Personally, the fact that the EU considers itself above the constitutions of its member states without having this "constitution level" approved by the actual people (there are two referendums that failed at the ballot, in France and in the Netherlands, that lead restructuring so that no more popular vote was necessary, those are the contracts which are now in place), is a major no go for me. If there ever is to be an European constitution, the people must absolutely be able to vote on it, and the vote must be binding - so rejection means no, and a not "bypass by restructuring" - and a new attempt must then furthermore be voted on.
Or we have a revolution and a world war to replace it. Millions dead.
I'm sorry but these things don't tend to have a middle solution. That's what history teaches us.
The framework: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
It's extremely vague. It's more an understanding that "hate speech is bad so bad you should all draw a line... somewhere".
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...
I think this is going to inevitably create more and more tension between EU and American contexts, because hate speech is affirmatively legal in the U.S., most recently ruled under Snyder v Phelps.
The EU has been rent seeking on FAANG and US tech for a decade. They want control and money. Thanks for USB-C but they can keep their fucking cookie banners. This will create huge problems for the whole world when an arbitrary agency can "impose rules on content moderation" and "privacy[1]" and levy a huge fine. The US tech companies should form a bloc and force them to be reasonable
[1] Which I'm sure mean anti-privacy.
Yes, I agree that the first DSA investigation targeting X obviously has more of a populistic bent due to Elon. But he's drawn a pretty good target on his own back including but not limited to firing the election integrity team [1] while the DSA clearly states that VLOPs have to do risk assessments before elections.
Honestly, American big tech has shown close to zero ability to self-regulate the externalities of their platforms, especially abroad, and especially in smaller countries.
If the consequence of this regulation is that American tech companies pull out of hard to serve European markets I wouldn't mind that one bit. That would open up markets for local competition closer aligned to their audience. Norway doesn't use Meta as the dominant messaging app because people like it. We use it because network effects creates unassailable moats, lock-in and network effects. Most people absolutely hate Meta and loathe Google - but we can't exactly not use them without it costing us greatly.
I'm happy to live here and the actions being done by the EU with GDPR, DSA and DMA are in my honest opinion critically needed as American-centric, free-market, "free-speech" norms are misaligned with other cultures in a way that foreigners would never understand without delving deep into a countries culture. Not just through naive metrics-driven technology scaling engagement at all costs. This is warping and killing culture, media environments, advertising ecosystems and political communication in the name of profit for a select few massive tech companies which aren't even taxing to the countries they're siphoning advertising budgets out of.
X is nothing special. The only reason there isn't another Twitter is because these markets mostly have room for one platform. If Twitter disappeared in Europe there'd be a local replacement in less than a year or two. And honestly it would probably be better.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/28/elon-musk...
That's neither what I said nor the stated goal of this regulation.
Theres tons of externalities ranging from increased political polarisation, mental health issues, increasing social isolation to the decimation of the traditional publishing sector. These socio-technical systems are some of the most complex ever built and we are barely scratching the surface of the challenges they are causing. It doesn't help that these platforms actively stop the collection of data on their platforms for research purposes (as they probably know it'll reflect poorly on them).
The platforms themselves have identified their content as a legitimate existential risk. Mostly due to how advertisers don't want to be affiliated with certain types of content. See the multiple rounds of demonitizations done by Google in the adpocalypse or Elsagate. Or Meta's crackdown on content post 2016/Brexit. Or Elon's current YOLO which has killed their advertising revenue.
The current status quo is that platforms govern their platform content through advertisers threatening to pull advertising budgets. I'd say you Americans are mildly crazy for regulating the reach of speech through informal negotiations by big advertisers and big tech, but it does sound on-brand for you guys. I find it pretty disgusting though, and I bet a lot of you Americans do too.
Anyways, the DSA in it's current form is largely revolves around increased transparency into data for researchers and mandated reporting processes around moderation decisions. More informed decision making can be made in the future while not relying exclusively on leaked documents from whistleblowers like Frances Haugen.
Do you know that Meta, Google, etc have to hire literally tens of thousands of people exclusively to keep up with EU regulations? And even then, it's not even possible, so the EU tosses massive fines (up to 20% of global revenue.) This is rent-seeking no matter how you cut it.
Perhaps if the EU had the barest shred of competency in developing modern consumer technology, it would understand. But wildly, regulators doggedly proceed ahead with simply absurd asks, not realizing that the EU tech industry is well and truly dead because of their actions. Let's not let them do the same to American tech.
