I dunno. I wouldn't say the EU has done an amazing job of actually twisting companies arms enough to get them to a) provide the actual fucking product, not some bastardized version that's intentionally bastardized to make people voluntarily keep using the evil version, AND b) not be evil. At the same time.
Look at apple with the payment shit. They managed to do neither a NOR b! The data privacy stuff usually has companies just opting out of serving the EU.
So, there's clearly a very hard problem here, of how do you make these entities whose sole goal is to maximize profit, who have managed to figure out a way that makes tons of profit while having the only "pollution" be the damage we do to our culture/dopamine receptors. Which is a lot harder to get people mad about compared to oil in the ocean and smog in the air.
In the meantime, I don't mind us just trying to keep things at least vaguely geopolitically aligned. Look at what russia is doing to US politics with very basic tactics (reddit comments etc). Now imagine China trying to do something actually subtle.
To underline the difference I'm referring to, just look at tiktok vs rednote. Western users immediately getting banned from rednote for posting the "wrong" kind of LGBT stuff. There are some fundamentally different cultural expectations about freedom of speech. Can you imagine how censored talking about vietnam would be if the US took the same approach as China did w.r.t. Tienanmen Square?
> I wouldn't say the EU has done an amazing job of actually twisting companies arms enough
It takes a lot of time to open political eyes, break through lobby barriers, and get sufficient awareness on the deep issues. Then it takes an age - in business terms - for governmental action and regulation to follow. But if that is ramping up inertia builds and prolonged policy follows, hopefully as unstoppable tide. Other than some decent government regulation and old-fashioned unfair competition protection there's talk talk talk and not much that restrains Big Tech and the maddened billionaire class.
I dunno. I wouldn't say the EU has done an amazing job of actually twisting companies arms enough to get them to a) provide the actual fucking product, not some bastardized version that's intentionally bastardized to make people voluntarily keep using the evil version, AND b) not be evil. At the same time.
Look at apple with the payment shit. They managed to do neither a NOR b! The data privacy stuff usually has companies just opting out of serving the EU.
So, there's clearly a very hard problem here, of how do you make these entities whose sole goal is to maximize profit, who have managed to figure out a way that makes tons of profit while having the only "pollution" be the damage we do to our culture/dopamine receptors. Which is a lot harder to get people mad about compared to oil in the ocean and smog in the air.
In the meantime, I don't mind us just trying to keep things at least vaguely geopolitically aligned. Look at what russia is doing to US politics with very basic tactics (reddit comments etc). Now imagine China trying to do something actually subtle.
To underline the difference I'm referring to, just look at tiktok vs rednote. Western users immediately getting banned from rednote for posting the "wrong" kind of LGBT stuff. There are some fundamentally different cultural expectations about freedom of speech. Can you imagine how censored talking about vietnam would be if the US took the same approach as China did w.r.t. Tienanmen Square?