[HN Gopher] EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech
___________________________________________________________________
EU reveals plan to regulate Big Tech
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 282 points
Date : 2020-12-15 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Link to the not that long source :
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If you can't compete, better slap successful companies with
| regulations, more red tape and arbitrary fines!
|
| That creates good unionized civil servant jobs to work out all
| these new compliance regulations! Good for reelection I assume.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Moreover, you're cutting your throat by introducing yet more
| regulation that only established players can afford to comply
| with.
|
| All of the previous steps in this direction have been massive
| boons to Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Exactly!
|
| But all that compliance busy-work is generally done in the
| country that enacts these regulations. So you just created a
| bunch of non-technical jobs at tech companies.
|
| Meanwhile, engineering is still done in California.
| mrlala wrote:
| Are you both done jerking each other off yet?
| nalekberov wrote:
| And how they are going to prevent millions of websites from using
| Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel etc. in their websites?
| Quanttek wrote:
| Better article: https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-digital-
| markets-act-s...
| plandis wrote:
| > Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send
| cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide
| access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based.
|
| That just sounds like the opposite of privacy and additionally
| restrictions on free speech. If Poland doesn't like a YouTube
| video criticizing their government it sounds like they now have a
| legal framework to get that removed, for example.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Is imposing restrictions on foreign companies bad?
| plandis wrote:
| If your intention is to hinder foreign competition, then yes.
| If it ends up doing that then I'd expect the US to take it to
| the WTO.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Actions against Huawei might also be taken to the WTO but I
| still believe that there are valid concerns there.
| melenaboija wrote:
| I don't have much idea about regulations but I have the feeling
| that western countries reactions in this terms have been slow.
|
| I am not sure if this has been intentional to not slow the fast
| pace of the industry, they could just nod do it or they have not
| realized the impact of it.
|
| I think in some way the the almost immediate reaction to most of
| the regulatory problems that appeared during the COVID pandemic
| demonstrate that is possible to solve some of the bureaucratic
| barriers if needed. Not comparing the situations per se at but
| yes the practical resolutions.
| hpoe wrote:
| >" so would only come into force after the Brexit transition
| period has ended."
|
| Well so this isn't going to do anything for 40 years.
|
| > "Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send
| cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide
| access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based."
|
| I feel that this is very open to abuse especially with this
| example provided
|
| >"A commission spokesman gave the example of Amsterdam's local
| government being able to ask a service like Airbnb, which is
| based in Dublin, to remove a listing of a non-registered
| apartment and share details about a host suspected of not paying
| taxes."
|
| I get the feeling although this law started with the right idea
| it is being used as an excuse for law enforcement to expand their
| reach, without actually helping people.
| ben_w wrote:
| I don't see why that Airbnb example is problematic --
| enforcement of local laws using information not stored locally.
| The other option is requiring data to be stored within
| whichever jurisdiction the data concerns, which could be done
| but seems contrary to the point of the single market (not a
| huge difficulty if they can afford local translators and
| content moderators, but still against the point of the single
| market).
|
| Can you give a better example of how this could be abused?
| xwdv wrote:
| Raiding the illegal AirBNB and throwing the guests, often
| foreign, in prison and forcing them to pay huge fines to
| collect revenue.
| TruthHurts44 wrote:
| And if they don't have the money to pay the fines we can
| keep them in a work camp...
|
| I hope you are joking about this.
| avianlyric wrote:
| What exactly would the guests be guilty of? This is EU
| we're talking about, we do actually have due process here.
| avianlyric wrote:
| >> " so would only come into force after the Brexit transition
| period has ended."
|
| > Well so this isn't going to do anything for 40 years.
|
| I wish, but it's pretty clear the brexit transition period is
| ending 17 days whether the UK is ready or (more likely) not.
|
| > I feel that this is very open to abuse especially with this
| example provided
|
| Not sure how else you could manage this. If you don't put this
| stipulation you'll end up with the privacy equivalent of the
| double-Irish. Where a smaller EU country either writes the
| weakest version of the law they can get away with, or just
| turns a blind eye to abuse, and uses that to attract companies
| like Facebook to move their "HQ" there.
|
| > I get the feeling although this law started with the right
| idea it is being used as an excuse for law enforcement to
| expand their reach, without actually helping people.
|
| Not sure how this is an example of a regulator expanding their
| reach. If a regulator has the authority to regulate the housing
| in a city, why should they not be able to force companies that
| help people actively flout their regulation to turn over
| details on those flouters.
|
| In the EU there's a cross-border agreement to help police
| identify car owners for speeding tickets etc. Is that also an
| over reach?
| foota wrote:
| That part's not about law enforcement, especially given the
| example it's probably about Ireland's use as a tax haven.
| richwater wrote:
| Once again governments pushing their responsibilities onto
| corporations.
| a_diplomat wrote:
| Actually no, it's the opposite. It's governments regulating
| companies, and thereby taking responsibility. Going a step
| further would make governments actively intervene in day-to-
| day-operations.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Ehh one of the major complaints about EU legislation is it's
| left intentionally vague and relies on the companies to guess
| what the goal is, which of course misses something, take
| their yearly fines and tweak their system after each round of
| fines.
| nannePOPI wrote:
| >"Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders
| selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering
| counterfeit items or other illegal products." >"[It] will require
| online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they
| are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more
| difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr
| Breton.
|
| I see, it's another "let's regulate the big by removing small
| players from the market". Of course, of course. Totally not
| another gift to the bigs masked by helping normal people.
| DrNuke wrote:
| From the EU perspective, this is aimed at disentangling
| fundamental services for the general public from private corp
| monopolies. Good in principle, very difficult to implement?
| 6510 wrote:
| It would be easier to throw away the code and have the EU
| create its own cloned services. I look at software as mostly
| prototyping. By now we've figured out that email is something
| we want. Buy some servers and create a mailbox for the
| citizens. Have an open source feature set. Let people make add-
| ons, migrate some of these into the default set. It will be
| hard to get in the way of it becoming something nice and
| useful.
| cody3222 wrote:
| Where's our comment from HN user "dang" to tell us all the
| related articles?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| dang often points to a previous discussion of the same article.
| As this BBC article was created four hours ago, that seems
| unlikely.
|
| If there are two discussions of the same event, dang sometimes
| adds a comment to the smaller discussion pointing to the larger
| one.
|
| If neither of those are true... what, exactly, do you want him
| to do?
| sveme wrote:
| You know that dang is employed by ycombinator to moderate
| hackernews?
| tedunangst wrote:
| Does this prevent Apple from shipping iMessage by default on
| iPhones unless they bundle Facebook and WhatsApp, etc.?
| youeseh wrote:
| I think what they're trying to do is force Apple (and other OS
| makers) to provide the ability to uninstall built-in apps. So,
| your iPhone will come with Apple's default messaging app, but
| you would potentially have the ability to uninstall it.
| tedunangst wrote:
| It also says their own app can't be placed more favorably on
| the screen, and a default app certainly sounds more favorable
| than one not on the screen.
| ericra wrote:
| [Original Source Press Release](https://ec.europa.eu/commission/p
| resscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...)
|
| I found this bit promising:
|
| "Concretely, the Digital Markets Act will:
|
| - Prohibit a number of practices which are clearly unfair, such
| as blocking users from un-installing any pre-installed software
| or apps; "
|
| I'm curious about what other "clearly unfair" practices they are
| referring tho, but this alone could have implications for
| potentially getting rid of bundled applications on Android
| phones, as an example. This assumes that the clause extends to
| the Android operating system as it is installed on devices made
| by manufacturers possibly not regulated under these Acts.
| Veedrac wrote:
| Bundling is explicitly allowed by the regulation. Some examples
| of other 'clearly unfair' practices are restricting the use of
| third-party software or stores, or preventing them from
| accessing them other than from the company's channels.
|
| The full proposal is here:
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/proposal-regulati...
| Majestic121 wrote:
| A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they
| have different levels of expectations between small to medium
| businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? :
|
| > Platforms that reach more than 10% of the EU's population (45
| million users) are considered systemic in nature, and are subject
| not only to specific obligations to control their own risks, but
| also to a new oversight structure.
|
| Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope that
| 'private platform can act as they wish since they are private' :
|
| > The Digital Markets Act addresses the negative consequences
| arising from certain behaviours by platforms acting as digital
| "gatekeepers" to the single market. ... This can grant them the
| power to act as private rule-makers and to function as
| bottlenecks between businesses and consumers.
|
| The road is still long before ratification, but it looks like a
| step in the good direction.
| Zenst wrote:
| >A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they
| have different levels of expectations between small to medium
| businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? :
|
| Yes that does seem like it could be bumpy. I like the UK
| approach https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55230704 which
| seems to be that they will have more flexibility - hopefully
| not over-flex, but a set of rules catering for the large
| companies, which at the scale is maybe a more manageable
| approach without culling all the middle/small growing companies
| with some solid rule that is less fiscally impacting upon the
| large players.
|
| However, a final thought for all - countries been doing their
| own TAX laws for ages and the companies that always manage to
| play that game better than those who write the rules
| are....large companies of the type these are targeting. So I
| don't think it will improve overnight, but does seem that the
| right direction would be a good place to start.
|
| > The road is still long before ratification, but it looks like
| a step in the good direction.
|
| Yes and with the EU, just one country could hold the whole
| thing up and Ireland may have more of a vested interest in the
| large tech firms than many others, so may or may not be more
| suitable to corporate lobbying factors.
| kapilkaisare wrote:
| Isn't 10% too low a number to consider a platform systemic?
| manfredo wrote:
| Maybe. I could see sites removing access to less profitable
| users, probably in lower income countries to stay below the
| 45 million threshold. Or perhaps boot low-engagement users in
| order to keep user-counts below the threshold. When
| regulation exists with a threshold, enterprises will strive
| to stay below it. Hence why there's such a huge drop-off in
| businesses with 50 or more employees in France [1] [2].
