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@SortOfTested Big tech affects medium tech, medium tech affects small tech. This will be felt down to the single-maintainer open source android apps through its effect on the role of standards and API access, if they can do it right.
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@SortOfTested That's probably a major motivation for it.
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@myss I see a lot of possible paths for political influence from democratic governments who serve people. All of them are positive influence, since by themselves big tech serves capital and nothing else.
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@SortOfTested I'm not a big fan of what Greece is doing but it's still better than making incomprehensibly rich people even richer.
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Look, my point is that pretty much nothing except empowering literal maniacs is worse than the current situation, that secret algorithms maintained by unaccountable companies motivated only by profit determine what we experience as real. Will this be abused? Perhaps. Could it be done better? Probably. Is it worse than what we have? Certainly not.
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@PaperTrail How do dictators come to the picture? All significant powers in the EU are democracies.
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Yeah but that only 3 people know the coca cola recipe is alright. Let be guess? Because there are alternatives? Well let me quickly order a computer off aliexpress so I can Bing how Firefox EU laws will get some day. After clicking through 7 popups I might get an answer from Quora. Sent from my Linux computer.
Get real. This whole "what are you actually doing" deal of lawmakers completely eliminating competition from online markets just because they don't know what's going on and THAT THERE ARE IN FACT TONS OF ALTERNATIVES AROUND. We fight monopolies by just having nothing. Nice. Fuck this. It's sad. -
@nitwhiz That may be for something like Google (although it's impossible to get a video outside YouTube to outrank a remotely relevant YouTube video), but social networks' monopoly relies on complete internal compatibility and no external compatibility, and the number of users. If Messenger and Facebook can't share a database, they have to either remain incompatible or use an open protocol, which opens the gates for small messaging services that are otherwise struggling purely due to the lack of users.
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@homo-lorens >" All significant powers in the EU are democracies."
Sure..lets go with that.
My point is when governments start picking winners and losers, eventually, someday, you'll lose. Governments don't have a good track record of staying in their lanes.
Picking on the big tech (just like the "evil rich") is easy+popular because its "them" and not "us". Slippery slope? I hope not. Maybe a good thing? I hope so. History tells me otherwise. -
@PaperTrail There are no plans for governments picking winners and losers. These are scientists appointed by the European Union, not governmental agents. They might have some political motivations, but they can't just do whatever.
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@homo-lorens so you're saying that social networks these days don't have APIs?
Did anyone of you actually ever *use* the data scraped by e.g. facebook to advertise your product to people based on an extremely narrow target group by putting an ad on facebook with their ads manager?
It's a bliss. Don't ruin it. Watch TV if you like irrelevance. -
@nitwhiz I'm saying that it's illegal according to the API terms to use it to provide similar functionality, making it unsuitable for competition.
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@PaperTrail It's pretty obvious that forcing corporations to share the trade secrets their entire business depends on is a bit of a stretch, so they have to be careful not to overstep their boundaries. No significant government in the EU has such a comfortable margin over its opposition that they can afford a fight with Google.
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@homo-lorens > "These are scientists appointed by the European Union, not governmental agents"
A little word play ..
The scientists appointed to determine if smoking is bad for you were appointed by Phillip Morris, not Marlboro.
I get it, politics are a religion to a lot of people. European Union, Democrats, Republicans, pick your poison. Its hard to imagine they are made up of people, and people are, well people. -
Both sides are usually corrupt. All consist out of people that initially wanted to do the ethically right things.
At some point they start deviating from that path. May it be to get better along with others who have taken the same path or just doing not the ethically right thing went against the goals of the organization or just got a little bit easier every time.
So in that sense, no government or company can ever be fully black or white.
Personally, though I choose to believe more governments. They are usually behind the time, conservative, and so on but have the primary goal to keep their country running. Companies on the other hand have not the goal of helping their customers but to make profit (at least the big ones that can be invested in).
Sure there are corrupt politicians who launder money or have some other goals. Same applies to managers though.
One possible gray area is governments having lots of shares in companies.
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I'm tired now. I won't follow this tread more. -
So here is another reason why this legislation is important.
The state of Texas just sued Facebook and Google today for an "unlawful agreement". Google and Facebook possible violated anti thrust laws by agreeing on, not to compete with each other on brookering ads across the internet.
“ The agreement, the complaint says, fixes prices and allocates markets between Google and Facebook.”
Wired - Texas acuses Google and Facebook of illegal conspiracy
https://wired.com/story/... -
@heyheni This is a textbook cartel, wtf. Do they think they're above the law or do they not know highschool economics?