The belief that if EU removed their regulation a big tech sector would pop up is absurd libertarian propaganda. I'm not saying you believe that, but some people do. Norms, values and the insanity of scaling a business across 20+ languages are way bigger factors for why companies settle into local geographical maxima's. Try managing 3 different marketing agencies, 3 different websites, 3 different app languages. Imagine doing an A/B test on this and maintaining different winner variants across geographies. Congratulations you've just scaled to 20 million people in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. I deal with this everyday - it's horribly inefficient. I think that's the main factor hindering the European B2C tech sector. It's easier to just scale in the US.
This article is about the DSA so I'll stick to that.
> Do you know that Meta, Google, etc have to hire literally tens of thousands of people exclusively to keep up with EU regulations?
A platform serving billions of users needs thousands, if not tens of thousands of moderators. Hell even a forum with hundreds of users need a couple of moderators to keep things in check. Unmoderated platforms turn into self-destructive cesspools without exception.
Facebook and Twitter scaled to other countries with the wishful thinking that algorithmic moderation would scale. Turns out it doesn't. It was a risk they took while moving fast and breaking things and now they're cashing in their check.
The DSA in large parts revolves around transparency around how platforms are dealing with moderation. Did you know that Twitter only has one polish speaking moderator? Do you think that's enough for the 14 million MAUs they have? [1]
In Germany it's illegal to show nazi symbolism. It's also illegal to "harm someones reputation". In Norway the Sapmi ethnic population is a protected class. In Denmark you can't burn the Quran. This are real codified laws and preferences that a foreign company can't just ignore. And you have. There's thousands of examples and a decade of cases. There's a reason the entirety of Europe is standing together to do something about it - and it's not to seek a measly billion euros or five in fines.
While you may be ideologically or philosophically opposed to the "limiting of speech" you'll find that this varies wildly across cultures and across topics. Just because the US has laws and norms around "free speech" and "safe harbour laws" doesn't mean that other countries must be forced to be imposed these rules from American tech giants who put no or a marginal effort into following laws behind extremely opaque platforms with zero accountability.
When doing business in another country you follow their laws, it's as easy as that. If the cost of the fine is less then the cost of following the law it won't be followed. If the cost is too high to bear, it opens room for local competition who will follow the rules. That's fine. American tech can do whatever the hell they want in the US, that's not our right to influence.
[1]https://transparency.twitter.com/dsa-transparency-report.htm...
It doesn't sound like EU is really doing bad here.
Tell that to the literal trillions of euros in growth the EU regulated away into oblivion by stamping out any hope for an emerging tech industry.
- The EU has drastically scaled up regulatory requirements for tech businesses, starting with GDPR, running through the DSA, and probably eventually continuing through the AI Act and the proposed cybersecurity law. Because this is a community mostly centered around people who start or work at or invest in tech businesses, there’s a lot of frustration that the new regulations are making life harder.
- In this case, part of what the EU alleges is that Twitter is not doing enough to actively combat disinformation. People are concerned that what the EU wants in terms of combatting disinformation IS a speech-controlling agenda.
I’m not sure either argument is 100% correct, but I can understand why many are arguing that the EU regulations are going too far, both in terms of requiring too much work for too little gain, and in terms of jeopardizing Internet independence.
Let's have a test:
What's wrong with the following:
In 2020, the Netherlands passed a new law that stated that anyone that works in a job with an obligation to secrecy cannot be prosecuted for perjury for lawing in court under oath.
The example given by the government was, "Consider a lawyer and his client".
Forget for a moment that in this trivial example a lawyer could simply refuse to answer?
Figure it out yet?
Here's a hint, everyone in government has an obligation to secrecy, including prosecutors.
See the problem here? I'm sure that lots of hacker news people would.
https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/1039807/liegende-officieren-...
He was lying in court again just before he retired. No consequences. Worse, he was never found out officially. The press were never even interested in the story.
However, two years later the law was changed. Now there can never be consequences in such cases. The Netherlands officially only has a kangaroo court now.
With less informed, this creates a pretty big "EU bogeyman" trend.
""Content circulating online that can be associated to Hamas qualifies as terrorist content, is illegal, and needs to be removed under both the Digital Services Act and Terrorist Content Online Regulation," a Commission spokesperson said." [1]
Precedent in France is that this is understood to apply even if the content is published to denounce those facts.