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/business/international/
| th...
|
| 2. http://economics.mit.edu/files/12321
| RangerScience wrote:
| Nah. I can see why it sounds small, but I'm having trouble
| thinking of places where 10% isn't of huge significance.
|
| If you drink one cup of coffee a day, that's less than 10% of
| your waking time, but coffee is systemic to your life.
|
| If 10% of your cells have a defect, that defect is systemic
| to your body.
|
| If your API is down 10% of the time...
| 6510 wrote:
| with 28 countries 10% is much larger than most.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I think this might actually put Spotify on the list. Whether
| or not you agree if it should be, at least Spotify is no
| small dog.
| avianlyric wrote:
| What number would you pick?
|
| I would say that any company that has 45 million customers is
| doing pretty good. 10% definitely makes many companies the
| largest in their sector, not every company is a Google or
| Amazon that's completely consumed it's market.
| iguy wrote:
| Also, 10% overall probably means a much higher share in
| some countries. Doesn't seem like a crazy threshold.
| rodgerd wrote:
| In the EU context, it would mean 100% of several
| countries, or 80%+ of one of the big EU nations (France,
| Germany, Italy, etc).
| revax wrote:
| It is 10% users, not people in general if I understood
| correctly.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I haven't read the details, but I'm surprised not only by the
| tiers, but that the measure would be something like "reach".
| How do you accurately and consistently measure "reach" with the
| internet? Language adapted sites as a ratio of the population
| that is possibly able or actively accesses the internet?
| Accounts? Active accounts?
|
| Also, my first thought is to simply then start breaking up into
| smaller social media companies that are somehow networked. It
| may actually be that this brings about just that, that we get a
| kind of adversarial competition or interoperability (I think
| it's being referred to).
|
| I just find it extremely disheartening that with all the good
| work and forward thinking it seems the EU is doing, their free
| speech policies are right out of a dystopian terror novel, the
| more so as ever more and tighter speech and though control
| measures are put in place.
|
| It WILL snuff out and strangle innovation and creativity when
| there is constant fear of drawing the ire of the Thought Police
| based on intentionally ambiguous thought and speech limitations
| that are arbitrarily enforced. It's unfortunate that Europeans
| do not have the courage and conviction to allow for free
| speech, but it also seems like it is being snuffed out in the
| USA too. Pursuant consequences will inevitably follow.
| Tarsul wrote:
| the free speech in the usa is also something out of a
| dystopian terror novel. Writers (e.g. in the atlantic) like
| to say that our time is less like 1984 and more like brave
| new world in that all the noise that is allowed through free
| speech leads to bad results (trump, brexit, anti-social media
| etc.) that are not necessarily better than what the EU is
| trying to avert with its free speech agenda. I'd argue some
| regulation is necessary since the popularity contests that
| thrive within the current media environment do not lead to
| enlightened people (since it's not necessarily the
| smartest/most empathetic argument that wins/gets all the
| attention). However, it's a slippery road, that's for sure
| (and you CAN deconstruct my arguments in that way) - but
| let's be honest: allowing ALL free speech and letting the
| loudmouth that makes fun about the out-group win all the
| arguments is not a solution either.
| ksec wrote:
| >Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope
| that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are
| private' :
|
| Now the EU is saying the same thing to Apple. It is their
| market, and they dictate the rules. Which is perhaps a taste of
| Apple's own medicine?
|
| I wonder what those people who keep saying it is Apple's
| platform they can do what ever they want had to say?
|
| I sometimes wonder had Apple not been such an arse with its App
| Store and monopolistic rules. Would these regulations ever come
| up.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| This is weird to me, the argument is not just that company X
| is a private platform so they should be able to do what they
| want it is that they're a private US platform and in the US
| they can do what they want because that's generally the law
| and social understanding of companies in the US. At least for
| me it was never that company X can do what they want
| globally.
|
| That's silly they're subject to the laws of the jurisdiction
| under which they operate.
|
| The EU is free to regulate them just like the US is free not
| to regulate them.
| nickff wrote:
| The EU didn't create its citizens (unlike Apple which created
| its products); saying that the EU 'owns' their market is
| quite a big step in assuming control over the lives of
| residents.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > quite a big step in assuming control over the lives of
| residents.
|
| Have you heard of laws and governments before? This is
| exactly what they do, it's also why democracy is such a big
| thing.
|
| If you're gonna give that much power to an organisation,
| you want to make sure you can change it if start going off
| the rails.
|
| > The EU didn't create its citizens (unlike Apple which
| created its products);
|
| It might not have "created" it's citizens. But it certainly
| created and maintains the environment that make those
| citizens wealthy and capable of being a market for Apple.
| nickff wrote:
| I was just answering the parent's question: "I wonder
| what those people who keep saying it is Apple's platform
| they can do what ever they want had to say?"
|
| With respect to political authority, I have some rather
| unpopular views... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prob
| lem_of_Political_Autho...
| bserge wrote:
| They're nice views, I entertain myself that way
| sometimes, too.
|
| But they all fall apart at the first meeting with the
| police, especially when you're the suspect. We're
| powerless.
|
| And that's "just" the police, the military is the actual
| force of a government and they're absolutely not keen on
| listening to your philosophies. It's an interesting
| world, for sure.
| jariel wrote:
| "do, it's also why democracy is such a big thing"
|
| Voters of France and Netherlands strongly rejected the
| treaty upon which the EU derives is legitimacy.
| Referendums were cancelled elsewhere.
|
| Ursula von der Leyen did not receive any votes, she
| wasn't even part of the process, she was an unknown
| German figure until _after_ the election, when she was
| plucked from obscurity by actors acting in total opacity,
| behind closed doors: "Here is your New Leader".
|
| I respect much of the commercial facility of the EU, but
| it's severely lacking in democracy.
|
| And while I think a lot of the intentions of the current
| system are reasonable, a lot of it is not ... and I'm
| super concerned that totally unelected and unaccountable
| elite are just going to be smashing their big hands into
| the economy, with the simplistic populist notions of
| 'American Economic Imperialism' and a kind of anti-
| American jealousy just under the surface.
|
| It'd be nice to see much more thoughtfulness here, but
| more importantly, mechanisms to improve European
| competitiveness.
| avianlyric wrote:
| The EU democratic structure is complex, that for sure.
| But it's hardly undemocratic.
|
| The EU has always struggled to explain how it works, why
| it's structure works the way it does. But all the leaders
| in the EU are elected, just not always via direct
| elections. A process that actually isn't that unusual in
| the world.
|
| The US is actually a bit of an outlier, because they have
| direct elections for almost every position in government,
| with some slightly mixed results. The EU it's common for
| countries to select and organise their executive bodies
| via in-direct elections. For example in the UK our prime
| minister isn't directly elected, the general public
| didn't "choose" Boris Johnson. Instead the conservative
| party did, via its own methodology which it can change
| any time it does.
|
| The current byzantine system exists out of a need to
| somehow balance the power of the EU as a federal entity,
| against the sovereignty of the individual nations. With
| irony come from the fact that the "unelected" leader only
| exist because it give _more_ power to leaders of the
| member states, and takes it away from the EU as an
| organisation independent of its member states and their
| elected governments.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _The EU democratic structure is complex, that for sure.
| But it 's hardly undemocratic._
|
| I don't really want to start a rehash of the entire
| Brexit debate we had in the UK, but the EU does have a
| serious democratic deficit.
|
| Ask yourself this simple question: Can a citizen who is
| governed by the EU meaningfully influence who is doing
| that governing? In particular, can a large group of
| citizens affect who holds power within the EU and vote
| out those individuals they don't want, so any individual
| office holder has some degree of personal accountability
| to the electorate?
|
| It would take quite a leap to argue that the European
| Commission, which is where most of the real power still
| lies in practice, would meet any of those standards.
|
| It is debatable whether even the European Parliament
| does, though it is at least more directly affected by the
| public vote.
|
| _For example in the UK our prime minister isn 't
| directly elected, the general public didn't "choose"
| Boris Johnson. Instead the conservative party did, via
| its own methodology which it can change any time it
| does._
|
| Our arrangement here in the UK suffers from a similar
| problem of failing to faithfully represent the will of
| the electorate. FPTP is a deeply flawed voting system on
| purely mathematical grounds, and then the mechanics
| through which the PM and by extension the government come
| to power once MPs have been elected can be even more
| distorted.
|
| If you don't think it matters that many of our population
| have little influence over who occupies Number 10, I
| would respectfully remind you that one of the first
| things each new PM does is handwrite four letters that
| could literally cause the end of the world as we know it.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Can a citizen who is governed by the EU meaningfully
| influence who is doing that governing? In particular, can
| a large group of citizens affect who holds power within
| the EU and vote out those individuals they don't want, so
| any individual office holder has some degree of personal
| accountability to the electorate?
|
| Erm yes. A large group of citizen can apply pressure to
| its local government to push for change in the EU, they
| can also to the same via MEP elections. You just need to
| remember that a "large group" need to be very large to be
| considered important relative to the EU 450 million
| citizens. The UK's total population only makes up 14% of
| the total EU population, what gives us the right to
| dictate terms over the remaining 86%?
|
| National governments pick the members of the European
| Commision, so if you're not happy with your European
| Commission representative, take it up with your national
| government. As for the member picked by other
| governments, well you wouldn't expect to have power over
| an MP that doesn't represent you.
|
| > It is debatable whether even the European Parliament
| does
|
| The European Parliament obviously does. The only reason
| why the UK keeps getting short changed by the European
| Parliament is because we keep electing idiots into power.
| Most because our national government like to pretend MEPs
| don't exist, thus doesn't educate people on the
| importance of MEP elections, then acts surprised when the
| European Parliament doesn't represent the UK population.
|
| > If you don't think it matters that many of our
| population have little influence over who occupies Number
| 10
|
| I think it does matter, I think it matter quite a bit.
| But I'm not convinced that the general public is the best
| body to make that choice directly. The whole point of
| have a representatives is that they have the time and
| resources to educate themselves on the minutiae of state,
| and make better decisions than the general public. Not
| because they're smarter or better, but because they're
| better informed.
|
| My view on the EU debate in the UK has always boiled down
| to the fact the UK public has simply not bothered to
| engage with the democratic systems in the EU, so it's not
| a surprise that those systems don't represent us. The fix
| here was always for the UK to actually participate in the
| EU, not just strope, but that would require the UK
| national government to stop using the EU as it scapegoat
| for its own domestic failures. At least with Brexit the
| UK government won't be able to blame the EU for
| everything anymore, and we might actually get some
| competent leaders with a real vision for the UK.
| Silhouette wrote:
| These are the usual arguments in defence of the EU's
| democratic credentials. The fundamental problem I have
| with them is that they don't actually meet the simple,
| transparent standards I set out for _meaningful_
| democratic representation.
|
| _National governments pick the members of the European
| Commision, so if you 're not happy with your European
| Commission representative, take it up with your national
| government._
|
| How, specifically, should someone do that in practice?
| Does someone cast an anonymous vote to indicate their
| preference? Will some robust system then make an
| objective determination of the outcome based on the
| popular vote? This is how the people customarily
| determine their representatives in a representative
| democracy.
|
| In reality, the number of levels of indirection between
| you or me as ordinary people who vote in elections and
| Ursula von der Leyen as the most powerful person in the
| EU government removes any meaningful requirement for her
| to either achieve a popular mandate before taking office
| or accept any meaningful personal accountability for her
| performance while in office.
|
| And more generally, European Commissioner is _infamous_
| for being a role you give a national politician who is
| still in favour with the leadership but perhaps has lost
| popular support. Just look at the past roles of the
| people who get nominated to these positions by their
| respective governments. There 's an incredible number of
| _ex_ -representatives, and often not ex- by choice but
| because the electorate chose not to re-elect them.
