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Article by article, how Big Tech shaped the EU's roll-back of digital rights

272 points by robtherobber 9mo ago

Sharlin 9mo ago
One gossamer-thin silver lining in this current geopolitical lunacy is that it's likely to show the current Commission's pro-corpo anti-citizen endeavors like this, to bend the knee to US corporate interests, in an increasingly bad light. Particularly given that activating anti-coercion measures that target those very corporate interests is now being seriously discussed.
- shrubby 9mo ago
  Yes. Masks are off. And Musks.
  - MonkeyClub 9mo ago
    Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail. It was a (steel and coal) corp affordances union to begin with, so it's no wonder it's pandering to business rather than civic interests after all. Von der Leyen is corrupt yet shapes EU policy without backlash, and the citizenry is left to pay the price, precisely because the EU pretends to speak for the people.
    - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
      > Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail. The EU is basically run by the Council, who are the national governments, all of whom are elected. It's incredibly depressing that this keeps needing to be repeated when its been this way since the inception of the EU (with a small hiatus where we were gonna get a constitution). The Commission can propose laws, but unless the Council (mostly) and Parliament (theoretically) agree, they won't happen.
      - wolvoleo 9mo ago
        True but they can keep pushing those laws over and over again like they're doing with chatcontrol.
        disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
        Most of ChatControl has (unfortunately) been driven by the national governments.
    - andsoitis 9mo ago
      > EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office Selection/rejection of the European Commission president (there is no such thing as the EU president) is indirect democracy, not popular vote. But it is still representative and democratic. US contrast: in the US, citizens also don't vote for the President directly. Instead, we use a two-step system centered on the Electoral College. Hypocrisy: if anyone (especially us American citizens) are going to argue that europeans should get to vote directly for the President of the EU commission, then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor.
      - MonkeyClub 9mo ago
        Yep, EC rather than EU, my bad.
        andsoitis 9mo ago
        > Yep, EC rather than EU, my bad. And the democracy part which you got wrong. That's the salient point.
        MonkeyClub 9mo ago
        Imho the indirection ends up removing the democratic aspect.
      - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
        >then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor. I don't think that's an unpopular idea as of 25 years ago now. With current technology, nationals should be a direct democracy (and with ranked choice votes, not FPtP), the house should be doubled (if not tripled since we stopped growing 100 years ago), and the supreme court should be expanded to at least 15. And that's just the start of small updates we need for government.
- sph 9mo ago
  Is it a silver lining? I think it's clear that whoever runs any government is free to do whatever they want with total impunity. Dissatisfied citizens complaining on Twitter is not gonna remove any "pro-corpo anti-citizen" politician from power. And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook. Power corrupts, and the more steps removed politicians are from whomever put them in power, the safer they are.
  - Sharlin 9mo ago
    There's a fair chance that discordant voices in the Parliament will grow increasingly stronger, party affiliations notwithstanding. It wouldn't be the first time that the Parliament has asserted its power over the Commission.
  - hardlianotion 9mo ago
    > And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook. What is the UK's playbook in this case?
    - immibis 9mo ago
      Call all the dissidents terrorists and arrest/deport them under terrorism law
      - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
        If it becomes big enough, they can't "deport" everyone. The only silver lining in the US right now is that it is way too big (and too stupid) to pull off this sad excuse of a blitzkrieg on its citizens.
        immibis 9mo ago
        Sure they can. Look how efficiently Germany did it.
        9mo ago
- trueno 9mo ago
  EU and the rest of the world needs to ditch their anti circumvention laws that they put in place to appease the US demands on trade deals historically. They're getting tarrif'd anyways so YOLO. I think you'd see a lot of pressures ease up that are probably putting a lot of politicians around the world in compromised or blackmail-able positions. US Tech really needs to lose this massive leverage they have over the world right now.
  - 1shooner 9mo ago
    Cory Doctorow's talk on this: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
- port11 9mo ago
  Given the EPP’s result after the corruption scandals of the previous administration, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Voters like a charismatic leader, and the lovely and charming deals-behind-doors Ursula did very well.
201-12958 9mo ago
The EU leaders falsely assume that US cloud services are essential and let themselves be blackmailed over and over again. If you want to do your part as a consumer, boycott all American products: https://www.goeuropean.org/ https://www.goeuropean.org/
- sschueller 9mo ago
  https://di.day/ https://di.day/
- devsda 9mo ago
  When my country and China had border clashes, there was a nation-wide grassroot level movement to boycott Chinese goods and services where possible. It worked to an extent but it fizzled out in few weeks/months. Some of the reasons were the impracticality of total boycott so you start from a position of compromise, difficulty to sustain a movement born out of anger and some inter-govt agreements to avoid escalations etc. Do you have plans to overcome those sort of challenges and sustain this initiative ?