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@Nanos Free speech isn't in danger in the western world, stop saying that. In Hungary in the past 12 months one government funded oligarch bought up 2 major opposition newspapers and a radio station and closed them, and they're selling frequencies at unpayable prices on purpose so only their stations can survive. There's one independent station that came around in the early 80s and one TV channel that isn't literally owned by high ranking officials in the governing party, the only independent media are online newspapers and blogs.
This is violation of free speech. Google or Facebook banning nutjobs isn't. -
@Nanos I still don't know what you're talking about, but IRC had also been around for a while and yet I only learned about it recently through some FOSS project. (and I still haven't used it ever because I run my own homelab and keep port 80 open which means all large servers block me automatically)
Anyway, I mean to say that just because some piece of internet tech is old it isn't necessarily well known or mature. -
@heyheni
Texas isn't a reliable dog in that fight. They sue because it's wednesday and they hate california liberals not moving more jobs to texas. They also sued the government over the election results, and tried to force vaccinate 11 year old girls for HPV with a vaccine that was shown to cause blood clot issues in pre-teens, because the government had gotten a fat check from Merck. -
No force in universe will stop stupid people doing stupid things. EU should invest more to citizens education instead of regulations. However i support pulling plug on facebook and some of googles practices just because the amount of lobbying they buy and monopoly positions they acquired by doing this.
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@Avimelekh I think they just want to undercut monopolistic practices. This is less about protecting the users and more about regulating massive troves of data to cut the self-fueling advantage they mean.
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The reality of this still looks a bit different. EU assigned scientists won't break into Google headquarters with their very own Black Ops team and let a Google rep get the search algorithm at gunpoint.
Companies still can decide simply not to comply and take the fines and since those are enormous they in turn may stifle the quality of their products in the EU.
While this might help competition, that is not necessarily positive for customers. Such an equivalency is oft brought up, but is plain wrong. An example is Germany and distribution of soccer rights to providers, where this is the favorite sport of most. In order to break up a Sky monopole, it was federally decreed for them to be distributed among providers. Now more providers show games, but customers are fucked. They would now need multiple subscriptions to view all the games they are interested in and could view before.
Lastly there is likely to be political strife and retaliation - all companies in question are US based. -
@Frederick It's also a hot topic in the US. Monopolies are bad for everyone.
Google for example buys small innovative startups automatically with a bot that analyzes the web and the stock market. No human involved. Eliminating potential competition.
That's not ok.
Sure the EU was founded as a neoliberal trading block to keep europeans from shooting each other. And a lot is to be wished it was better but the EU improved the lives of millions of people. And now it's Adopting laws to the digital age is a necessity and that's what happening with those two acts. -
@Frederick
Democracy is, and always will be an exercise in eventual failure. -
I see, you haven't much traveled outside of fairy wonder land that is skandinavia right?
With freedom and wealth comes a responsibility. You have to look at the alternative of not having the EU. Do you want the Bulgarians invading Greece because of poverty? Or "the great system of Denmark" invade Germany?
Oh wait.... you did 1864 (slesvig) because of hip hip hurrah danish nationalism and hubris. Europeans love to hate each other and wage war.
The EU prevents that by leveling poverty and giving a forum to talk. Yes that may look like oppression for rich ass danes. Because peace costs.
But in the bigger picture and with an outlook into the future. Chinas Expansion, Climate Emergency, Human Rights I'm damm happy about the EU. Fordi vi er stærkere sammen kære @Frederick. Aldrig krig igen! 🕊 -
@arcsector I don't think the rule is meant to target the discussion of laws that affect tech.
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@Frederick I wouldn't support turning the EU into a government but this has nothing to do with that. It's just coordinated trade regulation and quality assurance, which is very much within the boundaries of a trade union.
This meme requires you to be outside of the European Union to view.
Welcome to the internet of 2019 after Article 13!
FUCK ARTICLE 13
MOST OF THE MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIA...
Did you read about the new Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act laws of the European Union, that will go in effect in 2022? Pretty neat stuff, more transparency, user rights and a tool against internet monopolies.
"Very big online plattforms" must submit reports on freedom of speech, abuse of human rights, manipulation of public opinion.
EU assigned scientists will gain access to trade secrets like google search or Amazon recommendation algorithm to analyze potential threats.
The EU can fine serial offenders 10 % of their yearly income. And break up companies that stiffle competition.
Internet companies like Facebook will not be permitted to share user data between their products like Instagram and WhatsApp.
There will be a unified ruleset on online advertisement. Each add must have the option to find out why this add is shown to the user.
Unlike the GDRP data protection rule the two acts will be valid at the Union level. So that there won't be any exceptions from single member states.
Let's hope this leads to a better Internet and not things like cookie pop ups 😄
Link to the EU DMA DSA page
> https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single...
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