Comment by Kudos

I agree. I say this as a eurosceptic myself. HN and Twitter make it seem like the EU is borderline third world that is moments away from collapse.

Germany is the third largest economy in the world. The EU as a bloc is the second largest economy in the world.

While lagging considerably behind the US and China in services, it still is among the leaders in energy and manufacturing.

It’s in decline, but it’s really not anything that can’t be fixed.

Certainly not anywhere HN/Twitter like to make it out to be.

The EU is facing a two-front information war. A strong EU doesn’t benefit the US, Russia or China. Having said that, a lot of US criticisms that are propagandised against the EU are mostly fair criticisms, the EU makes it easy for its adversaries to propagandise low hanging fruit (such as the bureaucracy on display here)

Tech is an even field and had it been the primary cause, pro-regulation voices would be as prominent as anti-regulation ones

What really is happening is budget constraint - european 3-letter agencies don't get as much funding as US/UK ones and, due to failed geopolitic strategies, are spread over all sorts of vectors of internal sentiment defence - migrants, Turkey, ARTOS separation, etc

it isn't noticeable due to all the accumulated wealth, but european economies are being bled dry, but pretty much all geopolitical players. They stopped balancing between multiple centers of power - and now painfully pay the price of misaligned dependence.

Stability - on the defense, is like goal-keeping in soccer. You can protect the goal 99.99% and still loose. And therein lies the crux! The EU does not attack, it seems to think that waiting for the old world to return is enough - basically a extended hibernation to another episode of good times.

But maybe this is it. Maybe good times, made via surplus bribery by innovation and innovators will not come around for a while. So what do you call a strategy that relies on something hopefully to come, that you are unable to produce or even articulate you need.

Everyone likes to think “it’s the bots” or whatever but GDPR came before LLMs and the reaction to that was the same. I think you’re probably seeing just the effect of a bunch of Americans on an American site in awe at the legal barriers in place in the EU.

> feels mostly like astro-turfing attempts at destabilisation

Well it is certainly the perfect conditions for it, the EU is surrounded by friends and enemies alike who openly seek to break it up and the biggest companies in the world are doing everything they can to defy and undermine regulation efforts.

Yeah any thread on the EU is full with that on HN.

Somehow there is always an endless supply of coincidence theorists ready to hand wave away all criticisms of EU shooting itself in the foot. The TFA is from a seemingly legitimate Greek business with a 5+ track record of selling and publishing electronics content online. They obviously work with many others in the space and have come up with this plea for some reason.

And you are calling this astroturfing LLM based on what? It's really no different from calling tariffs so much winning and laughing at seething liberals.

No, there was already a steady complaints against Anti-EU regulation from within Europe around the time Eurozone debt crisis introduced sweeping changes that ultimately centralized regulatory enforcement over sovereign interests of EU member states. I think anybody from Europe would know this is the focal point when anti-EU sentiments really ticked up.

There really isn't much of astro-turfing in non-EU parts of the world that would make little sense, your narrative might make more sense if there were any actual evidence or credibility behind the claims that non-EU states are engaged in anti-EU discourse that doesn't apply to them.

The complaints against EU is a lagging effect and what you see today is cumulative, one that all federated organization eventually face. LLMs have little to do with it and its just more visible as it is quite literally in global discourse

There's no "catastrophising" here. This is simply an article that rationally explains why the latest EU regulation is well meaning but poorly implemented.

It just so happens that the same is true for a lot of EU technical regulation.

At what point are we allowed to say "the EU is failing to regulate its members effectively"?

Or are we not allowed to say that because it would create some kind of catastrophe where the EU Commission loses its power over the EU27 and Russia invades (or somesuch catastrophising...?)

While I generally agree, the specific regulation case seems to be particularly egregious, the playbook for the regulation already existed through the VAT system. They deliberately chose to add to the single markets fragmentation. By adding additional bureaucratic loops to enter each individual market.

What do LLMs have to do with it?