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    You speak about India? Yeah, EU is super fucked too since it outsourced its energy dependence to Russia, consumer manufacturing to China, defence and tech services to US, and only just woke up in the last 3 or so years that it was all a huge mistake that's now costing us dearly since we're at the whims of all 3 belligerents who know that now is the time they can squeeze us. Trying to undo just one dependency is a slow and painful process, but fighting all 3 at the same time is a suicide mission. The US outsourced its manufacturing too, but unlike EU, it has a strong enough economy and military that they can just snap their fingers and the likes of Taiwan and Korea will immediately onshore manufacturing of their high end chips and ships to the US, but EU doesn't have this kind leverage.
    - js8 9mo ago
      > only just woke up in the last 3 or so years that it was all a huge mistake If only! We just outsourced all our agriculture to Latin America (MERCOSUR free trade agreement).
Lucasjohntee 9mo ago
[flagged]
seydor 9mo ago
Almost nobody in europe cares about these things. Nobody has gone out demonstrating for digital rights vs american companies. If we did we we would have already firewalled europe outside big tech. Why are these articles finding their way here? In europe , this is not news, never.
- deleted 9mo ago
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- pbhjpbhj 9mo ago
  I've been actively moving away from USA originated products. I'm happy to see alternatives being discussed. I really don't think it's moral to fund fascist states in this way, sorry. Yes, I'm still here, despite being told (paraphrasing) 'fuck off we don't want anyone from outside USA here'.
  - akramachamarei 9mo ago
    What does fascism mean to you, exactly?
  - vixen99 9mo ago
    Fascism: 'A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.' Interesting because doesn't every sort of democratic state try to be 'a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls'? Depends how stringent and usually not stringent enough for many on the Left and on the Right. When tempted to use the word 'fascism', is it not better to describe the issue with which one's concerned (maybe deeply) rather than using a fit-all word and take care not to devalue the significance of the word as it was, for instance, applied in WW2 to some of the appalling atrocities that occurred in that period and those we've seen reports of recently?
    - pbhjpbhj 9mo ago
      A clearly corrupt dictatorial leader, lack of rule of law, violent oppression of ones own citizens, perpetual lying and use of mass media to influence the populous, violent incursions in to the affairs of other countries without UN support, threats of violent invasion against erstwhile allies, release of violent offenders and drug dealers (clearly in exchange for money), accepting of bribes more generally, acting against supposed allied interests, purging of military leaders according to political affiliations, manipulation of international markets for insider trading, refusal to address child trafficking for rape and sexual abuse (and possibly murder), release of violent insurrectionists, release of violent neo-nazi offenders (eg Proud Boys), breach of constitution, actions to prevent national and foreign journalists having access, actions to suppress proper reporting of the regimes actions, war crimes/murder of shipwrecked people, ... I'm sure there's loads more if the question is somehow genuine? Just spending $billions on an illegal (ie not established through constitutionally sound, democratic legislative means) military force, who travel in unmarked vehicles, conceal their identities, and target citizens in areas that politically oppose Trump are alone actions of a fascist regime. They murder, disappear, deport with no due process and act as if outside the law. Their actions, such as murder, are supported fully by the public face of the regime. This regime is publicly supported by the billionaire owners of tech and media companies operating in USA. Little people like me don't have much, but every £pound is a vote.
terespuwash 9mo ago
“Since the start of the parliamentary mandate, Meta has met 38 times with far-right MEPs” Hmmmm
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  Far left EU MEPs complain about what far right are doing. So what else is new in politics? Do they also complain when they themselves meet with Meta, or is it an issue only when their growing opposition do it? You know the saying "For my friends everything, for my enemies, the law"?
  - Manfred 9mo ago
    The fight against “left” and “right” is just a narrative to gin up allegiance with certain groups. The only relevance to the article is that it indicates which parties have sided with the US administration to fight consumer’s digital rights.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      Yeah that was my point, it doesn't matter if it's left or right, because the only ideology Meta et-al speak, is USD, so they will kiss the ring of whoever is in power at the present moment in EU, far left or far right. Same how many of them also kissed the ring of the CCP or Saudi Arabia while flying the pride flag in the west. They don't really care about those ideologies they preach, they just virtue signal however needed in order to appease the mobs and governments in power so they can be allowed to extract wealth.
  - timeon 9mo ago
    > Do they also complain when they themselves meet with Meta, or is it an issue only when their growing opposition do it? Are you referring to anything specific or you have just emotional urge to defend far right? (PfE in this case).
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
geremiiah 9mo ago
Somebody needs to investigate the EC for corruption.
- pas 9mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor%27s_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor%27s... if there was selling of influence it's within the EPPO's jurisdiction (as far as I understand)
RalfWausE 9mo ago
Luckily, the orange idiot in charge is doing us (the Europeans) a favor showing us that America (and its companies) are no longer a trustworthy partner. In a way i really hope he goes through with the Greenland stuff... this would be the final nail in the coffin.
- Forgeties79 9mo ago
  Brexit didn’t do anything to correct the UK’s current trajectory. I guarantee you even destroying the relationship with NATO would not shift the course the US is on. Every time something extreme happens, people gasp for a second then accept it and move on. I don’t think the situation in the US is hopeless by any means, but Greenland is not going to suddenly be some magical moment that wakes everybody up. We’ve done this song and dance for a decade with Trump. After the attack on the capitol it be became very clear that it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than we thought.
