Big tech can go F itself.
All big tech has done is stolen our data and lied to us for their own needs.
Make all software FOSS
Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"
Submitted 5 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/big-tech-eu-drop-dead
Comments
_sideffect@lemmy.world 5 months ago
shortwavesurfer@monero.town 5 months ago
If it’s not FOSS, it’s not yours.
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 5 months ago
That’s not true. Try also destroyed really good things, like the internet as a whole.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 5 months ago
This smells like sour grapes to me, just like when people say to boycott Starbucks and then in the same breath say their coffee sucks. These companies became behemoths because people find a lot of value in the products and services they offer. Failing to acknowledge that truth just makes you sound out of touch.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I mean you SHOULD boycott starbucks for their business practices. But you can’t say their coffee sucks. They don’t have coffee. They have “diabetic inducing coffee flavored sugarwater”
But it’s not coffee
golli@lemm.ee 5 months ago
people find a lot of value in the products and services they offer
This is definitely true to some degree, but there imo is also another side to this.
Yes, they there are underlying problems/demands that they solve, but they definitely also create and shape those since psychology sadly works extremely effective. And they really try their hardest to manipulate customers.
Another aspect is that they might have originally created that value and given the users what they wanted, which got them in the position they are in now. Sometimes even operating at a loss to bully competition out of the market. But once they achieved this dominant position enshittification commences. Which wouldn’t be that much of an issue, if they wouldn’t also often prevent competition from growing enough to be able to compete.
Example Google search: The demand for a way to navigate the web is real and google fulfilled it best, which made them huge. Timejump to the present: the demand is still the same, but now google shows you what they want you to see and pay billions to be the default search engine to hinder any competition from gaining any traction.
suction@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s a timeline. tech companies have become much worse, and people warning about them more vocal, so the lower educated classes who mindlessly use their products have (partially) woken up to the real motives of companies who create “free to use” products, i.e. data mining. In the EU, we have a lot of dummies who we call “remote controlled”, who want to simulate a version of the US lifestyle (huge cars, celebrity adulation, eating like shit, single-issue voting, vapidness). These mainly teenagers but regrettably also low-class adults. Those are also the people who still use social networks because they have nothing else going on and are too lazy to invest their free time in worthwhile activities. So it’s a class issue, the social underbelly of the EU is remote controlled by US culture and corporations almost like the social underbelly of the US is.
barsoap@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Americans found lots of values in Starbucks coffee because Americans have no concept of coffee that’s simultaneously black, not bitter, not acidic, and sweet. It would be wrong to blame Starbucks for that, they’re a symptom, not the cause, but yes their coffee sucks. As it does everywhere else in the US, the country that thought that percolators were a mighty fine idea.
refalo@programming.dev 5 months ago
Make all software FOSS
That would require extreme socialism
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
good
Brickardo@feddit.nl 5 months ago
Please, remember to vote on the European elections! We do need the EU to keep taking actions like this
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 months ago
As an American, please vote. Our country is owned by the corporations, at least yours can bring them to heel sometimes.
Sadbutdru@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
:`-( I miss voting in the European elections! 🏴🇪🇺💪
Emmie@lemm.ee 5 months ago
European elections have this advantage that the morons don’t even go to vote nor know what is going on.
It’s the sole reason why is it going so good, obfuscation.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I don’t think that’s true at all.
When the UK was in the EU, UKIP was their largest party. For France, Le Pen’s National Front party was the largest. And they aren’t alone. There’s a number of right wing EU parties.
And it’s due to get worse, many countries in the EU are swinging to the right. Polling is indicating right wing parties will have a solid majority in the EU parliament this year.
NaoPb@eviltoast.org 5 months ago
What parties should we vote for to make sure they keep protecting consumers?
suction@lemmy.world 5 months ago
anything but the right-wing ones.
Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Volt wants:
To make digital rights binding. They call for a “Declaration on European Digital Rights and Principles”.
Tax revenues from digital technologies where they are generated.
Guarantee net neutrality and reject contradictory laws.
Enact laws against the unethical use of AI.
Miaou@jlai.lu 5 months ago
As left as you can. I’d recommend something less extreme if proto-fascists aka liberals had not lied to us for decades.
Lumisal@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Depends on you country, but the right wing one are usually not the ones that are so pro-regulation.
barsoap@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Pirates.