|
| _The European Parliament obviously does._
|
| Not in my country. While it operates a PR system, it's a
| party list, so again at a minimum it fails my personal
| accountability criterion. The only way for the people to
| remove a particular individual they don't like from power
| is, in this case, to remove everyone from that
| individual's party from power in that electoral region.
|
| In fact, this is the same basic problem with many of the
| situations we've been discussing here. You can in theory
| indirectly influence which individual holds power. The
| catch is that your only way to remove them is some sort
| of nuclear option. Don't like your nation's choice for
| European Commissioner? No problem, just elect a different
| entire national government at the last election. Don't
| like the UK's current PM? No problem, just make sure no-
| one votes for any MPs in that person's party at the last
| election. Don't like the current European Commission
| President? Sorry, I can't help you much with that one
| because hardly anyone (including hundreds of MEPs, by the
| way) actually knows how she got the job.
|
| _The whole point of have a representatives is that they
| have the time and resources to educate themselves on the
| minutiae of state, and make better decisions than the
| general public. Not because they 're smarter or better,
| but because they're better informed._
|
| Again, so the theory goes. But as someone who has
| interacted with various MPs personally, and through them
| also with senior figures in government on a few
| occasions, I can promise you that it is a work of fiction
| in practice.
|
| Just look at the nonsense MPs on both sides of the Brexit
| debate were shouting from the rooftops before the
| referendum. Or for something a little less inflammatory,
| try the arguments they've made about regulating business
| and technology, including in the EU measures we're
| discussing here and the roughly analogous UK plans also
| announced today. Those weren't the arguments of well-
| informed experts who have studied the issues and drawn
| rational conclusions. In many cases, they weren't even
| the arguments of a moderately well-informed member of the
| general public. And they were statements not just from
| elected representatives but often from senior government
| figures!
|
| The truth is that there is absolutely nothing about our
| current system of government that requires our MPs to be
| qualified to make or capable of making better decisions
| than members of the public who are well-informed about
| and personally interested in any particular issue. Even
| those who are intelligent and trying to do a good job, as
| I'm sure many MPs actually are despite all the negative
| press they get, can't possibly become experts on
| everything and don't have the resources to staff it out.
| And even on issues they do choose to prioritise, unless
| they are members of the party in power and take a
| government position with all the strings that are
| attached to doing so, their power to influence policy is
| often very limited even when acting in quite large
| groups.
|
| And the same is true of most other elected
| representatives and political appointments, whether in
| the UK or EU. This isn't about Brexit, or about being
| pro- or anti-EU, if that even means anything anyway. It's
| a problem with systems of government operating at
| national and international levels where those in power
| are so well insulated from the voting public that they
| don't require a popular mandate and aren't required to be
| accountable to the people for whom they supposedly act.
| That's not democracy, at least not in any meaningful
| sense of the word.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The UK public has been told very little about the EU.
| There's very little local European news in the British
| media, and what does appear is often jokey and
| condescending or slanted in a negative.
|
| A snowstorm in the US will get significant coverage, but
| an equivalent major weather event in France and Germany
| won't.
|
| The reality is the British Establishment simply doesn't
| understand Europe as a social and political project. It
| has no clue what consensus building, social
| responsibility, and political integration are for, and
| simply sees the EU - at least, saw the EU - as an
| exploitable if rather shifty trading partner.
|
| Now the EU is a competitor, the US has limited interest
| in the UK, the former commonwealth countries have been
| looking elsewhere, and the UK's rather minimal level of
| independent leverage is about to become very obvious.
| bserge wrote:
| > Can a citizen who is governed by the EU meaningfully
| influence who is doing that governing? In particular, can
| a large group of citizens affect who holds power within
| the EU and vote out those individuals they don't want, so
| any individual office holder has some degree of personal
| accountability to the electorate?
|
| In theory, yes. But it would take a _huge_ group of
| people. Which is practically impossible these days.
|
| So you are right, there is a serious deficit of
| democracy, not only in the EU, but everywhere imo.
| Silhouette wrote:
| I realised after I wrote my original comment that I
| forgot to add a rider along the lines of "without causing
| profound and possibly unwanted side effects", which is
| often the fundamental problem with having indirectly
| elected (aka appointed without a popular vote) people in
| positions of power.
|
| And you're right, this is a very widespread problem
| today. That doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge the
| issue and challenge the status quo where opportunities
| present, of course.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I don't see how Brexit was supposed to fix an alleged EU
| democratic deficit when the UK suffers from the same
| problems - even more so, because most EU countries don't
| have FPTP.
|
| In fact the EC is just the EU's version of the UK
| cabinet, but on a bigger scale. Everyone present is
| elected by their national voters, but there are - as yet
| - no direct EU-wide elections for specific EU posts.
|
| Opponents of the EU criticise this while simultaneously
| being furious at any hint of closer political union which
| might make direct EU-wide elections possible.
| Silhouette wrote:
| Just to be clear, I'm neither arguing for nor arguing
| against Brexit here.
|
| Personally, I am a politically interested floating voter
| with no party affiliation. On the specific issue of
| Brexit, I have always had mixed feelings, for the simple
| reason that I expect it to have both some good and some
| bad effects for both the UK and the EU27, and I'm not
| sure anyone truly knows what the balance between them
| will end up being in the long term.
|
| Something that _does_ matter to me very much is how we
| run our governments, and that governments act with
| popular support and are accountable to their people. On
| this count, I do indeed make very similar criticisms of
| the way the EU operates and the way our own system of
| government operates here in the UK.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| In that case I don't understand your point. You seem to
| be arguing _for_ direct representation in the previous
| comment and arguing _against it_ in the comment below.
| Silhouette wrote:
| I'm not really arguing for or against direct
| representation as such. I tend to judge democratic
| systems by their practical effects. Do they result in
| governments that act with popular support? Are the
| individuals who achieve power within those governments
| accountable to the people they supposedly act for, such
| that there will be consequences for them personally if
| they don't faithfully act for the people and do a decent
| job of it?
|
| It's true that directly elected representatives are, in
| some situations, more likely to meet those standards.
| Indirectly elected officials are, by the nature of the
| system, not in need of a personal popular mandate to
| achieve power, nor directly accountable to the people,
| and the gap widens as more levels of indirection separate
| the official from someone who actually had to win a
| popular vote.
|
| But I'm not necessarily arguing for directly electing
| everyone in public office. I don't think that works very
| well in practice either, because voters get election
| fatigue and anything but the big ticket elections can
| easily end up being more about which candidates have the
| best PR and spin rather than the best policies on the
| issues.
|
| What I do think would be a big improvement in many cases
| is directly electing the people _at the top_ of a system
| of government and having appointed officials subordinate
| to them. Many of the democratic deficits identified in
| this discussion, from forming the European Commission to
| choosing the PM and by extension the government in the
| UK, are examples where the lower level representatives
| are the only ones who actually have to win an election,
| and then some number of averages of averages up the tree
| you get the people with most of the real power being
| isolated from needing to attract or maintain popular
| support. I don 't think this kind of arrangement is
| healthy for democracy, and I think forcing direct
| elections for those most senior positions would go some
| way to fixing the problem.
| pmontra wrote:
| The EU is currently based upon the Treaty of Lisbon [1]
| signed in 2007 after the referenda of 2005 for the new
| constitution (Spain yes, France and Netherlands nay)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lisbon
| jariel wrote:
| Yes, exactly. Nations gave away sovereign, constitutional
| powers literally after their populations boldly rejected
| the terms, in a fair and open democratic processes.
|
| Other European nations, verging on 'voting no' were
| denied the chance precisely because the EU apparatus knew
| what the outcome would be.
|
| There's basically no defence of that issue, and the
| patronizing arguments defending 'indirect' nature of
| democracy of the EU wear thin - voters have no material
| impact on the EU, which is how it was designed, very much
| on purpose.
|
| The limitation that MEPs have no ability to introduce
| legislation or frankly drive any of the real legislative
| process is by design.
|
| It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend
| an undemocratic system that their ancestors literally
| fought for 2000 years to overcome, with literally
| millions dead. 'Reason' lasted only one generation,
| before ostensibly well meaning actors took away the
| rights of the plebes before their eyes, and convinced
| them that it was in their best interest.
|
| There is obvious need for reform, and if there was, I'll
| bet Norway and UK would be part of it, and possibly even
| Switzerland.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > ancestors literally fought for 2000 years to overcome,
| with literally millions dead.
|
| Not sure how good your history is. But the EU was built
| by an ancestors who were fed of fighting and dying by the
| millions in wars that did nothing to actually improve
| people lives.
|
| The whole purpose of the EU from day zero was to ensure
| lasting peace in Europe, and given there haven't been any
| domestic European wars since its creation, I would say
| it's been pretty successful.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people
| defend an undemocratic system that their ancestors
| literally fought for 2000 years to overcome, with
| literally millions dead.
|
| It's mesmerizing to watch legions of young people defend
| a Union they grew up in with no wars, with relative
| economic stability, with open borders and unencumbered
| travel. Compared to their ancestors who literally
| sacrificed millions of people fighting over each square
| millimiter of land for centuries on end.
|
| > There is obvious need for reform, and if there was,
| I'll bet Norway and UK would be part of it, and possibly
| even Switzerland.
|
| Norway and Switzerland are not part of EU [1]. UK has
| left the EU and it will be fascinating how it will
| function now that it has severed basically all ties with
| the EU.
|
| [1] They are a part of the Schengen Area and various
| other treaties. They are, however, tightly integrated
| into the EU and are basically bound by most of EU's laws.
| paddez wrote:
| > Ursula von der Leyen did not receive any votes
|
| She was nominated by the Council of Europe (comprised of
| the heads of state for each of the EU nations), and
| confirmed by the European Parliament (which represents
| the European electorate).
| corty wrote:
| That is a very uncharitable and weak interpretation of
| the grandparent. For the parliamentary elections, the
| bigger parties agreed to try to fix democracy deficits by
| promising to elect a nominated candidate (Frans
| Timmmermans and Manfred Weber) as president of the
| commission depending on which block won in parliament.
| Yet, after the election, in a typical EU backroom deal,
| von der Leyen was elected. So it is quite fair to say
| that no constituent voted for her in any meaningful way.
|
| https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2019-07/ursula-von-
| der-l...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The UK has exactly the same opacity. People vote for
| parties, and the winning party can replace its leader at
| any time. Voters have exactly zero input into who is
| chosen. That choice is down to the party hierarchy, with
| some token show-voting from party members once a
| shortlist has been selected.
| alacombe wrote:
| > Have you heard of laws and governments before? This is
| exactly what they do, it's also why democracy is such a
| big thing.