  - bondarchuk 9mo ago
    GP was not about America changing but about Europe.
    - Forgeties79 9mo ago
      I originally read it as “the final nail in the coffin for him and the shenanigans coming out of the US” but yeah I see I read it wrong now.
  - piltdownman 9mo ago
    Brexit wasn't an exercise in Imperialism and power-projection though, it was a dissolution of federated oversight and grant conditions to facilitate a transfer of wealth from the working classes to a select group of oligarchs. They, in essence, traded 10% of their GDP for Regulatory Independence and UK’s accession to the trans-pacific partnership, estimated by the government to be worth only 0.06% of GDP by 2040. If the Falklands represented a major turning point, then imo Greenland does too. The simple mustering of an international task-force of troops for defense is a move unprecedented in the 21st Century. The recent Spectator article correctly identifies Trump as “playing geopolitical Monopoly with Greenland”, which holds substantial mineral as well as strategic value in the president’s eyes. The author identified presidential “ego-politics” as a plausible top reason, along with a US quest for hemispheric power and sending a message to rival powers - concluding by noting that both Britain and France hold territories in the western hemisphere and asking if they could be next on Trump’s list. https://spectator.com/article/trump-is-playing-geopolitical-monopoly-with-greenland/ https://spectator.com/article/trump-is-playing-geopolitical-...
deleted 9mo ago
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zerosizedweasle 9mo ago
"Oxfam, the world-renowned advocacy group, issued a report ahead of the Davos event which showed that billionaire wealth rose by more than 16% last year, three times faster than the past five-year average, to more than $18 trillion. It drew on Forbes magazine data on the world’s richest people. Oxfam said the $2.5 trillion rise in the wealth of billionaires last year would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over. Their wealth has risen by more than four-fifths since 2020, while nearly half the world’s population lives in poverty, the group said. The Trump administration has led a “pro-billionaire agenda,” the group said, through actions such as slashing taxes for the wealthiest, fostering the growth of AI-related stocks that help rich investors get richer, and thwarting efforts to tax giant companies." AI is killing humanity
arneeiri 9mo ago
Ironic if Trump's Greenland stunt ends up killing the Digital Omnibus. Hard to gift-wrap GDPR rollbacks for US tech giants while they're simultaneously being tariffed.
- toyg 9mo ago
  Sadly, I fear the opposite might be true. Trump acts by creating leverage and then asking for something in return to renounce that leverage (in other contexts this could be described as blackmail or racketeering - "nice Greenland you have there..."). Luckily, his reign of terror is not infinite. In November he'll be cut to size.
deleted 9mo ago
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StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
The article paints a situation where the EU is caving in to US pressure and completely ignores the very real criticisms of the current regulatory push coming from the EU itself. A significant part of the Draghi report on European competitiveness is about how the Parliament has been stifling the ability of EU companies to efficiently compete under the weight of more and more complex laws. It's not very useful being the first to put in place complex regulations if nothing remains to regulate because every company has moved somewhere else.
- xvector 9mo ago
  It is interesting how downvoted you are for stating simple facts. Many people in the EU will just willfully bury their head in the sand when it comes to the impact of regulation on the economy. It's a night and day difference trying to get something built in the EU vs the US.
  - StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
    It's always easier to focus on a shared ennemy than to look inward. Talking about the Draghi report forces people to confront that the EU is actually extremely disunited at the moment and the political landscape is very messy. The report was buried by Germany and the Netherlands after all. It's easy to rally behind the idea that bad foreign actors conspire to torpedo customers protecting laws because it provides a theorically easy solution: just stop allowing foreigners to interfer. Meanwhile, considering how these laws might be impacting companies in a fairly cut throat international environment and if we have put the cursor at the right place between protections and economic growth is a far more complex debate. It involves a lot of trade off and shades of gray and it puts the onus of decision strictly on us. It's complex and as with everything involving trade offs, it's very easy to rattle purists of both sides. I rarely expect a rave welcome when I start discussing these topics on the internet.
jmyeet 9mo ago
This has been my prediction for the last year: the EU is going to be forced to take the China approach of creating their own version of all US tech companies. The current US administration has done more to destroy US soft power on the world stage than any other in the country's history. The administration seems intent on destroying NATO. Personally I'm fine with that because it's a protection racket and a tool of imperialism. But this is going to materially hurt the US defense contractors who profit off of arms sales. That's really the turning point for any fascist regime: when you start screwing up the bag. US tech companies are also a tool of American foreign policy in pretty much the exact same way the administration accuses China of doing. So the EU needs to be responsible for its own security. And it's own platforms. But it may be too late for that as the EU itself may well splinter under the rise of far-right governments that are currently in place (eg Hungary) and only one election away from taking place (eg UK, Geermany maybe even France; even though the UK isn't in the EU I'm still counting it as part of Europe). Unfortunately the EU (and the UK) is too committed to the US imperial project, such as in the Middle East. People don't seem to realize just how connected things like imperialism and the erosion of your own rights at home are inextricably intertwined.