Hapankaali@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Discard the Brownshirts, their collaborators, and the Putin fluffers, and you probably won’t have many choices left.
DmMacniel@feddit.de 5 months ago
To this articles question on why apple should care about EUs 500 million citizens when they have trillions of Dollars. Well given that the USA only has 333 millions I would say they should care a lot.
IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social 5 months ago
Apple needs to realize that the EU doesn’t care if they left. They barely pay any taxes in the EU and don’t even create much economic value. Since most Apple jobs in the EU are in retail, businesses administration and tax evasion. They don’t produce shit here.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Meta tried to do the same. The EU response was to ask when they’d leave to plan the going away party. Meta was a lot less confrontational after that.
jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 5 months ago
But what about the blue chat bubbles?!
RidcullyTheBrown@lemmy.world 5 months ago
As of the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, the Americas held around 41 percent of the revenue, whereas Europe came in second with roughly over 26.5 percent.
As the second largest revenue generator, Europe has a powerful voice.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
25% less revenue is 25% revenue lost. I don’t think the shareholders would welcome that.
kirklennon@kbin.social 5 months ago
The EU is only one chunk of Apple’s “Europe” segment, which is defined as “European countries, as well as India, the Middle East and Africa.”
MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There’s a rule banning “self-preferencing.” That’s when platforms push their often inferior, in-house products and hide superior products made by their rivals.
Spaz isn’t going to like this.
stiephel@feddit.de 5 months ago
He wouldn’t if it applied to him. Unfortunately, reddit I not a gatekeeper in the sense of the DMA and due to its management it’s also unlikely to ever reach that position :)
MapleEngineer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You’re right. Hopefully they will expand the rules to include non-gatekeeper services like Reddit once the rule is in effect.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
Unless the saga continues, they didn’t “hide” the competition, they paywalled their access.
There’s nothing wrong, per se, with charging access to the API. Where they went wrong was setting an exorbitant price. That was clearly anti-competitive. They knew the pricing they set wouldn’t be sustainable to any third party developers. Then he started shit talking the Apollo developer…
purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 5 months ago
Well it may or may not be wrong. One of the measures would be, can Reddit afford the price if it also had pay for the same access? If the answer is no, then it might be considered preferential treatment to their own app. However ianal so there could be a carve out for that.
fart_pickle@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I would have never expected the EFF to use a lame click-bait headline like this one.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 5 months ago
The article is ok (summary of the current state of things) but the title is completely out of place.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Guess they had a visiting editor from The Daily Beast in charge of headlines for a day 🤷
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Apple’s going to fight all of this tooth and nail, country by country, to the end of time. Anything less and they risk a shareholder lawsuit.
This is billions and billions of dollars we’re talking about, not chump change.
lorkano@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Apple get get out of my face. In EU, it’s not even close as popular as in NA. I wouldn’t care if they stopped selling products here
raldone01@lemmy.world 5 months ago
While I don’t like Apple losing them in the EU would be bad. Forcing them to open up their garden is way better.
Less competition is bad for the consumer (usually). If they break laws though they must not sell in the EU.
whome@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
I know but it feels like it’s getting more popular especially with younger people the teenagers and young teens that I know tend to be overwhelming drawn towards apple
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I feel like trying to make the big fish act in our interest and not theirs is fighting windmills.
Better kill the big fish.
Not directly on topic - note how all the socialist revolutionaries always start with killing the smallest fish and hate it the most. The big ones they try to convert.
mark@programming.dev 5 months ago
Genuine question: how do we actually “kill the big fish” though? Majority are going to continue to use big tech out of convenience and because they dont care much.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
No quick way. There are too many regulations which are enforced badly and abused to actually support that “big fish”. Make them fewer and make the punishment swift and unavoidable and hard. And split a few of the worst offenders into parts each in one specific area - Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta are all good candidates.
very_well_lost@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I think in the end it all comes down to putting power back into the hands of regulators — power that corporate America has been slowly and steadily eroding for the last 40 years.
A more powerful regulatory state could start enforcing the anti-trust laws we already have on the books by breaking up the massive tech monopolies. Once that’s done, new regulations and new legislation against anti-consumer practices are needed, but those will only work if the punishments scale high enough to work as an actual deterrent against the multi-billion dollar tech giants.