|
| The EU has been designed to be as anti-democratic as can
| be, from its very inception.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Don't the citizens create the government in a democracy?
| Sargos wrote:
| No, at least not in the semi-democracy systems that are
| in use today. In most western countries the citizens are
| allowed to vote on a portion of the people that create
| and run the government. It varies between countries but
| even in those nearest a system that resembles democracy
| the citizens don't have much power over what happens or
| who most of the people running the system are.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Governments do however create corporations, which is an
| artificial structure that can only exist due to government
| control over the intersection between the marketplace and
| the legal system.
| alacombe wrote:
| I'd be tempted to think the concept of "corporations"
| pre-dates "government" as we know them today, and these
| secular traditions were merely enshrined in Law.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| you know what sort of corporations you get without
| governments? without schools and universities that
| educate their employers? or the research that has
| supported ALL the technologies that these companies have
| exploited? or build ALL the infrastructure (roads,
| electricity, water...)
| bla3 wrote:
| The EU is its citizens. So in a sense the EU did create its
| citizens.
| nickff wrote:
| I'm actually an EU citizen, who has never lived there,
| and never even visited. I did not create the EU; did the
| EU create me?
| Fargren wrote:
| If your parent are EU citizens, and the EU 'is it's
| citizens' (which is controversial but defensible) then
| yes, the EU did create you.
| nickff wrote:
| None of my family have ever resided in the EU either.
|
| I think I understand the argument you're trying to make,
| but it relies on some rather tortured logic.
| mnl wrote:
| I fail to understand how your particular case works. Not
| having a horse in the race but just a piece of paper you
| don't care about doesn't help you to make a point, which
| is what exactly?
| nickff wrote:
| I was replying to a comment that said: "The EU is its
| citizens. So in a sense the EU did create its citizens."
| I tried to show that I was a counter-example.
| harperlee wrote:
| You are part of it, so you created part of it through
| your birth. Once all EU citizens die, the EU dies. We can
| also of course end it earlier.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Of course the EU created her citizens, do you think
| European citizenship is some sort of fact of nature? Like
| people woke up in Europe in a cave and were like "Yeah of
| course we're cosmopolitan citizens of the United European
| states" ?
|
| All the rules, all the borders, all their values have been
| created, quite hard earned in fact, with a lot of blood and
| sweat along the way I might add, even more so than at an
| Apple smartphone factory if you can believe it.
| alacombe wrote:
| There is no such thing as "EU citizenship".
|
| I am a French citizen, my passport says I am a French
| citizen, and I do not have a SINGLE legal document
| mentioning "European citizen".
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > There is no such thing as "EU citizenship".
|
| You might want to check what the Treaty on European Union
| (Title II, Article 9) says about that:
|
| "Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of
| the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional
| to and not replace national citizenship."[0]
|
| It is possible to possess a citizenship without owning
| any legal documents that mention that fact.
|
| [0] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Consolidated_version_o
| f_the_T...
| Mijka wrote:
| Just checked the cover and first page of my french
| passport (made in 2013).
|
| There's 3 lines written in different languages in this
| order :
|
| - Union europeenne
|
| - Republique francaise
|
| - Passeport
|
| It doesn't says "French citizen" either, just "French
| Republic" and "European Union" multiple times.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| How about the passport of the European Union? [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passports_of_the_Europe
| an_Unio...
| SllX wrote:
| The difference is that Apple is not a government.
|
| That means they are not an organization which can legally
| stop, detain, arrest, charge, prosecute, convict, imprison,
| and kill you.
| username90 wrote:
| EU have about much power to imprison you as Apple does, as
| in they can't unless they can convince the local police you
| have committed some crime. They lack power compared to US
| feds.
| SllX wrote:
| They're still a collaborative governmental entity with
| governments enforcing its laws, so they pass muster as
| far as being a "State" goes, unless you want to go into
| specifics about the various treaties and how this is
| really a treaty organization and blah. In the looks,
| walks and quacks like a duck, with all the other ducks
| around treating it like a duck, it's a bloody government
| with all the powers that entails, even if enforcement is
| a matter left to the member nations that do have all of
| the powers I just outlined. I actually did write recently
| in a HN comment outlining the difference between the EU
| and Feds, but in terms of power, the EU is closer to the
| US Federal Government than to Apple because it still has
| laws.
|
| Apple is a private organization with a corporate charter,
| owned by shareholders, controlled by its Board of
| Directors and with the ability to engage in lawful
| business activity, with none of the powers that
| governments have. They don't have jurisdiction, they have
| stores. They don't make laws, they write policies. They
| don't levy taxes, they trade. The fees of the App Store
| are a known quantity, and you can take them or leave
| them.
|
| So in that light, does it still make sense to try to
| control Apple like a government entity or treat them like
| some kind of pseudo-government or rhetorically refer to
| their business practices using language we use to
| describe governments? Why do we demand so much more
| accountability from governments including supranational
| intergovernmental treaty organizations controlled by
| governments than we do from private shareholder owned and
| controlled organizations? Honestly think about it.
| Tainnor wrote:
| > The difference is that Apple is not a government
|
| Yes, and this is a key difference between Europeans and (at
| least the libertarian/SV type of) Americans.
|
| We trust governments more than corporations because
| governments were elected by us. It's really a difference in
| culture.
| SllX wrote:
| That's an interesting point, but I don't think it's a
| matter of trusting one type of organization more than
| another.
|
| I think we (Americans) don't trust either without cause,
| and there's more corporations than governments so there's
| more opportunities to find corporations, actually scratch
| that, businesses, big or small, that we trust. But by
| default, I think we trust both about as far as we can
| throw them and businesses we do trust, maybe only
| slightly so and in a largely transactional manner. The
| question is whether we are getting value for the money,
| not whether the businesses and owners are trustworthy.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > I sometimes wonder had Apple not been such an arse with its
| App Store and monopolistic rules. Would these regulations
| ever come up.
|
| Nah these regulations were always coming. Everyone always
| likes to pick on Apple and the App Store, but quite frankly
| in the EU (where iPhones market share is only 24% compared to
| 49% in the US) Apple is small fries compared to companies
| like Facebook which basically owns 100% of social media.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| "Small fries" and 24%...
|
| Anyway you're right but it's like, how would any of this
| concretely improve competition? In my experience, the
| problem is that giant companies _steal_ your stuff, whether
| it 's your code or your users, and that even when you want
| to enforce something like that, they can afford better
| lawyers than you.
|
| Like nobody here is working on social networks, cellphones
| or web browsers. I bet you interact with IP law almost
| every single day though, and a lot of truly disruptive
| things have termination conditions like, "And then a giant
| company sues you for IP violations and you go bankrupt,
| even if you're in the right."
|
| Maybe this benefits giant _European_ tech companies, but it
| certainly doesn 't benefit _competition_.
| woah wrote:
| They steal "your" users???
| bigbubba wrote:
| See also the term 'poaching', which implies ownership of
| employees.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > "Small fries" and 24%...
|
| Everythings relative. You've got to start somewhere.
|
| > Anyway you're right but it's like, how would any of
| this concretely improve competition?
|
| I don't think this is just about competition. There has
| to be a recognition that social networks etc are natural
| monopolies, it's very hard to have competition there.
| Regardless of HNs utopian view of open protocols and
| distributed and federated social networks, the reality is
| that it's just not gonna happen.
|
| So a I feel a big part of these laws isn't about creating
| competition, it's about making sure that mega-
| corporations like Facebook can't amase more power than
| democratically elected governments. These law make it
| clear that if you get to big, the EU will step in and
| make sure you're operating in line with their ideals, not
| the other way around.
| alacombe wrote:
| > it's about making sure that mega-corporations like
| Facebook can't amase more power than democratically
| elected governments
|
| It's about the resentment of not having European GAFA and
| wanting to "milk the cash cow" with bs. regulations.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > And then a giant company sues you for IP violations and
| you go bankrupt
|
| Is this an issue with the FAANG giants? My sense is
| initiating IP litigation is more the province of legacy
| tech companies like IBM and Oracle. (Who aren't being
| targeted by these EU laws)
|
| I've seen very little examples of Apple, Google, or
| Amazon initiating patent lawsuits. Especially against
| small players. If anything most of their lobbying and
| litigation seems to aim to _weaken_ IP law. (E.g. Google
| v. Oracle)
| username90 wrote:
| App stores charging 30% are a majority of the EU market and
| Apple is a large part of it. EU tend to regulate such price
| fixing schemes when they get large enough, see for example
| credit cards.
| briandear wrote:
| That isn't price fixing unless there is coordination
| between competitors.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing
|
| If every cafe charges EUR1.50 for a coffee, that isn't
| price fixing. If they all agree to, that is price fixing.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > A interesting point missing from the BBC article is that they
| have different levels of expectations between small to medium
| businesses and large ones, to avoid regulatory capture ? :
|
| It's easy to overlook, but the BBC article does have this line:
|
| > It introduces a sliding scale, under which firms take on more
| obligations the larger and more influential they are.
|
| > Another interesting tidbit is the answer to the common trope
| that 'private platform can act as they wish since they are
| private' :
|
| In the US we have a similar trope with respect to social media
| companies, that they don't have a responsibility to protect
| free speech because they are a private entity; however, they
| also argue that they aren't responsible when they curate
| illegal content.
|
| EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect this to be a controversial or
| particularly unpopular comment. I wonder if downvoters could
| elaborate a bit on their objections?
| core-questions wrote:
| > they don't have a responsibility to protect free speech
| because they are a private entity
|
| It continually amazes me when I see people who are ostensibly
| on the left trotting out this chestnut like as though it's
| even remotely a valid argument for the curtailment of one of
| the most important rights over the past few centuries. It's
| like as though they're in complete denial about the idea that
| this kind of speech control could ever negatively impact
| them. Must be nice to be completely aligned with corporatism
| to the extend that your personal set of values is literally
| dictated to you by the Google HR department.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Strange argument your making there. One of the interesting
| side effects of free speech rights is also the prevention
| of forced speech. After all how can you have free speech if
| someone else can force to express views you don't hold?
|
| Why should my right to free speech trump your right to not
| be forced to speak? Equally what right to I have to force
| any corporation to publish and distribute speech they don't
| agree with?
|
| Based on the argument your making, you're saying that I
| have the right to go to your home, plaster it with posters
| that you disagree with, then prevent you from removing
| them.
|
| Does that sound like free speech to you?
| core-questions wrote:
| I don't see how I am forcing you as a person to say a
| damn thing. You've entered into a new level of tactical
| nihilism here.
|
| > you're saying that I have the right to go to your home,
| plaster it with posters that you disagree with, then
| prevent you from removing them.
|
| How is your personal home the same thing as a gigantic,
| billion-user social network that has effectively
| (especially in 2020) replaced the pub, the bar, the town
| square, and the public forum? It's not, and you know it
| isn't.