gyanchawdhary 9mo ago
I don’t see/share the HN outrage. If the EU wants to stay in the game, it has to be realistic about how regulation affects scaling and investment ... tweaking or rolling back parts of digital rules to compete with US/China tech isn’t “evil” .. it’s just how global competition works tbh.
- xvector 9mo ago
  Seriously, the EU needs to actually make it possible to build successful businesses in the EU. Starting any business there is such a nightmare, it's no wonder everyone takes their ideas to the US.
  - LtWorf 9mo ago
    Nobody takes their ideas to the US. The US prints money backing them with oil and purchases every single startup in EU.
- soco 9mo ago
  Becoming like your opponent must be for sure not the only way to compete with them... China and the US are not the same, why should the EU become like either?
eclipsetheworld 9mo ago
As a European founder building startups since 2015, I’ve spent a massive chunk of my career navigating the "alphabet soup" of EU regulation: GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act, CSRD, SFDR, CBAM... the list is exhausting. While the goals are usually noble, I’m increasingly convinced we’re regulating ourselves into irrelevance. I’m not a Big Tech company yet my interests align with theirs. We desperately need an EU that prioritizes actual growth over well-intentioned paperwork. To me, the AI Act and the GDPR are the worst offenders here, representing the largest possible gap between "good intentions" and the actual effect they have on the ground. Consider frontier LLM labs. We have the talent, the Nordic data centers, and access to the GPUs. But why would any investor drop $100B on a frontier LLM lab here when the legislative environment is fundamentally more hostile than the US? It feels like we’ve already watched Mistral and Aleph Alpha get left in the dust. To give you an idea of the "compliance vs. reality" GDPR gap: I worked on a project processing healthcare data for millions of people. We had a clear, easy-to-find privacy policy and a responsive DPO. Total GDPR requests for info or deletion? Exactly 53. Out of millions. We spent thousands of hours building systems for rights that only 0.001% of our users cared to use. If you look at the courts, the "damage" being prevented is equally vague. Since EU courts don't really do punitive damages, most awards are tiny unless there’s actual identity theft. Most of what GDPR protects is "mental distress" or "loss of control"-concepts so ambiguous that courts rarely award anything for them unless something else went wrong. The result of all this "protection"? No FAANG-equivalent, no frontier AI leader, and no homegrown ad-tech. It turns out the most perfectly regulated company is the one that never exists in the first place.
- soco 9mo ago
  So deletion of user accounts meant thousands of hours of development time?
  - eclipsetheworld 9mo ago
    Thanks for the comment. It actually perfectly illustrates my point. Most people equate GDPR with a "Delete My Account" button, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We didn't spend thousands of hours on a deletion feature (or just development time). We spent them in total to be compliant in a healthcare environment. That time goes into: Documenting the entire lifecycle (how, why, and where) of every single data point we process. Conducting and documenting formal risk assessments for every major processing activity (Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIA)). Drafting and negotiating data processing agreements (DPAs) with every single partner and vendor we use. Building strict role-based access and logging systems to track exactly who views and edits data and why. Implementing pseudonymization and logical data separation to ensure we meet "privacy by design" standards. Constantly coordinating between the product and dev team and the DPO to update policies and communicate changes to users. The point I’m making is that the EU has built an incredibly expensive regulatory environment to support rights that, in practice, the vast majority of users don't seem to care about. We’re over-engineering for a "loss of control" that the average user hasn't shown much interest in reclaiming.
PeterStuer 9mo ago
Close the 'legitimate interest' loophole that made the whole GDPR a farce in practice, and I'll take that as a sign you're actually serious.
raverbashing 9mo ago
Let me propose a different title: Article by article: how lawyers created impractical regulations that made sure big tech monopolized Europe and made sure small players had more trouble participating, and how the legal-industrial complex is fighting to keep milking that cow
stainablesteel 9mo ago
what good are digital rights in countries where physical rights are being deteriorated
throwaw12 9mo ago
One thing bothers me a lot is, if government organizations can be influenced by lobby groups, which primarily owned by corporations, then why do we need government? Corporations and governments should be considered as balancing forces, one works to increase its profits by any means, other works to protect humans living in that area by any means. You might say, corporations benefit its employees, true, but it is a small subset of people living in the country. If you allow everything to corporations, they will set up a slavery system from the birth of a baby
- philipallstar 9mo ago
  Lobbying having undue influence is entirely a government problem that it needs to fix. It will never be fixed while people have the attitude that lobbyists are the problem. (I'm not saying you're saying this; just making a statement.)
loorke 9mo ago
[flagged]
concinds 9mo ago
The EU must fix itself, and that means ignoring those NGOs. The EU's current tech laws penalize EU startups vs. US Big Tech. It should be reversed. Remove these worthless regulations (except DMA), and explicitly start discriminating against US Big Tech vs. domestic firms, like China. Then the low-hanging fruits: mandate exclusive data storage in the EU, encryption keys in the EU, ban AWS/Azure/GCP and Windows/Office from government procurement, force JV's or GTFO, force Linux government use. These NGOs are saboteurs in disguise that will never lead you to the promised land of EU tech sovereignty. China's playbook was: deregulate to build a domestic ecosystem, then regulate to protect society once the ecosystem is mature. Flipping that playbook around is insidious wrecker shit.

