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US businesses can get bent. Half my country is rotten and hollowed out, all the shops replaced by Amazon. Screw them. Uber wants to come over here and put our local cabbies out of work, then bring them all back on lower wages with higher fees. Screw off. Air B&B destroys affordable housing all across Europe and turns cities into tourist hell. Oracle comes over here and they're trying their damnedest to get their hands on our valuable NHS data. Facebook (now Meta) comes over here and shows horrific content to young children, wrecking the mental health of teens, especially young girls. Twitter (now X) wants to pollute my country's politics with American fascist nonsense while its owner promises to donate hundreds of millions to far right political parties across the content.

I don't want any of these “services” thank you very much. Inflict them on your own people, not us.

American technology companies operate by finding technological solutions to evading the law, then counting on being too big to fail once regulators catch up. These companies do not provide innovative products, they abuse monopoly power to dominate industries. The Chinese are smart enough to make their own versions of all this stuff so that they aren't under the US yoke and I want the same here (sans the dictatorship of course). I want to replace every horrid US machine with something FOSS or publicly owned, and every regulatory step towards that is a win in my book.

Maybe instead of turning your nose up at other countries that dare to regulate your tech overlords, you should try to get your politicians to do the same thing.


zettabomb
Tough luck, if you don't like it, then you (or your government) should block those websites. It's not job of the US businesses nor US government to enforce another country's laws.
James_K OP
Let me put this very simply to you: if I go to a country where the age of consent is 14 and start a business streaming child porn to America, I should be stopped from doing that. This is the same principle with a lesser offence.
zettabomb
I don't disagree at all. But it would then be the American government's job and responsibility to block this.
pclmulqdq
You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil. Ofcom notably is not setting up a "great firewall," but instead sending takedown notices to websites about content that is already blocked from British IPs.
jolmg
> You will stopped from doing that by American law. The difference between this and that is that Ofcom believes it can regulate conduct that never touches British soil.

You're showing yourself to believe that America can regulate conduct that never touches American soil.

pclmulqdq
America won't go after you. America will go after Americans who access your site and American ISPs will block your site. That's not America regulating your behavior. You're still free to do whatever you want.

If you enter America, there may also be consequences, but you don't need to enter America.

macinjosh
We are America. We can do whatever we damn well please because we have the biggest guns and most money. Welcome to the how the world really works. Not saying it’s right.
HeckFeck
I've sympathy for what you're proposing - on-shoring our own tech - but the Online Safety Act is a terrible law and it should've been repealed yesterday. It will do nothing to advance those aims, and plenty to stifle innovation in the UK tech space. Ofcom can get fucked.
pclmulqdq
So ban those businesses from operating in your region. Don't pretend that Ofcom can regulate the content that is viewed around the world just because you're upset about things in your country.
James_K OP
I bloody wish I could! Sadly, these things aren't up to me, and the companies involved would probably pay more bribes to your gangster president to get him to sanction our economy if we tried.
pclmulqdq
The US has great relations with many countries that ban AirBnB or Uber. The reason they operate in your country is because the people in your country want them.
hax0ron3
If your countrymen want to use Uber, Air B&B, Oracle, and Facebook, should you try to stop them from doing it, even if you personally dislike those companies?

You are making the same argument that Trump is making with the tariffs. Personally, while I can see some good arguments for protectionism, I'd rather have the choice to decide whether or not I want to buy Chinese products, rather than the government making the choice for me.

mothballed
Closer to the point: having Uber in a place with a licensed taxi trade is basically the same thing as removing licensing and then granting a monopoly on one business to operate taxis.

So you two are on completely separate frames of thought. One party sees it as a matter of choice, the other sees it as removing choice because one party has a monopoly on avoiding the regulations.

The issue here is IMO more so that the taxi driver should be able to operate a taxi business without a license without having to go through Uber. Ultimately what is happening in a lot of places is the guys with medallions will basically use agents of the state to violently enforce their racket (which Uber breaks up, but then monopolizes), or alternatively in some places in Latin America the entrenched taxi drivers will simply shoot to kill their competitors that don't have cartel sanctioned 'medallions.'

6r17
I personally think that FB, Uber, RBNB, Oracle, Google, Amazon, and literally every american SASS should be completely forbidden from Europe. Period no discussion at all. Given the state of current America, given the reactions even on this very post that do not see how Cambridge Analytics has damaged the entire world - yes, I think it would be safe to put a good 10 year ban on every US web tech. It would fasten up Europe and leave out the important decision to someone who can actually make a difference instead of being washed out by some reddit / twitter with fake russian bots. Let the economics just move away and make the decisions for people who are in a state of hypnosis instead of playing with mass control and then calling it "freedom".

Keep your american movies and social networks please. Btw why is TikTok banned in US?

aydyn
Its cute that you think Europe has the ability to replace those services.
6r17
I *personally* have a freaking orchestrator, mail server, git server, faster than rocksdb DATABASE ENGINE, freaking world of warcraft and faster than NGINX for static. It's cute that you think you have the capabilities to imagine what Europe can or cannot do.
selfhoster11
We've got plenty of servers, electricity, network hardware and people who code. We are missing the oxygen in the room, which American services all collectively sucked out. Banning those services will open some potential for innovation.
aydyn
I think what your missing is a regulatory framework that wont immediately screw you. Just look at how far behind you are with AI. AI is nascent so you have no excuse about "oxygen" or whatever.
oskarw85
It's cute that you think anyone is going to kiss your American ass.
aydyn
Top 3 messaging apps in europo

1) whatsapp (facebook)

2) telegram (incorporated in dubai)

3) messenger (also facebook lmao)

philwelch
Are there any other aspects of Xi Jinping Thought you think Europe should adopt?
6r17
Yes I do - for example ; any American that wishes to make a company in Europe will need to have a European voucher which is the owner of the service - so the money doesn't flow out of the country trough some UberMornonization app with $millions to ultimately do colonization.

There is 0 reason for us to let american suck away important infrastructure tools, benefits that goes with it, or even benefit from tax exemption trough the best company framework there can possibly exist.

I still haven't got an answer here - why is TikTok US owned ?

James_K OP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

Do some research on why these services are so attractive before you give your opinion on it being a good thing. What these companies are doing should be illegal under US law as well, but they have paid your president to make that issue go away.

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