Comment by dc396
1 month ago
I suspect there is going to be a flood of money in the EU for the creation of replacements for any US-based technology any of the EU countries are dependent upon (e.g., https://www.joindns4.eu). The real questions are whether there will be regulatory reform in the EU to facilitate this and will the money NOT flow to the usual dinosaurs. My impression is that Trump has sufficient pissed off EU governments such that there is some (small) hope for both. EC bureaucrats and MEPs might do well to read https://berthub.eu.
US tech workers believe their own lies and think they have some sort of magic sauce. For decades they've enjoyed government welfare and US-friendly regulation in many countries, which kept non-US competition small. An influx of non-US talent to US tech companies helped them stay innovative.
It is a courtesy that citizens from free countries pay US tech companies a middleman fee over various ways. What US tech workers fail to realize is that
So many of these things were done due to convenience and convention, making US tech workers richer and richer. I feel people are realizing what kind of pricks not only the management of US tech companies but also the US tech workers themselves are. Especially on HN these affluent workers from US tech companies run around and parrot the most stupid talking points while thinking their wealth comes from some sort of special skill.
We made them rich. They looted our data and poisoned our societies with fake news. They show no respect towards our systems or culture.
What also has been true the whole time is that nobody has been stopping companies in other countries from creating social media sites, electronic wallets, movie streaming, operating systems, image hosting, or food delivery services. You are right, creating these companies does not come from some special skills only found in the US. Not sure why you are mad at US for creating these services, especially because, like you said, nobody is forcing you to use them. And nobody in the US is going to be upset if an EU company creates a new fun or convenient web service.
“And nobody in the US is going to be upset if an EU company creates a new fun or convenient web service.”
You were pretty pissed when the Chinese made a better social media app.
Maybe is because of your deep love of democracy and freedom, but it more likely that you can’t countenance not being in charge.
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I recommend you read "careless people", the book about Facebook, where it is documented that Facebook illegally installed spyware alongside the Facebook app on the smartphones of their users. They monitored the apps their users where running alongside Facebook, which allowed Facebook to not only monitor all competitors but also see the rise of WhatsApp, which ultimately led to the "surprise" acquisition of WhatsApp.
Not to mention that Facebook and Google unknowingly ingested phone contact lists from smartphones of their users on a massive scale. So their "advantage" was extremely unethical behavior, which today would be considered an illegal crime.
So yes, it is literally Apple and Google stopping my European company to do the same, because they make it really hard to leech user data from their platforms.
> nobody is forcing you to use them
Do you remember internet.org? There's an interesting section in "careless people" about how Zuckerberg was working on bundling Facebook with smartphone contracts so people can use it for free. One country rolled out Facebook for free and it resulted in the Rohingyan Genocidg because Facebook enabled unchecked fake news along religious divides, while over years ignoring all warnings about the problem.
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The problem is that convenience trumps everything.
The golden cage of convenience is why nothing will change in the US -- we prize convenience above all else.
Sorry to be blunt, but it is extremely inconvenient to be force-exposed to internal politics of some religious shithole country which twice votes against their own interests. Where people don't believe in healthcare but accept school shootings. Where society cares about body positivity until Ozempic arrives. A country which talks bigly about geopolitics and ignores agreements they have signed.
It is inconvenient to buy a Tesla to help save the planet and then see emerald nepo baby Elon Musk doing hitler salutes, and US citizens downplaying it due to their special understanding of freedom of speech.
Or a sweaty Peter Thiel morphing from startup evangelist to religious nut babbling about the antichrist.
Or a Jeff Bezos who ships stuff from china to europe being so unhappy with his life that he needs to marry the wife of his neighbor.
On top of this there's this still unresolved child sexual abuse scandal that basically implicates all of US upper class including senior leadership of US tech companies, who suddenly come out of retirement like Sergey Brin because they keep being mentioned in the Epstein files.
For more and more non-US people the inconvenience of seeing all this outweighs the benefit of being able to use some sort of web application. We have survived before on Nokia phones and TomTom navigation systems, and we'll be able to do so again.
US tech companies had US government support and helpful non-US regulatory environment to capture value from our countries. In their core, they are rent-seeking middlemen, parasitic to our economies.
The parasite needs a host, but the host can always find a new parasite.
It is also a courtesy that free countries respect US copyright. I wouldn't be surprised if EU countries have already started ramping up corporate espionage and are making contingency plans to seize all data and assets on their territory. If they manage to get ahold of source code and data, they may be able to keep some services running without US involvement.
Netflix is a good example: the functionality isn't difficult to reproduce, and the only thing that restricts its library is copyright, which the EU could just stop enforcing for American companies.