272 points by robtherobber 9mo ago

One gossamer-thin silver lining in this current geopolitical lunacy is that it's likely to show the current Commission's pro-corpo anti-citizen endeavors like this, to bend the knee to US corporate interests, in an increasingly bad light. Particularly given that activating anti-coercion measures that target those very corporate interests is now being seriously discussed.

shrubby 9mo ago
Yes. Masks are off. And Musks.
- MonkeyClub 9mo ago
  Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail. It was a (steel and coal) corp affordances union to begin with, so it's no wonder it's pandering to business rather than civic interests after all. Von der Leyen is corrupt yet shapes EU policy without backlash, and the citizenry is left to pay the price, precisely because the EU pretends to speak for the people.
  - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
    > Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail. The EU is basically run by the Council, who are the national governments, all of whom are elected. It's incredibly depressing that this keeps needing to be repeated when its been this way since the inception of the EU (with a small hiatus where we were gonna get a constitution). The Commission can propose laws, but unless the Council (mostly) and Parliament (theoretically) agree, they won't happen.
    - wolvoleo 9mo ago
      True but they can keep pushing those laws over and over again like they're doing with chatcontrol.
      - disgruntledphd2 9mo ago
        Most of ChatControl has (unfortunately) been driven by the national governments.
  - andsoitis 9mo ago
    > EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office Selection/rejection of the European Commission president (there is no such thing as the EU president) is indirect democracy, not popular vote. But it is still representative and democratic. US contrast: in the US, citizens also don't vote for the President directly. Instead, we use a two-step system centered on the Electoral College. Hypocrisy: if anyone (especially us American citizens) are going to argue that europeans should get to vote directly for the President of the EU commission, then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor.
    - MonkeyClub 9mo ago
      Yep, EC rather than EU, my bad.
      - andsoitis 9mo ago
        > Yep, EC rather than EU, my bad. And the democracy part which you got wrong. That's the salient point.
        MonkeyClub 9mo ago
        Imho the indirection ends up removing the democratic aspect.
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      >then they should also argue strongly to get rid of the Electoral System in the US and let the presidential popular vote be the decisive factor. I don't think that's an unpopular idea as of 25 years ago now. With current technology, nationals should be a direct democracy (and with ranked choice votes, not FPtP), the house should be doubled (if not tripled since we stopped growing 100 years ago), and the supreme court should be expanded to at least 15. And that's just the start of small updates we need for government.
sph 9mo ago
Is it a silver lining? I think it's clear that whoever runs any government is free to do whatever they want with total impunity. Dissatisfied citizens complaining on Twitter is not gonna remove any "pro-corpo anti-citizen" politician from power. And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook. Power corrupts, and the more steps removed politicians are from whomever put them in power, the safer they are.
- Sharlin 9mo ago
  There's a fair chance that discordant voices in the Parliament will grow increasingly stronger, party affiliations notwithstanding. It wouldn't be the first time that the Parliament has asserted its power over the Commission.
- hardlianotion 9mo ago
  > And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook. What is the UK's playbook in this case?
  - immibis 9mo ago
    Call all the dissidents terrorists and arrest/deport them under terrorism law
    - johnnyanmac 9mo ago
      If it becomes big enough, they can't "deport" everyone. The only silver lining in the US right now is that it is way too big (and too stupid) to pull off this sad excuse of a blitzkrieg on its citizens.
      - immibis 9mo ago
        Sure they can. Look how efficiently Germany did it.
        9mo ago
trueno 9mo ago
EU and the rest of the world needs to ditch their anti circumvention laws that they put in place to appease the US demands on trade deals historically. They're getting tarrif'd anyways so YOLO. I think you'd see a lot of pressures ease up that are probably putting a lot of politicians around the world in compromised or blackmail-able positions. US Tech really needs to lose this massive leverage they have over the world right now.
- 1shooner 9mo ago
  Cory Doctorow's talk on this: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification...
port11 9mo ago
Given the EPP’s result after the corruption scandals of the previous administration, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Voters like a charismatic leader, and the lovely and charming deals-behind-doors Ursula did very well.

201-12958 9mo ago

The EU leaders falsely assume that US cloud services are essential and let themselves be blackmailed over and over again. If you want to do your part as a consumer, boycott all American products: https://www.goeuropean.org/ https://www.goeuropean.org/

sschueller 9mo ago
https://di.day/ https://di.day/
devsda 9mo ago
When my country and China had border clashes, there was a nation-wide grassroot level movement to boycott Chinese goods and services where possible. It worked to an extent but it fizzled out in few weeks/months. Some of the reasons were the impracticality of total boycott so you start from a position of compromise, difficulty to sustain a movement born out of anger and some inter-govt agreements to avoid escalations etc. Do you have plans to overcome those sort of challenges and sustain this initiative ?
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  You speak about India? Yeah, EU is super fucked too since it outsourced its energy dependence to Russia, consumer manufacturing to China, defence and tech services to US, and only just woke up in the last 3 or so years that it was all a huge mistake that's now costing us dearly since we're at the whims of all 3 belligerents who know that now is the time they can squeeze us. Trying to undo just one dependency is a slow and painful process, but fighting all 3 at the same time is a suicide mission. The US outsourced its manufacturing too, but unlike EU, it has a strong enough economy and military that they can just snap their fingers and the likes of Taiwan and Korea will immediately onshore manufacturing of their high end chips and ships to the US, but EU doesn't have this kind leverage.
  - js8 9mo ago
    > only just woke up in the last 3 or so years that it was all a huge mistake If only! We just outsourced all our agriculture to Latin America (MERCOSUR free trade agreement).

