be part of EU, as I don't think you can selectively "unmark" specific territories in a country to not be in EU if the country itself is in EU. But since Greeland isn't actually a part of Denmark, it isn't part of the EU.
- VorpalWay 9mo ago
  > Denmark is in Europe + EU, Kingdom of Denmark isn't in EU, but main part of it is indeed in Europe. Main part by population. By area, not so.
  - embedding-shape 9mo ago
    Was thinking more by "rule" than anything, since it is a monarchy after all. Folketing is located in Copenhagen.
- kergonath 9mo ago
  > I think if Greenland was actually part of Denmark, it too would be part of EU, as I don't think you can selectively "unmark" specific territories in a country to not be in EU if the country itself is in EU. Yes, you can. Plenty of overseas territories span the complete gamut between autonomous regions outside the EU and overseas EU regions. Each one is a special case and has specific reasons why there are inside or outside the EU.

aleph_minus_one 9mo ago

> There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Which obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but it's how you can view the EU. I would rather say for quite a lot of people in Germany it's that they neither trust the Federal Government nor the EU government nor the US-American tech companies.

graemep 9mo ago
> I would rather say for quite a lot of people in Germany it's that they neither trust the Federal Government nor the EU government nor the US-American tech companies. I think that is a healthy attitude. I am British and do not trust my government or big tech (regardless of where it is based). IMO governments are easily lobbied to utimately tend to take the side of big business.

graemep 9mo ago

> Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. Who has actually done it? What are you going to use instead? You could move servers off MS cloud platforms (although very little has actually happened and there seems to be very few places with a firm commitment to do it) but I am very sceptical that anyone is going to move client devices to anything other than MS, Apple and Google controlled OSes.

miroljub 9mo ago

[flagged]

stuartloxton 9mo ago
The european parliament is elected by citizens, and the council is formed of the heads of state of each member country (which would have been elected in the way each country decides). Which part with direct power isn't elected?
Attrecomet 9mo ago
That is, of course, a deeply misleading characterization. You might as well start ranting about the EUSSR in your next comment. The US regime is deeply undemocratic, cleptocratic and corrupt, but delegating democratically elected power isn't undemocratic in itself.
gambiting 9mo ago
>>Unlike national governments, EU ruling regime is not elected by EU citizens. It literally is. What a deeply misinformed and frankly misleading take.

css_apologist 9mo ago

> With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state. You say this with no irony as an american..

anthk 9mo ago

iOS was always irrelevant in Europe. No regulation was needed, ever. It was useless.

linus8989 9mo ago

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