> It is also a courtesy that free countries respect US copyright
Which, itself, is downstream of the US signing onto the Berne convention. American copyright actually used to be reasonable and (western) Europe was the insane one with life terms. All that is ugly about the US was buried so deeply in Europe that it is outside, here, with us.
Then America had the extremely short-sighted idea to assign copyright to software, and then use software to enforce copyright, and then make it independently illegal to tell anyone how to bypass that enforcement software. This was all then foisted back onto Europe, whose creative industries begged them for it, not knowing that it basically meant surrendering to the US before the war had even started.
Seizing American copyright would be a good start, but what you really want is to drop anti-circumvention law. Because that's the first domino[0] in the chain. Europe is chock full of businesses that would absolutely fall in line around a tyrant king just like American businesses have, and laws like that enable such businesses to exist.
[0] https://pooper.fantranslation.org/@kmeisthax/110771126221131...
You don't need it, but you want it, which is why you buy it. The vast majority of the economies of all post-industrial nations are dedicated not to needs, but wants. And convenience is one of the biggest ones. Go ahead, call me a prick, but you're a good customer, and I know you'll keep buying. We didn't loot your data. You gave it freely in exchange for the extremely convenient services that are built on it. You can go ahead and not use Google Maps next time you need to get somewhere you don't know the route. You can buy a map book and put it in your car and navigate the old way. But we both know you won't.
> Go ahead, call me a prick, but you're a good customer, and I know you'll keep buying.
Your overconfidence might set you up for disappointment, just like those US states who are begging Canadians to buy their booze. I understand that you're emotional, and it's fine - no need to call anyone a prick.
> We didn't loot your data. You gave it freely in exchange for the extremely convenient services that are built on it.
That's incorrect. Both Facebook and Google uploaded smartphone contact books of their users to their servers when it still was possible. There was no user consent to provide list of all contacts plus phone numbers. Now both have walled gardens and fight against other companies scraping their data.
> You can buy a map book and put it in your car and navigate the old way.
There are many other options.
> We made them rich. They looted our data and poisoned our societies with fake news. They show no respect towards our systems or culture.
And yet everyone and their dog in Europe has an iPhone.
It's a weak argument that Europeans are legally bound to forever buy iPhones "designed in california" because they used to buy them in the past.
Other US companies like Tesla massively lost market share already, whole US states are begging for Canadians to buy booze.
In light of current crises created by the US, why do you think it goes any different for the rest of the US tech companies? The goodwill is used up.
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Investment would be great, but the tech already exists. From Suse linux, hetzner, fairphone, to LibreOffice and OnlyOffice.
One simply needs to start using them. Investment can be focused on integration work and bug fixing.
My tax money is on the fact that it's going to go again to the dinosaurs. I cannot see them do any quick and adaptive change in the short term.
I can see ways that could be really effective, though trying to get a sane word out to these bureaucrats nowadays seems impossible.
I just can't see it happening. The United States benefits from decades of compounding advantages compared to the EU: elite research universities, talent pipelines, mature capital markets, and tons of integrated industries (fintech).
This is obvious in the recent AI race. EU-headquartered companies remain rare compared to their US/Chinese counterparts.
All true, but incomplete: you are not discounting these advantages with plain old 'industrial inertia'.
Some stuff just went goes to the USA, because it always went to the USA - even though the original advantages are long gone.
Screw with it enough and the users (the world) just route around the damage.
As the UK can attest after Brexit.
AI race is a very good example, because Microsoft customers in the EU pay significantly increased Microsoft license fees so that Microsoft can give that money to OpenAI. Without Microsoft having non-US customers as a cash cow the AI valuations would not be anywhere where they are today. In return non-US Microsoft customers get a useless copilot slapped into all UIs and have to throw away all their computers and buy new ones just because of Windows 11 software update.
The other things you list are weak arguments:
I think the delusion among US tech workers is immense. The moat is not that big. If other countries stop sharing your idea of copyright and software patents there is not much you can do.
The problem: you just listed all of the things under attack by the current administration.
NATO allies like Germany are sending troops to protect their ally nation along with Denmark. This isn’t a fight Trump is prepared for. If he somehow decides to move forward - we are all going to have to face a hard choice.
As much as I think US annexation of Greenland would be the single worst foreign policy move of my lifetime, and maybe in US history, the US military is not the one who isn't prepared for that fight.
I never said the military isn’t up for it. I said Trump and his administration aren’t.
I know our military is full of ego and testosterone and they’ll fight anyone.
As a spectator from neither continent, I feel Trump is being a bit of a wuss.
He should give into his vices, embrace his inner-Putin and demand a “land-bridge” from Washington State to Alaska.
For national security reasons, of course.