Lucasjohntee 9mo ago

[flagged]

seydor 9mo ago

Almost nobody in europe cares about these things. Nobody has gone out demonstrating for digital rights vs american companies. If we did we we would have already firewalled europe outside big tech. Why are these articles finding their way here? In europe , this is not news, never.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
pbhjpbhj 9mo ago
I've been actively moving away from USA originated products. I'm happy to see alternatives being discussed. I really don't think it's moral to fund fascist states in this way, sorry. Yes, I'm still here, despite being told (paraphrasing) 'fuck off we don't want anyone from outside USA here'.
- akramachamarei 9mo ago
  What does fascism mean to you, exactly?
- vixen99 9mo ago
  Fascism: 'A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.' Interesting because doesn't every sort of democratic state try to be 'a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls'? Depends how stringent and usually not stringent enough for many on the Left and on the Right. When tempted to use the word 'fascism', is it not better to describe the issue with which one's concerned (maybe deeply) rather than using a fit-all word and take care not to devalue the significance of the word as it was, for instance, applied in WW2 to some of the appalling atrocities that occurred in that period and those we've seen reports of recently?
  - pbhjpbhj 9mo ago
    A clearly corrupt dictatorial leader, lack of rule of law, violent oppression of ones own citizens, perpetual lying and use of mass media to influence the populous, violent incursions in to the affairs of other countries without UN support, threats of violent invasion against erstwhile allies, release of violent offenders and drug dealers (clearly in exchange for money), accepting of bribes more generally, acting against supposed allied interests, purging of military leaders according to political affiliations, manipulation of international markets for insider trading, refusal to address child trafficking for rape and sexual abuse (and possibly murder), release of violent insurrectionists, release of violent neo-nazi offenders (eg Proud Boys), breach of constitution, actions to prevent national and foreign journalists having access, actions to suppress proper reporting of the regimes actions, war crimes/murder of shipwrecked people, ... I'm sure there's loads more if the question is somehow genuine? Just spending $billions on an illegal (ie not established through constitutionally sound, democratic legislative means) military force, who travel in unmarked vehicles, conceal their identities, and target citizens in areas that politically oppose Trump are alone actions of a fascist regime. They murder, disappear, deport with no due process and act as if outside the law. Their actions, such as murder, are supported fully by the public face of the regime. This regime is publicly supported by the billionaire owners of tech and media companies operating in USA. Little people like me don't have much, but every £pound is a vote.

terespuwash 9mo ago

“Since the start of the parliamentary mandate, Meta has met 38 times with far-right MEPs” Hmmmm

joe_mamba 9mo ago
Far left EU MEPs complain about what far right are doing. So what else is new in politics? Do they also complain when they themselves meet with Meta, or is it an issue only when their growing opposition do it? You know the saying "For my friends everything, for my enemies, the law"?
- Manfred 9mo ago
  The fight against “left” and “right” is just a narrative to gin up allegiance with certain groups. The only relevance to the article is that it indicates which parties have sided with the US administration to fight consumer’s digital rights.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    Yeah that was my point, it doesn't matter if it's left or right, because the only ideology Meta et-al speak, is USD, so they will kiss the ring of whoever is in power at the present moment in EU, far left or far right. Same how many of them also kissed the ring of the CCP or Saudi Arabia while flying the pride flag in the west. They don't really care about those ideologies they preach, they just virtue signal however needed in order to appease the mobs and governments in power so they can be allowed to extract wealth.
- timeon 9mo ago
  > Do they also complain when they themselves meet with Meta, or is it an issue only when their growing opposition do it? Are you referring to anything specific or you have just emotional urge to defend far right? (PfE in this case).
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago

geremiiah 9mo ago

Somebody needs to investigate the EC for corruption.

pas 9mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor%27s_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Public_Prosecutor%27s... if there was selling of influence it's within the EPPO's jurisdiction (as far as I understand)

RalfWausE 9mo ago

Luckily, the orange idiot in charge is doing us (the Europeans) a favor showing us that America (and its companies) are no longer a trustworthy partner. In a way i really hope he goes through with the Greenland stuff... this would be the final nail in the coffin.

