this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2026
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Technology
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They think it's some brilliant scheme against big tech, when really it's so obvious that they're just going to tack the tax onto the users bill. French Netflix users will now have a "usage tax" on every bill, guaranteed.
It's exactly the same thinking as the tarriffs. They think businesses will eat that cost and protect the customers? BS they will they'll pass it on down.
Setting aside economic impact, I'm skeptical that this is actually a good idea, purely in terms of political capital.
Like...here in the US, gas taxes have a wildly-disproportionate political impact, in part because they're constantly thrown in your face. Signs all over outdoors with them.
If every time a French user of Steam, say, wants to download a game that they already bought and they're presented with a fee from Steam or something, I think that that's probably going to make the tax highly-visible to French voters, and probably unpopular.
It looks like Call of Duty is over 1TB. Okay, so Valve is probably telling you to pay your 55 euro or whatever French Internet Tax every time you want to install the game. That's probably going to generate upset pretty quickly.
The lawmakers are all rich so they do not care