|
| Step back and look at yourself: you're defending the
| right of billion dollar corporations to tell you what you
| can and cannot say.
|
| > Does that sound like free speech to you?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > How is your personal home the same thing as a gigantic,
| billion-user social network that has effectively
| (especially in 2020) replaced the pub, the bar, the town
| square, and the public forum? It's not, and you know it
| isn't.
|
| I think the scale is a good point (no idea what your
| original post contained since it was flagged before I
| read it). Twitter and a handful of other social media
| companies handle (by which I mean "choose who gets to see
| what content") such an enormous volume of speech that its
| moderation policies can influence elections and therefore
| public policy. Moreover, their power is inherently anti-
| competitive--users can't take their network to another
| platform because these platforms don't interoperate by
| design. It seems like this is an antitrust issue,
| especially since these networks tend to lobby together to
| protect their interests.
| cgriswald wrote:
| A fairer comparison is Facebook as a community bulletin
| board in a public space but that is privately owned.
|
| What the conclusions should be and whether technical,
| philosophical, or practical matters should take
| precedence, I'm not entirely sure.
| lovecg wrote:
| It's a bulletin board with a bunch of hired people with
| megaphones around it. The company decides which
| announcements the people with megaphones shout out. It's
| free to decide not to.
| jariel wrote:
| I think you have the FB issue upside down. Do you think the
| EU is interested in 'free speech'? No, the EU want to make
| sure that they able to suppress language they don't like. In
| some cases, it's probably for the common good, but in many
| others ... not so much.
|
| The EU, US and other actors definitely want FB et. al. to
| suppress information which they deem as 'factually
| innacurate' (things that can sway elections, scare people
| away from vaccines etc.) in addition to a few other points of
| interest, for example, things they deem 'hate speech' etc..
|
| Edit:
|
| Personally - I'm not sure how I feel about any of it really,
| but it's definitely not the case that either the EU is
| primarily to ensure 'free speech'.
|
| Austria high court ruling for a form of censorship:
|
| "that Facebook remove a post insulting a former Green Party
| leader, keep equivalent posts off its site, and do so on a
| global scale." [1]
|
| And at then at the EU level: "Facebook Risks EU Court Order
| to Censor Hateful Posts Globally" [2]
|
| This is the general theme of EU judicial and legislative
| activity.
|
| I don't see anything really that much in the other direction.
|
| [1] https://slate.com/technology/2020/11/austria-facebook-
| eva-gl...
|
| [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-02/facebo
| ok-...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I didn't mention Facebook at all...? My comment certainly
| wasn't intended to be subtext about any particular Facebook
| drama.
| buisi wrote:
| > The focus of the Digital Services Act is to create a single set
| of rules for the EU to keep users safe online, protect their
| freedom of expression and help both them and local authorities
| hold tech companies to account.
|
| You can either have freedom of expression or safety online. You
| can't have both. And the second might be an impossible goal
| regardless.
| avianlyric wrote:
| The world isn't so black and white. Even in the US, the home of
| free speech, you can't post child pornogaphy online. You could
| easily put forward the argument then that freedom of expression
| doesn't exist in the US.
|
| Freedom of expression has never really meant you're completely
| free to say and anything (at least no in a civilized world).
| There are always going to be gray areas, but equally there are
| areas where expression should obviously be protected.
|
| An example would be, if Facebook decided to eradicate all
| homosexual content. Clearly the EU stepping in and saying you
| can't discriminate against gay speech is protecting the gay
| communities freedom of expression.
|
| Equally the EU stepping in and saying the Facebook isn't doing
| enough to protect victims of revenge porn is providing safety
| online. And is a reasonable balance between the rights of free
| expression from the poster vs the victim.
| buisi wrote:
| Let us say the internet was created 50 years ago, and
| Facebook decided to eradicate all homosexual content.
| Perhaps, not even maliciously but as collateral damage for
| another goal. Would it have been as shocking or obviously
| bad?
| avianlyric wrote:
| The internet is not the only place the social changes
| happens.
|
| Equally the EU isn't applying the same regulation to every
| company, the most significant ones only apply to companies
| with 10% market share. It would be quite plausible for gay
| friendly social networks to spring up to fill that gap, and
| I would entirely expect it to happen. Apps like Grindr
| basically proves it would happen.
| dontTango wrote:
| And just like that, big tech becomes an oligarchy.
|
| That, or Europe becomes further disconnected to the rest of the
| world.
| Solvitieg wrote:
| Doesn't look like the type of regulation we were hoping for. The
| regulation seems to apply to content moderation and controlling
| information. Basically the exact opposite of what we need.
| mojzu wrote:
| Yeah, based on the article Facebook reactly quite positively to
| the proposed laws, which isn't a good sign. I'd like to be
| proven wrong, and there are some parts I like, such as not
| allowing preinstalled/unremovable apps. But on the whole I
| think the increased moderation/verification burdens are just
| going to cement existing companies in their market position,
| and create all kinds of oppurtunities for corruption in how
| content moderation disputes are handled.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Well corruption in how disputes are handled might not be a
| huge issue.
|
| As a first step the companies are required to allow you to
| appeal takedowns and account suspensions/terminations (for
| TOS or illegal content reasons, not for non-payment reasons)
| for a 6 month period.
|
| Further, if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and
| the company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to
| take the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the
| company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or
| account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of
| arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of
| doing business in the EU).
|
| Oh and the user (not the company) get to decide which
| arbitrator to use, from among those that have been certified
| by any Member state, with the relevant expertise for the type
| of social network and content or TOS violation in question.
|
| Obviously all of this is subject to change if the proposed
| law is changed before being enacted.
| mojzu wrote:
| Those seem like some decent mitigations, but I still have a
| hard time believing that wealthy corporations and people
| won't be able to abuse such a system for their own gain as
| they have done with the DMCA. And how those well meaning
| restrictions could easily throttle a competitive startup,
| because Facebook et al have the scale, technical and legal
| experience to handle these things whereas they may not
| buisi wrote:
| It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa and
| Mastercard. They too can pick and choose who they do business
| with (freedom of expression). There are a lot of middle-men with
| a lot of power who get ignored in favor of chasing the most
| popular target of the day.
| Sargos wrote:
| > It's weird how politicians never talk about regulating Visa
| and Mastercard
|
| These are two of the most heavily regulated corporations in the
| world. I don't even understand the premise of your comment.
| Banking and money is extremely regulated and they have to ask
| for permission to do pretty much anything.
| baxtr wrote:
| Ok, I will probably get downvoted for this. But I will still
| speak my mind: I am an EU citizen and I don't think that's the
| right approach because it's distracting from what really
| happened: We missed the big Internet bus because we were so much
| focused on keeping things the way they were. Now we try to
| regulate us out. It makes me unbelievably sad.
|
| And it continues. The car was invented here but it takes an
| Australian visionary to push our car companies into the future. I
| am sure we will want to regulate Tesla soon too.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Europe didn't miss the internet bus because of regulations,
| there were no regulations until the dust settled.
|
| The thing is, there's no US style capital in EU. The American
| capitalist bankrolled all the internet when there was no clear
| path to make money from it.
|
| I remember when YouTube was burning billions per year, Facebook
| being labeled as "would never be profitable".
|
| Is there the kind of money in Europe that would take these
| risks?
|
| There was no way for the internet to be EU thing because when
| it was fresh god knows how many billions had to be spent to
| have it operate and cross fingers to be able to recoup that
| investment. Simply, there is no that kind of money in Europe.
|
| If you made the YouTube in Europe you would go bankrupt because
| you wouldn't be able to pay the server bills.
| Pandabob wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong about the lack of VC funding
| having an effect on the European startup scene.
|
| That said, I'm a little baffled that Ottawa can produce a
| behemoth like Shopify which has a market cap ($130bn) larger
| than Spotify (~$60bn) and Adyen (~55Bn) combined.
| cambalache wrote:
| Dont underestimate being next to America, having a FTA,
| same language and same timezone,among many other advantages
| for Canada compared to say France or Italy
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> The American capitalist bankrolled all the internet when
| there was no clear path to make money from it._
|
| Umm, no, the US DARPA bankrolled the intrnet, then
| corporations took it mainstream and for profit, not for loss.
| The modern WWW originated at CERN in Switzerland.
|
| _> Simply, there is no that kind of money in Europe._
|
| Europe definitely has money to throw away, just look at
| Berlin airport and all the useless projects being bankrolled
| from EU tax money. How many startups could that have funded?
|
| _> If you made the YouTube in Europe you would go bankrupt
| because you wouldn't be able to pay the server bills._
|
| Edit: Dailymotion(not Vimeo) is European and it seems to be
| able to pay their server bills.
| rrdharan wrote:
| No, Vimeo is based in New York City and I believe always
| has been?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimeo
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Oh damn, my bad. I always though it was french for some
| reason.
| I-M-S wrote:
| You've probably got it mixed up with Dailymotion
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Oh yes, that was it, thank you.
| mnouquet wrote:
| > Europe didn't miss the internet bus because of regulations,
| there were no regulations until the dust settled.
|
| False. In France at least, state-monopoly Minitel services
| shadowed early initial Internet development. Even as Internet
| took over, communication state monopolies clamped development
| with overpriced phone bills for a couple of years minimum. It
| is only when France Telecom got privatized and Free (owned by
| a former Minitel erotic chat mogul) disrupted them with
| widescale ADSL development that thing really took off.
|
| > If you made the YouTube in Europe you would go bankrupt
| because you wouldn't be able to pay the server bills.
|
| False again, EU Youtube was Dailymotion, nothing but
| mismanagement over mismanagement, bad political decision over
| bad political decision.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's not internet regulation, that's utility regulation.
| Not different than electricity connection and doesn't have
| anything to do with the stuff on the internet that turned
| out to be big deal and countries are now looking to
| regulate those.
|
| And, nobody cares about Dailymotion. The Americans are
| shooting for complete take over of a media, not being just
| another small business doing video. That's why the huge
| capital is needed and that's why Youtube was never
| profitable until being acquired by Youtube and that's why
| only now "Youtube ads are so annoying".
| baxtr wrote:
| I totally agree with you all your points.
|
| Just to be clear: I never said we missed the bus because of
| regulation. But the fact that we react like that now shows we
| don't have other ideas or means to respond.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Having your communication run by foreign entities is
| dangerous. it's no longer even direct communication, it's
| curated. It can be used to create political problems,
| social unrest or movements, it can be used as commercial
| advantage on other areas.
|
| China happened to actually have a true competitor, TikTok
| and the first instinct of the USA was to try to ban it or
| force acquisition.