Forgeties79 9mo ago
Brexit didn’t do anything to correct the UK’s current trajectory. I guarantee you even destroying the relationship with NATO would not shift the course the US is on. Every time something extreme happens, people gasp for a second then accept it and move on. I don’t think the situation in the US is hopeless by any means, but Greenland is not going to suddenly be some magical moment that wakes everybody up. We’ve done this song and dance for a decade with Trump. After the attack on the capitol it be became very clear that it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than we thought.
- bondarchuk 9mo ago
  GP was not about America changing but about Europe.
  - Forgeties79 9mo ago
    I originally read it as “the final nail in the coffin for him and the shenanigans coming out of the US” but yeah I see I read it wrong now.
- piltdownman 9mo ago
  Brexit wasn't an exercise in Imperialism and power-projection though, it was a dissolution of federated oversight and grant conditions to facilitate a transfer of wealth from the working classes to a select group of oligarchs. They, in essence, traded 10% of their GDP for Regulatory Independence and UK’s accession to the trans-pacific partnership, estimated by the government to be worth only 0.06% of GDP by 2040. If the Falklands represented a major turning point, then imo Greenland does too. The simple mustering of an international task-force of troops for defense is a move unprecedented in the 21st Century. The recent Spectator article correctly identifies Trump as “playing geopolitical Monopoly with Greenland”, which holds substantial mineral as well as strategic value in the president’s eyes. The author identified presidential “ego-politics” as a plausible top reason, along with a US quest for hemispheric power and sending a message to rival powers - concluding by noting that both Britain and France hold territories in the western hemisphere and asking if they could be next on Trump’s list. https://spectator.com/article/trump-is-playing-geopolitical-monopoly-with-greenland/ https://spectator.com/article/trump-is-playing-geopolitical-...

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zerosizedweasle 9mo ago

"Oxfam, the world-renowned advocacy group, issued a report ahead of the Davos event which showed that billionaire wealth rose by more than 16% last year, three times faster than the past five-year average, to more than $18 trillion. It drew on Forbes magazine data on the world’s richest people. Oxfam said the $2.5 trillion rise in the wealth of billionaires last year would be enough to eradicate extreme poverty 26 times over. Their wealth has risen by more than four-fifths since 2020, while nearly half the world’s population lives in poverty, the group said. The Trump administration has led a “pro-billionaire agenda,” the group said, through actions such as slashing taxes for the wealthiest, fostering the growth of AI-related stocks that help rich investors get richer, and thwarting efforts to tax giant companies." AI is killing humanity

arneeiri 9mo ago

Ironic if Trump's Greenland stunt ends up killing the Digital Omnibus. Hard to gift-wrap GDPR rollbacks for US tech giants while they're simultaneously being tariffed.

toyg 9mo ago
Sadly, I fear the opposite might be true. Trump acts by creating leverage and then asking for something in return to renounce that leverage (in other contexts this could be described as blackmail or racketeering - "nice Greenland you have there..."). Luckily, his reign of terror is not infinite. In November he'll be cut to size.

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StopDisinfo910 9mo ago

The article paints a situation where the EU is caving in to US pressure and completely ignores the very real criticisms of the current regulatory push coming from the EU itself. A significant part of the Draghi report on European competitiveness is about how the Parliament has been stifling the ability of EU companies to efficiently compete under the weight of more and more complex laws. It's not very useful being the first to put in place complex regulations if nothing remains to regulate because every company has moved somewhere else.

xvector 9mo ago
It is interesting how downvoted you are for stating simple facts. Many people in the EU will just willfully bury their head in the sand when it comes to the impact of regulation on the economy. It's a night and day difference trying to get something built in the EU vs the US.
- StopDisinfo910 9mo ago
  It's always easier to focus on a shared ennemy than to look inward. Talking about the Draghi report forces people to confront that the EU is actually extremely disunited at the moment and the political landscape is very messy. The report was buried by Germany and the Netherlands after all. It's easy to rally behind the idea that bad foreign actors conspire to torpedo customers protecting laws because it provides a theorically easy solution: just stop allowing foreigners to interfer. Meanwhile, considering how these laws might be impacting companies in a fairly cut throat international environment and if we have put the cursor at the right place between protections and economic growth is a far more complex debate. It involves a lot of trade off and shades of gray and it puts the onus of decision strictly on us. It's complex and as with everything involving trade offs, it's very easy to rattle purists of both sides. I rarely expect a rave welcome when I start discussing these topics on the internet.

jmyeet 9mo ago

This has been my prediction for the last year: the EU is going to be forced to take the China approach of creating their own version of all US tech companies. The current US administration has done more to destroy US soft power on the world stage than any other in the country's history. The administration seems intent on destroying NATO. Personally I'm fine with that because it's a protection racket and a tool of imperialism. But this is going to materially hurt the US defense contractors who profit off of arms sales. That's really the turning point for any fascist regime: when you start screwing up the bag. US tech companies are also a tool of American foreign policy in pretty much the exact same way the administration accuses China of doing. So the EU needs to be responsible for its own security. And it's own platforms. But it may be too late for that as the EU itself may well splinter under the rise of far-right governments that are currently in place (eg Hungary) and only one election away from taking place (eg UK, Geermany maybe even France; even though the UK isn't in the EU I'm still counting it as part of Europe). Unfortunately the EU (and the UK) is too committed to the US imperial project, such as in the Middle East. People don't seem to realize just how connected things like imperialism and the erosion of your own rights at home are inextricably intertwined.

