Ask HN: Why is Europe doing a lot to penalize the Big Five with taxes and laws?
Looking at the 'Digital Europe' website, I get the feeling this is as much about Europe 'getting some of the pie' as much as it as about ethics.
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The damage FAANG does (and how their toxic business-model is copied by EU start-ups) deserves imo this intervention by regulation. But yes it's not disputable that this is also an attempt to level the playing field for local companies.
I think EU is more technophobic than the US (and Asia) because there are many that still remember the horrors of the Stasi. Many don't want to embrace the Silicon Valley & Asian surveillance capitalism. Disruption (by moving fast and breaking things) is quite a disgusting to many of us ... and the rise of right-wing populism (globally) sure is rooted in this ignorance by technologists (to a large extent).
From what I can see the content is mostly shallow (Hollywood over TCP). Despite them being a global player they totally lack local content. There is a total lack of great French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean content (not there would be a lack of good local conent) and hardly anything that is critical of the US. So it's just another US propaganda channel to make the hypocritical US come across as a country with great values (when they're the most vile and terrorist country in the world today).
Also, there is no way of knowing who Netflix shares my search/watch history with. And I have 0 doubt that this info is in the hands of multiple entities we've no idea about.