| hollerith wrote:
| You describe the post-1993 evolution of the internet, but I
| feel the need to add that in 1993, the internet had already
| been in constant operation for 24 years; it was already the
| largest network of computers ever. And many could see that it
| would probably transform society (which I know about from
| personal conversations with people before 1993). And before
| 1993 there was basically zero investor interest in the
| internet.
|
| Before 1993 the internet was funded mostly by the US
| Government, which started funding research into packet-
| switched networking in 1961. In 1977, unhappy with the cost
| of operating the network, the US Government offered the
| internet to AT&T for a token sum. AT&T could see no way to
| make money from it, so declined. In 1987, they offered it to
| them for a token sum again, with the same response.
|
| (Some pedants maintain the internet did not begin until 1987
| with the introduction of the TCP/IP protocol, and that before
| then there was the ARPAnet. I feel that using the word
| "internet" for the network before 1987 is justified because
| the same services, e.g., email, mailing lists, ftp, telnet,
| netnews (what we now call Usenet, i.e., the newsgroups) that
| ran on the 1987 internet ran on the ARPAnet. Many users of
| the network probably didn't realize (or were only dimly
| aware) that anything had changed!)
|
| Starting about 1986 for-profit corporations started offering
| access to the internet for a fee, but before 1993 even the
| largest of these for-profits -- Netcom probably -- was small
| as American corporations go. I would not be surprised if most
| of Netcom's revenue came from renting out shell accounts on
| Unix boxes with internet connections for $20 a month to
| individuals. (Before for-profit ISPs, the way an organization
| got on the internet was basically to lease a dedicated phone
| line from a telephone company. The organization at the other
| end of the dedicated phone line rarely charged money for
| routing the new organization's traffic.)
|
| Aside from government contractors (e.g., Bolt Beranek and
| Newman, Inc, and the Mitre Corporation) and the early ISPs I
| just described, possibly the largest internet for-profit at
| the start of 1993 was Brad Templeton's Clari-Net, which
| posted the output of some "news wire" (e.g., Associated Press
| or such) to netnews. (Netnews was much bigger then the web at
| the start of 93.) I doubt Clari-Net ever had more than 3
| employees. It probably only ever had one.
|
| In comparison, before the start of 1993, the US government
| had spent many billions of dollars on the internet -- over
| the course of 32 years if we count the package-switching
| research, not just when the internet got deployed in 1969.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Just think of all the unionized government jobs all this
| compliance work will create!
|
| I can already see politicians congratulating one another for
| creating all these jobs!
| nickpp wrote:
| Another EU citizen here, resonating with your words. It seems
| that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just do anything
| to protect the status quo.
|
| All these regulations just trying to keep those damn disruptors
| at bay. Innovation is forbidden here. But hey! It's for our own
| good.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> It seems that Europe has decided to stop evolving and just
| do anything to protect the status quo. Innovation is
| forbidden here. But hey! It's for our own good._
|
| Yeah, this. Europe is an old continent that's mostly old
| money. The Europeans of today are rich mostly due to
| inherited wealth and former imperialism, not wealth they
| created themselves through innovation, with some families
| tracing their wealth back for centuries when land was cheap
| and plentiful and taxes were next to nothing that any
| hardworking person could buy land and build a business and
| while the wealth didn't go stratospheric, it still multiplied
| handsomely for their successors since _" time in the market
| beats timing the market"_.
|
| If you look at Europe's biggest and wealthiest companies,
| most of them are several decades if not centuries old with
| some of their major shareholders still being old European
| nobility, in contrast to the US where the top tech companies
| are at most 30 years old, with older ones that fail to
| innovate always dying in a healthy cycle (IBM, Sun, Oracle,
| SGI, etc.), leaving room for new players(FAANG) to come on
| the market and eat the lunch of the dinosaurs. While in
| Europe, with so much of the pie taken by the old players,
| there's no more room for new players to spring up since the
| old established ones pulled the ladder up after them.
|
| The image of the typical wealthy successful German is not
| that of a hip 20-30 year old who built some cool business in
| his dorm room or his parents' garage like in the US, but of a
| 40 year old man with a Porsche who inherited his dad's
| machine shop and rolodex(typical owner of the famous
| _Mittelstand_ that 's always revered here on HN).
|
| All this old wealth is very risk adverse and feels threatened
| by disruptions and will fight tooth and nail to keep their
| status quo.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| What I wonder is how many of these wealthy Europeans own
| FAANG stocks?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| You can bet that most of them that diversified did so,
| with the emphasis being they own US tech stocks, not EU
| tech stocks.
| nickpp wrote:
| And further: don't bother starting that business dear
| citizen. Don't worry your pretty little head with
| entrepreneurship, it's too complicated for you.
|
| Just take one of these comfy government jobs we're
| providing and you'll be fine. We'll even take care of your
| pension and give you "free" health care.
| idkwhoiam wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. The EU is well behind the rest of the
| world in terms of innovation. We spend all our time thinking
| about new taxes & regulations. IMO all this bureaucracy will
| kill the EU.
| [deleted]
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| As a founder myself, I can't agree more. For startups the EU
| becomes more and more poisonous.
| coddle-hark wrote:
| I can't comment on why Europe isn't the world leader in tech...
| but are we really missing out on much? The head counts (=jobs)
| of these companies are low compared to other sectors. Most
| (all?) have a strong European presence. Anyone can buy their
| stocks and share their wealth. It's not like we don't have
| strong engineering talent, either. Is there something I'm
| missing?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| It's one of the last growing sector, where there's a lot of
| value added.
| maltelandwehr wrote:
| China showed how to foster a local tech startup ecosystem. As
| long as Europe refuses to take the same route, the US and China
| will split the pie.
| ericra wrote:
| This is interesting timing given the FTC announcement for data
| collection from social media companies in the US yesterday.
|
| I wonder if there is any connection here like some government
| cooperation happening behind the scenes. The two events have
| differences and apply to a slightly different set of companies,
| but they are both in the spirit of trying to control or better
| understand how big tech companies are operating (and especially,
| using customer data).
| nilshauk wrote:
| As a European citizen I'm hopeful for this regulation. The tech
| giants would rather police themselves, but they should be subject
| to oversight to ensure that they don't abuse their market power.
|
| If this goes well I hope to see more competition and more
| innovation. I don't believe that this will send Europe into some
| digital dark age, if anything it will make it easier for small to
| medium businesses to compete and innovate.
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The operators of online platforms - such as social media apps
| and video-sharing sites of any size - must prioritise complaints
| raised by "trusted flaggers", who have a track record of
| highlighting valid problems.
|
| Who determines which problems are valid? Unless I overlooked
| something, this article seems really vague.
|
| > Likewise, all online stores must be able to trace traders
| selling goods via their platforms, in case they are offering
| counterfeit items or other illegal products. "[It] will require
| online marketplaces to check their sellers' identity before they
| are allowed on the platform, which will make it so much more
| difficult for dodgy traders to do their business," commented Mr
| Breton.
|
| I'm excited about the crackdown on counterfeit products, but I
| also wonder if it will raise the barrier of entry for sellers (if
| Amazon has to spend money to validate a given seller, why should
| they do business with smaller sellers?). Hopefully this
| authentication mechanism can be inexpensive such that it doesn't
| disenfranchise too much legitimate business at the small end of
| the spectrum; big players already enjoy tremendous regulatory
| advantages over smaller players--no need to compound it further.
|
| > In addition, once a year they must publish a report into their
| handling of major risks, including users posting illegal content,
| disinformation that could sway elections, and the unjustified
| targeting of minority groups.
|
| I'm really wary of "disinformation that could sway elections" and
| "unjustified targeting of minority groups"; how do you litigate
| these fairly? One person's "racial advocacy" is another person's
| "racial patronization". These seem super subjective and thus ripe
| for abuse. Hopefully this too is just a case of poor journalism
| and the legislation is better.
| Veedrac wrote:
| https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/proposal_for_a_re...
|
| ---
|
| Article 19, Trusted flaggers
|
| 2.
|
| The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall be
| awarded, upon application by any entities, by the Digital
| Services Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant
| is established, where the applicant has demonstrated to meet
| all of the following conditions:
|
| (a) it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes
| of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content;
|
| (b) it represents collective interests and is independent from
| any online platform;
|
| (c) it carries out its activities for the purposes of
| submitting notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner.
|
| ---
|
| on a Single Market For Digital Services (Digital Services Act)
| and amending Directive 2000/31/EC
|
| (50)
|
| To ensure an efficient and adequate application of that
| obligation, without imposing any disproportionate burdens, the
| online platforms covered should make reasonable efforts to
| verify the reliability of the information provided by the
| traders concerned, in particular by using freely available
| official online databases and online interfaces, such as
| national trade registers and the VAT Information Exchange
| System, or by requesting the traders concerned to provide
| trustworthy supporting documents, such as copies of identity
| documents, certified bank statements, company certificates and
| trade register certificates. They may also use other sources,
| available for use at a distance, which offer a similar degree
| of reliability for the purpose of complying with this
| obligation. However, the online platforms covered should not be
| required to engage in excessive or costly online fact-finding
| exercises or to carry out verifications on the spot. Nor should
| such online platforms, which have made the reasonable efforts
| required by this Regulation, be understood as guaranteeing the
| reliability of the information towards consumer or other
| interested parties.
|
| ---
|
| Not sure about your third point yet, I've only briefly jumped
| around in the (lengthy) full text.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Sounds like Trusted flaggers are expected to be social
| interest charities like Internet Watch Foundation.
|
| https://www.iwf.org.uk/
| buisi wrote:
| The Internet Watch Foundation has made questionable calls
| in the past, like the one where they blocked Wikipedia for
| having a controversial (yet legal and historically
| relevant) image of a naked child.
|
| Despite this, the IWF might be one of the more reputable
| "trusted flaggers", and this system may open the door for
| far worse ones to enter into the scene.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_F
| oundation_and_...
| avianlyric wrote:
| > Who determines which problems are valid? Unless I overlooked
| something, this article seems really vague.
|
| We're still early doors on this, but presumably the legislation
| when it's written will have more details.
|
| But based on how most other regulation in the EU is handled,
| and thinking of how these questions are handled in the banking
| industry, I assume the company gets to decide. But the company
| will be expect to demonstrate to regulators that their content
| guidelines are:
|
| 1. A a minimum restrict illegal content, already defined in law
|
| 2. Don't discriminate against protected classes
|
| 3. Are fair, along with an explanation of why they're fair
|
| 4. There are policies and procedures that ensure they're
| applied fairly (again with explanation of why it's fair), and
| there's evidence they're actually being followed.
|
| I expect that there will be significant latitude for regulators
| to decide what level of evidence is required, and how you
| demonstrate fairness. After all no one really know how to do
| this, so it doesn't make sense to write prescriptive detailed
| laws which are guaranteed to wrong. The different regulators
| will end up converging on a common understanding, if the don't,
| then expect the EU to setup a super regulator or similar to
| force greater convergence.
