In other words, a company, acting on behalf of its own shareholders, tells a government, which represents 100% of the citizens in a given territory, to shove its legislation where the sun doesn’t shine. And not only is this not inherently absurd, but it also stands a significant chance of succeeding in getting the government to comply.
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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They probably wouldn't have had to if the school system hadn't dropped language arts from most curriculums ages ago. Students now are getting a markedly shitter education and don't even know they're being fucked over.
It's by design, the politicians only need 28% to win, easier to scrape those votes off the bottom of the barrel of knowledge
What really stings is watching groups and communities which historically have been supportive of each other getting fragmented by overt social media operations. It's asinine and just makes it easier to marginalize and oppress the people that most frequently need a voice.
Our country is now run by Twitter and Truth Social, and too many people are already lost to social media disinformation campaigns (counter-intelligence)
It felt miraculous for me that, for a while, tech companies appeared to comply to regulation (doing the bare minimum, as slowly as possible, but it kinda worked).
My hypothesis is that they now except political support from Trump administration and to pressure the EU?
My hypothesis is that they now except political support from Trump administration and to pressure the EU?
Yes. We will now export our fascism, making it essentially just the same imperialism we've been engaged in forever.
To be fair, you haven't invented fascism.
Although, in France we have a sort of proverb that says that what happens in the US happens here 10 years later. I hope we will manage to dodge what's coming at us, this time...
A government ... only in theory does. Like a church represents God, because humans are too dumb to understand him directly.
"Fact-checking" is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. "No fact-checking" is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Both sides of this fight prefer it being called such, so that one seems against misinformation, and the other seems against censorship, but they are not really different in this dimension. They are different in strategy and structure and interests, but neither is good for the average person.
“Fact-checking” is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. “No fact-checking” is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Dude, facts are facts or they are not. There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
You give authority to define "facts" to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC...
this is mostly an american take, and most of the rest of the world tends to disagree with this “free speech absolutism”
it’s the slippery slope fallacy
That's a solvable problem, not a reason to reject fact checking as a concept.
This is definitely to avoid the ire of fuhrer trump. It's also coincidence that meta is abandoning fact checking right before the new administration
He will sic the dogs of regulation on them if they don't dance to his tune
wish the eu would just actually ban american companies there is really no need for them anyway
Fine the heck out of them then. If they don't pay the fine ban em. Plenty of alternatives out there. More competition in the search engine market would be better anyways.
Not too big of a fan of banning companies as the hurdles should be decently high... Especially if many people rely on their service but if they won't comply with our jurisdiction long term I see this as the only option as fees can not be order of business to pay
Start criminal proceedings to imprison the leadership responsible for non-compliance. Seize their assets to pay for any fine.
Why do we accept that all solutions to corporate crimes should be fines and kiddie gloves?
Damn.
Wish the rest of us could just ignore all laws & not face any consequences.
What a fucking joke this entire system is.
They don't have a problem giving someone 100 years for a quarter bag of weed though. For a first time offense.
Oh that was long ago. it's for not having a baby if you're female now. Megacorps run usa and now the worst (which is best for some reason) ceo in the history of man will again be president and continue the clear path to government dismantling
Who decides what the facts are?
Reality
Who decides what reality is?
Physics
I’m OK with this risk. The incredible rise of stupid arguments that we attempt to treat as equal for consideration is unreasonable. If we want to continue having meaningful discourse, we have to remove disinformation.
Yeah, but the question was; who decides what is disinformation? If it was some truly competent and unbiased AI system then I perhaps wouldn't be as concerned about it, though I can see issues with that too, but humans are flawed and I see this as a potenttial slippery slope towards tyranny and censorship.
Imperfect need not be the enemy of good. Failure to combat disinformation is absolutely a path to tyranny, and a lie going halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on is effectively censorship if the truth comes out only by the time the public has lost interest.
Yes, there are problems combating it, but we have to show up to the fight somehow. I’ll take a fallible fact checking system over none at all, because the court of public opinion makes a poor fact checker.
Given that we are going full authoritarian fascist now, perhaps the EU should ban Google, given the US tik tok precedent.
What a twist. In the 90s, the internet forced countries to wake up to the new modern era. It was a combination of American companies wanting both to expand and provide goodwill.
And now, this new era is going to tell American companies to fuck off.
Democracies around the world rightly shouldn't tolerate the blatant corruption and manipulative business practice of American tech companies.
Good, hope they get banned in the EU so people will switch to competitors
I could see the EU backing down a few years ago, but these days they have watered down any actual advantage in search by filling their results with ads and low quality content. Not that I use Reddit any more, but a good Reddit search engine would probably be better for a lot of use cases.
Reddit search engine? Hell nah I want more federated communities. Reddit has a contract with google anyways that blocks out foreign web crawlers.
That's pretty bold for a really fucking useless search engine. The EU could just block it and redirect google.com to a gov run searxng instange and everyone in europe would be better off overniggt
The eu doesn't it to block the search engine from the internet. It only needs to block the google cash-flow from inside EU to Ireland and then it's shareholders.
The government, running a service that doesn't suck? Call me when it happens
You have become normalized to a country that allows a convicted felon to be president
As well as a political party that actively tries to make public services shitty so people won't miss it when it's dismantled.
I live in the nordics, would you like a list?
List a country with a decent population of like at least 50 mio people that competes with companies successfully and fairly. Countries with a smaller population don't have as much of a bureaucratic overhead. But even there... where do they offer a better service in a fair competition with companies
Google neither competes fairly nor provides a good service. We have to endure them because they have made investment in a competitor uneconomical.
I would argue that "bureaucratic overhead" is missing in companies at least as much as it is excess in governments. These double checks and regulations help guard against things like companies externalizing environmental and health impacts. They also act as a check on tendencies towards consolidation (or rather should). Consequently, companies appear to operate more efficiently, but we will have to pay to clean up and handle their externalities eventually.
Google has told the EU that it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law.
Perfect time to implement sky-high fines for non-compliance.
Ah, but that's why US Big Tech is splooshing cash all over President Felon and hoping he saves them from evil communist European consumer protections.
Yep, they're hoping Trump will pressure the EU to get rid of their pesky consumer protections. They don't even make any profits for billionaires!
Google has behind it an incoming US government that puts US economic interests first, and relishes bullying its allies. The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in. It will bend the knee.
The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in
lol ok
Have you ever looked at a map? America can just float anywhere