gyanchawdhary 9mo ago

I don’t see/share the HN outrage. If the EU wants to stay in the game, it has to be realistic about how regulation affects scaling and investment ... tweaking or rolling back parts of digital rules to compete with US/China tech isn’t “evil” .. it’s just how global competition works tbh.

xvector 9mo ago
Seriously, the EU needs to actually make it possible to build successful businesses in the EU. Starting any business there is such a nightmare, it's no wonder everyone takes their ideas to the US.
- LtWorf 9mo ago
  Nobody takes their ideas to the US. The US prints money backing them with oil and purchases every single startup in EU.
soco 9mo ago
Becoming like your opponent must be for sure not the only way to compete with them... China and the US are not the same, why should the EU become like either?

eclipsetheworld 9mo ago

As a European founder building startups since 2015, I’ve spent a massive chunk of my career navigating the "alphabet soup" of EU regulation: GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act, CSRD, SFDR, CBAM... the list is exhausting. While the goals are usually noble, I’m increasingly convinced we’re regulating ourselves into irrelevance. I’m not a Big Tech company yet my interests align with theirs. We desperately need an EU that prioritizes actual growth over well-intentioned paperwork. To me, the AI Act and the GDPR are the worst offenders here, representing the largest possible gap between "good intentions" and the actual effect they have on the ground. Consider frontier LLM labs. We have the talent, the Nordic data centers, and access to the GPUs. But why would any investor drop $100B on a frontier LLM lab here when the legislative environment is fundamentally more hostile than the US? It feels like we’ve already watched Mistral and Aleph Alpha get left in the dust. To give you an idea of the "compliance vs. reality" GDPR gap: I worked on a project processing healthcare data for millions of people. We had a clear, easy-to-find privacy policy and a responsive DPO. Total GDPR requests for info or deletion? Exactly 53. Out of millions. We spent thousands of hours building systems for rights that only 0.001% of our users cared to use. If you look at the courts, the "damage" being prevented is equally vague. Since EU courts don't really do punitive damages, most awards are tiny unless there’s actual identity theft. Most of what GDPR protects is "mental distress" or "loss of control"-concepts so ambiguous that courts rarely award anything for them unless something else went wrong. The result of all this "protection"? No FAANG-equivalent, no frontier AI leader, and no homegrown ad-tech. It turns out the most perfectly regulated company is the one that never exists in the first place.

soco 9mo ago
So deletion of user accounts meant thousands of hours of development time?
- eclipsetheworld 9mo ago
  Thanks for the comment. It actually perfectly illustrates my point. Most people equate GDPR with a "Delete My Account" button, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We didn't spend thousands of hours on a deletion feature (or just development time). We spent them in total to be compliant in a healthcare environment. That time goes into: Documenting the entire lifecycle (how, why, and where) of every single data point we process. Conducting and documenting formal risk assessments for every major processing activity (Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIA)). Drafting and negotiating data processing agreements (DPAs) with every single partner and vendor we use. Building strict role-based access and logging systems to track exactly who views and edits data and why. Implementing pseudonymization and logical data separation to ensure we meet "privacy by design" standards. Constantly coordinating between the product and dev team and the DPO to update policies and communicate changes to users. The point I’m making is that the EU has built an incredibly expensive regulatory environment to support rights that, in practice, the vast majority of users don't seem to care about. We’re over-engineering for a "loss of control" that the average user hasn't shown much interest in reclaiming.

PeterStuer 9mo ago

Close the 'legitimate interest' loophole that made the whole GDPR a farce in practice, and I'll take that as a sign you're actually serious.

raverbashing 9mo ago

Let me propose a different title: Article by article: how lawyers created impractical regulations that made sure big tech monopolized Europe and made sure small players had more trouble participating, and how the legal-industrial complex is fighting to keep milking that cow

stainablesteel 9mo ago

what good are digital rights in countries where physical rights are being deteriorated

throwaw12 9mo ago

One thing bothers me a lot is, if government organizations can be influenced by lobby groups, which primarily owned by corporations, then why do we need government? Corporations and governments should be considered as balancing forces, one works to increase its profits by any means, other works to protect humans living in that area by any means. You might say, corporations benefit its employees, true, but it is a small subset of people living in the country. If you allow everything to corporations, they will set up a slavery system from the birth of a baby

philipallstar 9mo ago
Lobbying having undue influence is entirely a government problem that it needs to fix. It will never be fixed while people have the attitude that lobbyists are the problem. (I'm not saying you're saying this; just making a statement.)

loorke 9mo ago

[flagged]

concinds 9mo ago

The EU must fix itself, and that means ignoring those NGOs. The EU's current tech laws penalize EU startups vs. US Big Tech. It should be reversed. Remove these worthless regulations (except DMA), and explicitly start discriminating against US Big Tech vs. domestic firms, like China. Then the low-hanging fruits: mandate exclusive data storage in the EU, encryption keys in the EU, ban AWS/Azure/GCP and Windows/Office from government procurement, force JV's or GTFO, force Linux government use. These NGOs are saboteurs in disguise that will never lead you to the promised land of EU tech sovereignty. China's playbook was: deregulate to build a domestic ecosystem, then regulate to protect society once the ecosystem is mature. Flipping that playbook around is insidious wrecker shit.