|
| As for the standard argument of "oh but then how am I meant to
| know what to do" etc
|
| 1. Regulators will publish guidelines
|
| 2. Regulators will work with companies to make sure everyone
| agrees nothing draconian is happening, and equally make sure
| companies don't get off scot free.
|
| 3. Regulators won't punish companies that are clearly making a
| best effort attempt to follow the spirit of the law.
|
| 4. The EU has plenty of expertise doing this, look at financial
| regulation, GDPR etc No one who's actually had to follow tricky
| EU regulation before is worrying about this, unless it looks
| like the regulation basically outlaws their business.
|
| > Hopefully this authentication mechanism can be inexpensive
| such that it doesn't disenfranchise too much legitimate
| business at the small end of the spectrum;
|
| You'll be glad to hear it basically already exists in the EU.
| Open banking will make this process so much easier. Amazon will
| be able to lean on banks to handle some of this process, rather
| than building from scratch, with Open banking providing unified
| APIs to connect to almost any bank in the EU. And talking as
| someone whos help build bank grade Know Your Customer and Know
| Your Business processes and systems, it's much easier than you
| think (not easy, but Amazon won't struggle). Not to mention
| there's a flourishing industry of tech companies already
| solving these problems for FinTechs.
|
| > I'm really wary of "disinformation that could sway elections"
| and "unjustified targeting of minority groups"; how do you
| litigate these fairly? One person's "racial advocacy" is
| another person's "racial patronization". These seem super
| subjective and thus ripe for abuse. Hopefully this too is just
| a case of poor journalism and the legislation is better.
|
| As with the "trusted flaggers" above, I expect there to be
| quite a lot of latitude for regulators to decide. With your
| specific example, entities like the European Court of Human
| Rights will be the ultimate backstop for preventing abuse. It
| may take 5-10 years for all the court cases to be raised and
| litigated to that level, but it'll happen. The EU has good
| track record of balancing these concerns, and providing the
| legal infrastructure to allow these thing to be litigated. No
| doubt it'll figure it out, just like its done plenty of times
| before.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| The Current proposed legislation for the part you are
| discussing can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/in
| fo/files/proposal_for_a_re...
|
| The actual legislation text (i.e. skipping the recitals)
| starts on page 43. "problems" here consists of reported
| illegal content, whether copyright violation or child porn.
| The legislation is basically an enhanced EU version of DCMA's
| safe harbor system, but with a focus on all illegal content,
| not just copyright infringement, and with more ability of the
| company to reject clearly invalid notices.
| FleaFlicker99 wrote:
| > must prioritise complaints raised by "trusted flaggers"
|
| That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very
| carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be
| 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do they
| get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms.
|
| I don't live in the EU, but just like that well intentioned but
| shortsighted cookie law, the rest of us will have to deal with
| the fallout of that for a long time to come.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| The purpose of this is to ensure that organizations like the
| European equivalents of RIAA and MPAA have basically one
| click disable buttons (not strictly required, but how most
| sites will implement it) for content they claim infringes
| their copyrights, or is otherwise illegal. This would also be
| used by organizations that track down child porn etc.
|
| As for who is a trusted flagger: "The status of trusted
| flaggers under this Regulation shall be awarded, upon
| application by any entities, by the Digital Services
| Coordinator of the Member State in which the applicant is
| established where the applicant has demonstrated to meet all
| of the following conditions: (a) it has particular expertise
| and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and
| notifying illegal content; (b) it represents collective
| interests and is independent from any online platform; (c) it
| carries out its activities for the purposes of submitting
| notices in a timely, diligent and objective manner. "
|
| I.E. if you can convince your local government that you
| should be one, bam you are one, and online platform the EU
| needs to expedite processing of any notices you make.
|
| On the other end of the spectrum, the companies are required
| to allow you to appeal takedowns and account
| suspensions/terminations (for TOS or illegal content reasons,
| not for non-payment reasons) for a 6 month period. Further,
| if you appeal a takedown or account suspension and the
| company rejects your appeal, the law will allow you to take
| the matter to binding arbitration. If the user wins, the
| company pays all costs, and must reinstate the content or
| account. If the user loses, they only pay their portion of
| arbitration costs. (The company's portion are just part of
| doing business in the EU).
| buisi wrote:
| This makes it very difficult to host any sort of
| "borderline" content in the E.U. If someone decides they
| don't like your decision on a contentious matter, and a
| court agrees with them, you're the one who'll take the fall
| for making the wrong call.
| eznzt wrote:
| Trusted flaggers sounds to me like crazy people who spend all
| day reporting content because they are obsessed or have
| absolutely nothing to do. Having a system like this in place
| would lead to bad outcomes.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| No these are organizations that an EU government has
| granted special status to:
|
| "The status of trusted flaggers under this Regulation shall
| be awarded, upon application by any entities, by the
| Digital Services Coordinator of the Member State in which
| the applicant is established where the applicant has
| demonstrated to meet all of the following conditions: (a)
| it has particular expertise and competence for the purposes
| of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content;
| (b) it represents collective interests and is independent
| from any online platform; (c) it carries out its activities
| for the purposes of submitting notices in a timely,
| diligent and objective manner."
|
| edit: Yeah, NGOs and also MPAA/RIAA style associations will
| probably be the most common entities.
| eznzt wrote:
| Oooof, I imagine an endless list of left-wing NGOs.
| buisi wrote:
| Right-wing ones too. Both factions of politics are likely
| to step in here.
| 6510 wrote:
| They are employees.
| tarsiec wrote:
| Who are these people, and why do they get more say? I assumed
| their level of "trustworthy" comes from them consistently
| flagging content or issues of the platform and those reports
| being valid, as some sort of reputation system, and not some
| users being selected for more arbitrary reasons.
|
| I could be wrong though.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Vanilla reputation systems don't optimize for "validity";
| rather, they optimize for consensus--whatever opinions are
| popular get hyper-reinforced in tight feedback loops. If
| you believe that our society is irredeemably racist, then a
| vanilla reputation system will optimize for racism.
| Basically, the reputation system can't dictate what is
| valid--that has to be determined outside of the reputation
| system. In other words, set a clear, objective standard for
| "valid" content and use a reputation system that holds
| moderators accountable to that external definition of
| "validity".
| john_moscow wrote:
| This is the trend of the past decade. More and more people
| are expected to work as replaceable drones without any real
| career advancement, or a shot at affording retirement, house,
| or family/kids. But the social pressure resulting from this
| is cleverly redirected. Instead of being passionate about
| starting their own business (and competing with the former
| employer), they are now passionate about policing what others
| can say or do. Instead of creating a new cool product, they
| create rules that others must follow in fear of being
| canceled.
|
| This costs nothing on the corporate expense sheets, but makes
| the society increasingly more toxic.
| stiray wrote:
| Well you might address it also the way you have mentioned
| but there is a tiny issue. European culture and its laws
| are highly problematic in regards to todays behaviour and
| income that large internet companies profit from (spying on
| users and use their data essentially against them - even
| for just showing the ads). Today there is just no way to
| make your own 3rd party OS / search engine / social network
| (regardless if it would be better) as development is too
| expensive on the other side you dont have financing from
| the same murky practices that were just too new when
| current giants (and even those have monopoly so there is
| literally no way to finance yourself) came out.
|
| Yes, they were first but now they are strangling everybody.
|
| And this is not only true for EU, same goes for USA.
| Someone will have to do something about it but with the
| power of home lobbying I dont believe that the States will
| do anything meaningful. On the other side, EU needs to
| protect its market.
| oblio wrote:
| > That's the real concern here. Speech must be handled very
| carefully, but now we're elevating some specific people to be
| 'more equal' than others? Who are these people, and why do
| they get more say? I can see that opening a can of worms.
|
| Well, who are the people that censor all other kinds of
| media? As far as I know movies are censored (Motion Picture
| Production Code, Motion Picture Association film rating
| system), music is censored (Parental Advisories), TV is
| censored (TV station licenses), radio (radio station
| licenses) is censored, news paper are censored (I can't find
| the exact reference).
|
| The roof hasn't fallen because of existing censorship, or am
| I missing something?
| FleaFlicker99 wrote:
| The internet was such a big deal because groups of people
| could finally interact without the mediation and filtering
| of a large (typically corporate) entity determining what's
| "fit to print". You don't have to search very hard to find
| the bounds of acceptable thought from corporate-sponsored
| media, even pre-internet. I don't think I'm alone in
| feeling constrained and frustrated with that situation.
| Sure, it's not a North Korea situation, but it's not great
| either.
|
| There are some very real problems with unfettered access to
| communication, and I don't think we've solved them yet. I
| am very concerned that this law will have a range of
| unintended negative consequences, and I don't think
| defending our existing (flawed) structure really proves
| that it'll all be fine.
|
| Specifically we're talking about moving from a model of
| centralized media control (eg: media companies and the
| conglomerates that own them) to one where a select group of
| people get to manage the filtering of content on the
| largest platforms. That seems like something that will be
| almost impossible to manage properly, and ripe for (at a
| minimum) political manipulation.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship.
| Moreover, only _broadcast_ television and radio are
| censored (perhaps because radio waves are a public
| platform?). I 'm not going to argue that censoring
| broadcast is ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less
| sympathetic to the plight of massive media companies than I
| am to millions of private citizens.
| oblio wrote:
| > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship.
|
| True, calling them censorship is kind of stretching the
| definition.
|
| But there's still a small group of people that decide
| those ratings and the commercial impact of those ratings,
| as far as I know, is massive.
|
| So it's not direct censorship, but it still has a
| "chilling effect".
