I love the mention of "innovation". What innovation? All the areas of innovation that matter to the EU people, the U.S does not have. 0 federal paid holidays, almost non existent maternity leave, encourages unpaid overtime (something that is illegal in most of EU). Innovation in regards to corporations ability to screw over their own people for monetary gain is not something we're interested in, that's the U.S mindset - money and success before anything else, including personal freedom, employee rights, and so forth.

It's almost funny whenever this argument comes up. In most EU countries Uber isn't even the biggest ride hailing provider. In this space and every other, there's plenty of competition that would celebrate if any company left the market. There is no figurative void that would be left behind.

Tease.

I would love it if companies from the U.S.A. left the EU. Not solely for the economic boost it would give local competitors (who have all but shut down when U.S.A. companies came), but also because they clash with our culture in negative ways.

I don’t think this kind of « threat thinking » is true. « We find ways to steal from you and it’s still good for you because otherwise you will be left behind without us ». It’s kinda feels like bullying to me

It's called Colonialism

This is an unconventional usage of "theft" in the "you wouldn't steal a car?" way.

Could you explain how the Uber drivers are worse off due to their data being in the USA?

If what they do with data is not "theft" then why this there US laws and contracts to regulate and authorize the use of datas every time I use a new US based service, app, game ? As we see from LLMs, data has value, sometimes probably more than a car. And if it’s worthless, why Uber took the risk in the first place ?

It’s not from us to explain why would drivers be worse. It’s from the one who took the datas to explain why would drivers be better. Because if they would have been better I guess Uber would have done a marketing campaign around it to talk about the benefits instead of doing it this way without anyone noticing.

Well, they are UE citizens (at least a chunk of it).

Following your reasoning, then the whole legislation is moot, and all European citizens data should be sifoned in the US without anyone complaining, because "hey, I'm in the UE so you cannot touch me", no?

I'm mostly objecting to the terminology.

Not theft indeed, but copy/use of data without consent. How are they worse:

They are now at risk if there is a data leak in the USA. There are higher fines for data leaks in Europe, so they aren't as well protected as before

Do you mind sending us all US citizens’ data? Just a copy, that is.

We don't like the kind of innovation which exploits workers in this way. On this side of the great herring-pond, humans have rights.

What price is it worth paying for innovation? Innovation just means "new", not necessarily good or beneficial. If the innovation is for companies to be able to do anything and treat anyone however they like in order to make large profits for very few people then we don't want that innovation.

Without growing user numbers they lose stock value.

And ideas like Uber aren't hard to copy by local companies.

There was even a time where copy cats were an easy way to get rich.

Copy a US company, wait to get bought by that company. That made the Samwer brothers rich.

> Even though the rules are great, I'm just not sure if it will be good or bad long term for EU.

We can speculate this all we want, but I think it's fair to say with confidence that leaving companies unregulated (or poorly regulated) is bad for everyone in the long term. A slightly different example is the poor enforcement of antitrust laws being one of the reasons we have the tech oligopoly we have today with Apple, Google, Amazon and Meta.

Too much money here to leave it behind. This is a slap on the wrist anyway.

Thats what the Chinese through during the industrial revolution.

But the west came back for cheap labor so a win for China in the long term

The century of humiliation is a funny name to call a period of winning.

Let me know which tech company is willing to leave behind 1/2 to 2/3 of the revenue they make in the USA by quitting the European market.

The analogy to China during the industrial revolution is simply non-applicable, to the point of not being even wrong.

What is the actual innovation of Uber outside of trying to push the competitors out of the market with investor money? (this isn't anything new/innovative either)

We had app based ride hailing services before Uber and still have them so it can't be that. Surge pricing also has existed before them.

Why can't this argument die? What innovation? These practices are those of parasites and leeches and ticks.

But USA companies leaving EU is better for competition - smaller EU-based companies can try to copy the model and do their own thing.

For example, for Uber, lack of it (it took a while to come to some countries) already spawned lots of successful competition.

It's not like building these platforms is hard. They can leave.

All that will happen in that case is that it leaves less competition for companies that provide the same services in the EU.

Maybe there's innovation somewhere, but putting third world migrants behind the wheel of rental cars isn't it. In any case, there are EU companies to pick up the slack (i.e. Bolt).

China is by basically all accounts running rings around the US, based on current behaviour, whilst being a much more authoritarian regime.

America loves to pretend that no other data points exist so they can attribute whatever good performance they’ve historically seen to whatever supposed cornerstone of American life is advantageous to make whatever point they want to make.