Of course, we’d also need massive, MASSIVE campaign finance and lobbying reforms so that monied interested aren’t able to sabotage the system all over again.
Or we could just bring back the guillotine… that would probably do the trick too.
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 5 months ago
US is doing that with TikTok already. The government can snap their fingers and ban / break up companies at the drop of a hat if they want.
Spotlight7573@lemmy.world 5 months ago
That’s a sentiment that quite a few others online feel too:
techdirt.com/…/do-people-want-better-facebook-dea…
I do get the argument though that if no improvement will ever be good enough for some people, then what incentive do they have to change if it won’t make a difference to those people either way?
zweieuro@lemmy.world 5 months ago
In general the article seems to be a summary of current legislative actions that are ongoing between big tech and EU. Though in the article it’s worded with the much more fitting ‘game of chicken between EU and Big Tech’ rather than something like the title, but I guess “drop dead has a better ring to it”…
ppb1701@lemmy.today 5 months ago
On meta’s while it is flagrant screw you, they may have a valid argument. Human beings don’t actually need any kind of social media to survive, ergo it is a convenience or luxury that could be charged for.
I’m certainly not agreeing with them, but they may be banking on that style argument and their ungodly amount of money to fight it.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Really the regulation should be about requiring social media companies to interoperate similar to regulation on the phone companies. You should be able to switch to another social media platform without losing your ability to communicate with your friends on the old platform similar to how you can still call your friends after you change phone companies.
Then is if the social media companies want to charge money people could change to another platform without losing their contacts.
Basically the only reason I still have facebook is to talk to chat with people on there that I can’t contact through other means.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You should be able to switch to another social media platform without losing your ability to communicate with your friends on the old platform similar to how you can still call your friends after you change phone companies.
Boy have I got some news for you about something called “the fediverse…”
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Yes. But we have all gotten pretty used to things on the Internet not costing money. If they start costing money, many people will either not want to or be able to use them.
kn98@feddit.nl 5 months ago
Right. But if things do start to cost money, should that be stopped by laws?
ppb1701@lemmy.today 5 months ago
Where they lose totally though is the off service data harvesting that isn’t even remotely “implied okay”
el_abuelo@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
To some people in some places Facebook is actually necessary in order to have a social life or run a business.
We all know Facebook would die if it charged for access, because it would lose its ubiquity that makes it necessary for some people.
What would actually be good is if instead of charging for privacy, they charged for enhanced features - similar to how discord charges for Nitro (I am not defending discord, just using their payment model as an example)
The problem with that payment model though is then you have to actually develop features people want to pay for. And we all know Facebook is creatively bankrupt.
stiephel@feddit.de 5 months ago
You absolutely can charge for social media, just not the way Facebook does. They’re not charging for the service, just for not spying on you, which is illegal under GDPR.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
The Internet is a perfect example of why we can’t have nice things, or rather, why anarchy could never work.
That’s what the Internet used to be, and what it largely is. And it worked quite well, until people realized the Internet could be monetized beyond just being an extension of your brand.
Now it’s quite obvious that regulation is necessary. People are idiots and they can’t be trusted with a dopamine-injection-button run by greedy corporations. That gives those companies really unprecedented power.
Beetlejuice001@lemmy.wtf 5 months ago
I hope the EU retaliates in an incredible show of force
Amoxtli@thelemmy.club 5 months ago
If you don’t like the products of Big Tech, don’t use it. Don’t like oil, don’t use it. The EU might as well ban Big Tech.
catalog3115@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It’s not that simple. I don’t like Facebook & I don’t like Facebook. Still Facebook collects data about me. Tell me why shouldn’t Facebook be stopped? Here data is new oil. Facebook is mining for that Oil on my land. You wouldn’t allow oil company to mine oil on your land right.
refalo@programming.dev 5 months ago
free market and that’s a bad analogy
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Me to Big Tech: “Drop Dead”
Beaver@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Big Tech needs to knows its place. Yes especially you Apple. Make sideloading available globally.
narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 5 months ago
And stop charging a “Core Technology Fee”. And allow JIT compiling for non-browsers so emulators for newer systems can perform well.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Wow. I have no idea what a “Core Technology Fee” is. Guess I’ll stick with Android.