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Like I said, I'm not going to die defending censorship of
| Hollywood or CBS or whomever, but I am much more
| concerned with the rights of ordinary citizens who only
| recently got the right to communicate in any sort of
| broadcast fashion (still nowhere near the power that the
| media industry enjoys).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship.
|
| To the extent they are incorporated with schemes that
| limit access to the rated content imposed by powerful
| entities outside of the transaction, they are part of
| schemes of censorship. (Public censorship schemes that
| incorporate movie ratings, and thus delegate to movie
| raters the role of public censor, are common.)
|
| > I'm not going to argue that censoring broadcast is
| ideal or valid, but I'm certainly less sympathetic to the
| plight of massive media companies than I am to millions
| of private citizens.
|
| Censorship by a third party equally impacts the rights of
| the parties on both sides of a potential transaction;
| broadcast media censorship restricts the freedom of both
| massive media companies _and_ millions of private
| citizens.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Censored for children only. I don't think anyone over 18
| is subject to the censorship. That is disregarding laws
| specifically targeting pornography, of course.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Imposing a proof burden on someone to view content is a
| restriction of their freedom even if they meet the
| requirement and have access to the required proof.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > To the extent they are incorporated with schemes that
| limit access to the rated content imposed by powerful
| entities outside of the transaction, they are part of
| schemes of censorship. (Public censorship schemes that
| incorporate movie ratings, and thus delegate to movie
| raters the role of public censor, are common.)
|
| No doubt they are part of "schemes of censorship" in some
| literal sense, but if someone publishes a rating and
| another chooses to use that rating as the basis of
| censorship, the onus is still squarely on the part of the
| censor and not the rater.
|
| > Censorship by a third party equally impacts the rights
| of the parties on both sides of a potential transaction;
| broadcast media censorship restricts the freedom of both
| massive media companies and millions of private citizens.
|
| You're conflating several things. Yes, censorship by a
| third party has similar effects to government censorship,
| but we treat them differently because the government is a
| special entity (ultimately because it enjoys a monopoly
| on violence and force). There are legitimate questions
| about when a third party becomes so powerful that it can
| unilaterally affect government (as with social media
| companies being a vector for the manipulation of
| elections), but this is the purview of anti-trust as I
| understand it (and I strongly support anti-trust action
| against social media corporations for precisely this
| reason).
|
| The other conflated issues are "freedom to speak" vs
| "freedom to hear". Yes, restrictions on the content of
| broadcast media corporations limits the "freedom to hear"
| of millions of citizens as it does with restrictions on
| social media; however, restricting social media also
| infringes on millions' freedoms to speak.
|
| Indeed, when you consider that the _volume_ of
| communication in a social media network is combinatorial,
| the impact on regulations is far greater than for
| restrictions on traditional broadcast media.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You're conflating several things. Yes, censorship by a
| third party has similar effects to government censorship,
| but we treat them differently
|
| My post was discussing whether censorship occurred and
| whose freedom was affected. While it did mention certain
| explictly public schemes, it nowhere argued that other
| schemes should be treated as government censorship, so
| you are inventing a position here for the sole purpose of
| claiming it is in error and a conflation of different
| things.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| >> You're conflating several things. Yes, censorship by a
| third party has similar effects to government censorship,
| but we treat them differently
|
| > My post was discussing whether censorship occurred and
| whose freedom was affected. While it did mention certain
| explictly public schemes, it nowhere argued that other
| schemes should be treated as government censorship, so
| you are inventing a position here for the sole purpose of
| claiming it is in error and a conflation of different
| things.
|
| You brought up the 'third party vs government' dynamic; I
| was merely mentioning that it's distinct from the dynamic
| of 'freedom to speak' vs 'freedom to hear'. I
| specifically never claimed that you were arguing that we
| should treat third parties the same as the government. No
| need to speculate about my motives.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > You brought up the 'third party vs government' dynamic
|
| No, "third-party" contrasts with the parties involved in
| the transaction (mostly the source, which may exercise
| self-censorship, which does not restrict the freedom of
| the participants the way third-party censorship does.)
|
| The government would be an example of a third-party
| censor, not something distinct from it.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Fair enough, I misunderstood your meaning; thanks for
| clarifying. The "'freedom to listen' vs 'freedom to
| speak'" concern still stands (i.e., no, restricting
| private citizens' speech on social media platforms
| doesn't have exactly the same effect as limiting the
| content that broadcast media corps can publish on the
| airwaves).
| amaccuish wrote:
| > To be clear, movie and music ratings aren't censorship.
|
| And yet I consider restricting access to educative LGBT+
| films under the banner of "18+" to be censorship
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I was distinguishing between "rating films" with
| "restricting access", but yeah, the content of the films
| doesn't matter--it's censorship whether the content is
| LGBT+ or Al Qaeda beheadings. The pertinent question is
| whether a third party is obligated to show you that
| content. As it relates to social media companies, my
| position is that if a company is exercising the right to
| censor (effectively to curate content) then they must
| also take responsibility when they curate illegal
| content, such as child pornography or intellectual
| property--they don't get to have it both ways.
|
| Similarly, I don't think your local theater's prohibition
| on minors viewing 'adult' content compares favorably to a
| large social media company which steers and manipulates
| so much communication that it can unilaterally sway
| national elections. The latter is an issue of national
| sovereignty.
| juskrey wrote:
| "Curators"
| ANarrativeApe wrote:
| Watching this with great interest. The platform we are launching
| next year is focused on letting people vote the $40 trillion in
| shares they own through their collective investments. A core
| feature is the ability to support externally proposed company
| resolutions so that they trigger minority shareholder rights,
| creating a mechanism for getting the issues that matter to you
| onto the only corporate agenda that counts. We'll be operating
| 'Citizen Shareholder Assemblies' in which anyone will be able to
| participate. We're super aware of the need for open debate and
| free speech but at the same time we want arguments to be based on
| data. As Citizen Shareholders are able to follow the voting
| pattern of Default Advisors, we are particularly keen on
| preventing the 'obtaining of votes by deception'. You'd think
| there would be lot's of best practice we could follow from the
| wonderful world of politics, but it turns out that isn't a thing
| in the 'real world'. If we achieve our ambitions in a few years
| we will have 10% of the EU population, and even more in the US
| (103.7 million US citizens own shares through collective
| investments). Rather than waiting for problems to arise we are
| looking to get ahead of this curve. We have a number of things
| going for us, 1. we are not reliant on advertising revenues 2. we
| will know who everyone is (free speech doesn't have to equal
| anonymous speech) and 3. we have so many examples of how not to
| do this. We ;ook forward to the constructive criticism we will
| undoubtedly get from groups like hacker news. Any upfront
| thoughts would be much appreciated.
| nbzso wrote:
| Another money grab from EU bureaucrats. Control the narrative in
| digital space, regulate small businesses, and get the position of
| Gatekeeper from big tech. It looks nice on paper.
| maltelandwehr wrote:
| In the current system all the money flows to Google, Facebook,
| etc. and they evade EU taxes.
|
| So, yes. A money grab. One that is dearly needed for the EU!
| TruthHurts44 wrote:
| The money for huge clientele networks milking the EU funds in
| Eastern Europe and the money for propping up losing businesses
| and bloated social services in Western Europe have to come from
| somewhere.
| nbzso wrote:
| It's simple. EU stops giving money to corrupt Eastern Europe
| criminals masked as a "politicians". The people there have
| not gained nothing. EU regulations are made to serve agendas
| of big members only.
| danielfoster wrote:
| > Furthermore, the law specifies that local officials can send
| cross-border orders to make tech firms remove content or provide
| access to information, wherever their EU headquarter is based.
|
| The article goes on to give an example of how Amsterdam could use
| the law to request earnings data for local hosts from Airbnb.
|
| The way the BBC explains it, this law would give EU governments
| ready access to user data with no oversight.
|
| This represents a huge loss of privacy and freedom for EU
| residents.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Having Dutch law apply to the owners of Dutch property doesn't
| seem like a huge government overreach. If, however, the law
| ends up giving the Dutch government information about, for
| example, Estonian freelancers, then there would be reason to
| complain.
|
| The "smell test" for this will be whether the person whose data
| is accessed is allowed to be informed by the service provider
| when a government request comes in, and from which government,
| and why.
| easton wrote:
| The not allowing uninstallable apps part is interesting. Looking
| through their FAQ, they don't really seem to define what a "app"
| is. Could this not mean the entire OS should be replaceable with
| one that wasn't made by a "gatekeeper"? Because if say, Apple,
| allows you to remove Messages.app but keeps the Messages API
| private or locked behind an Apple-only entitlement, that isn't
| very useful, and the user should be able to load another OS at
| their discretion that lets them run whatever SMS client they
| want. Unless they want to require that all of the system services
| be able to be accessed by whatever app the user installs, which
| seems like a bigger kettle of fish.
| jelling wrote:
| > let users uninstall pre-installed apps on their platform and
| use different software
|
| Assuming it passes, I wonder what this means for Apple's Siri.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| That users should be able to uninstall it. People like Siri, so
| I don't really anticipate a precipitatious drop-off -- the
| people who will be uninstalling Siri are the people who
| currently don't use it, so I'd expect a drop in install base
| without any drop in MUA.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| I'd imagine for something like Siri they'd argue it is too
| deeply embedded to be replaced and the rules would have
| exemptions for that. I think the rules applies more to
| superfluous apps on Windows and Android that you can't remove
| like the Xbox app on Windows or having Facebook preinstalled on
| Android.
| claydavisss wrote:
| Boo. The EU has had as much time as anyone to build a native
| digital economy. The web was born in Europe (TBL was working at a
| Euro science facility when he created it). Yet despite having an
| educated populace, wealth, infrastructure, and a bureaucracy that
| will favor homegrown tech, they are definitely behind North
| America and Asia and arguably behind India and even Africa.
|
| No one is asking the tough question - why can't the EU build?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25428091
| breck wrote:
| > The idea is to prevent the firms gaining unfair advantages via
| their elevated positions.
|
| Anyone who is serious about this needs to stop attacking all the
| symptoms and address the root cause of Big Tech's monopoly power:
| Imaginary Property Laws ("IP"). Everything else is just tissues
| to sooth a runny nose instead of medicine to fight the virus.
|
| End IP and bring real competition and democratization to Big
| Tech.
| fadsfsafadf123 wrote:
| Sometimes I think GDPR was secretly pushed by Big Tech to make it
| harder for smaller business's to compete.
|
| It was basically useless.
|
| I wouldn't even be surprised if Google or Facebook helped write
| the legislation.
|
| Whatever noise EU is making now I have very little hope for.
|
| If the US government was so fearful that a fun video app made in
| China had the power of compromising National Security, stealing
| and spying on citizen's data, and even radicalizing people
| through their mobile Skinner Boxes and algo-driven Ludovico
| Technique pleasure therapy apps -------- you would think they
| would be doing WAY more, WAY faster.
| buisi wrote:
| The GDPR is good in spirit as it forces a certain standard of
| privacy, but it is extremely vague (which means countries can
| effectively neuter it, or it could be over-enforced), and there
| is an extraterritorial component which set the precedent for
| global take-downs of content.
| bloodorange wrote:
| "It was basically useless"
|
| Could you elaborate and perhaps point towards what makes you
| think this way?
|
| I ask because I have worked in a rather large corporation which
| had to implement massive changes to ensure they were being more
| respectful and careful towards user data. In my experience, the
| GDPR made them take it seriously which was otherwise ignored as
| it allowed them to profit off being negligent about these
| things.
|
| Also, it's a bit like food handling and storage related
| regulations for restaurants. While it might seem like a pain
| for the guy running the restaurant, it helps reduce the risk
| the consumers could otherwise face.
| didibus wrote:
| Ok, most of those do seem reasonable to me. That said, I still
| wonder where all this motivation comes from? Have we really shown
| that big tech is harmful? And exactly to what kind of harm? And
| how we know alternatives arn't more harmful?
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