EU Lawmakers Want Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google CEOs at Feb. 1 Hearing (reuters.com) 48
EU lawmakers have invited the chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet to a Feb. 1 hearing in Brussels as they try to crack down on the powers of U.S. tech giants. From a report: The European Parliament will in the coming months provide input into proposals by the European Commission to force the companies to play fairly with rivals and to do more to tackle online fake news and harmful content or face hefty fines. "The purpose of the planned hearing is to have an exchange with the chief executive officers of the four globally leading platform companies to learn about their current business models and future concepts as they face the challenges of altering market conditions," said an invitation sent to the companies seen by Reuters.
Alls fair in private industry (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't have to. They are private companies and can de-platform rivals, and commercial or political competitors at will.
[Insert snide remark about working class people]
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They don't have to. They are private companies and can de-platform rivals, and commercial or political competitors at will. [Insert snide remark about working class people]
This is about anti-competitive behaviour, other rules apply ... genius.
Re:Alls fair in private industry (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the idea is that so much of the infrastructure is concentrated into the hands of so few that you can't have a free market of ideas, whether that's for hate speech or a competitor's speech.
Re: Alls fair in private industry (Score:2)
Profit maximizatiom is mutually exclusive with the free market.
A perfectly balanced free market by definition means zero profits to be made. Profits can only come from lack of freedom and strong-arming victims as a result.
Hence for-profit businesses being the natural enemy of the free marker, no matter how much they state the opposite.
Which is why a market can only stay somewhat free, with outside regulation.
The good kind of regulation. As opposed to the usual kind that is just a business writing laws to st
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A perfectly balanced free market by definition means zero profits to be made.
No. In strictly the economic sense, a free market refers to prices being governed by the forces of supply and demand. In the case of ideas, it means they rise or fall based on how well (or not) they're received. Instead what we have is a small group simply deciding what rises and what falls.
Hearing? (Score:2)
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I"d think their best move would be to send their lawyers to meet with them...
All of these countries' out there decry8ing "fake news"...including the US.
Which one of them is the arbiter of truth?
Do they think we need a ministry of truth of something formed maybe?
I've always like this diatribe on censorship by Pat Palsen [youtube.com], while the references are quite old, the message is the same, and well...it shows we poked fun at our politicans even back th
Mistaken belief (Score:2)
You seem to be under the mistaken belief that the EU is powerless because they are American companies.
You could not be more wrong, Valve recently suffered punitive (triple) penalties for flouting EU laws while others who cooperated paid ordinary level of fines. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tec... [bbc.co.uk]
Antitrust: Commission fines Google â1.49 billion for abusive practices in online advertising https://ec.europa.eu/commissio... [europa.eu]
Microsoft got hit with near half billion Euro fine a decade ago. https://en.wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]
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They don't have to. They are private companies and can de-platform rivals, and commercial or political competitors at will.
[Insert snide remark about working class people]
You're welcome to make a case for the law not applying to private companies, but laws currently do apply to them.
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All the EU wants is money. They seem to have a recurring meeting on their calendars to fine US tech companies for "insert reason valid or not".
Re: Alls fair in private industry (Score:3)
You seem to confuse the EU with the USA... Or Ferenginar for that matter.
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The cost of not waiting 14 days (Score:1)
Re: The cost of not waiting 14 days (Score:2)
No euro country gives two fucks about that.
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When you have GERMANY and RUSSIA telling you about freedom of speech, you know you've fucked up.
No, that tells you that those fascist countries do not respect the rules of private property. But then again, we already knew that.
Twitter owns their platform and can ban whomever they want. Facebook own their platform and can ban whomever they want.
If the government does not like that, then they should build their own platform.
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When you have GERMANY and RUSSIA telling you about freedom of speech, you know you've fucked up.
No, that tells you that those fascist countries do not respect the rules of private property.
Remind us again, who is it that makes these 'rules of private property' that you refer to?
Either way, regardless of your opinion on how legislation is enacted, while the leaders of these governments may wish to speak, in person, to the CEO's of these companies, to have the opportunity to ask searching questions, and to lay out their position on what they consider to be acceptable corporate behaviour (bearing in mind that a corporation is, at root, an entity empowered by legislation), those CEO's can simply
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who is it that makes these 'rules of private property' that you refer to?
The constitutions of each country, governed by the European Convention on Human Rights. You know, that pesky little basic right that says that governments are not allowed to simply take private property as they wish.
And laws can be, fairly simply in most cases, written or rewritten should those with political power see a need...
Yeah, it does not work that way in the real world. Only in Russia. Hence my consistent designation of the EU as the EUSSR, since the EU is starting to look like Russia more and more. Unelected politicians making far reaching decisions limiting the rights of citizens and companies worldwide.
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Waiting to ban him might've ended American democracy, so it was a risk worth taking. And if it brings more attention to the oligopolistic situation among these companies, that's a win/win!
Punching bags (Score:4, Insightful)
proposals by the European Commission to force the companies to play fairly with rivals and to do more to tackle online fake news and harmful content or face hefty fines
I hope some of those execs come ready with some strong language for those politicians as well, and won't let them simply be punching bags at a dog and pony show.
Sure, the "tech giants" have their share of responsibility in all this, but so do goverments - namely allowing media concentration (outside of 'tech giants' - think the SBG [wikipedia.org] for example) that has had a equally detrimental effect.
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Yeah... it is pretty hard to have it both ways— limiting power and censoring aren’t really compatible. Paying their fair share of taxes might be compatible with either.
Really it is about five years too late for the actions that are needed. Getting out of the rabbit hole will take at least 10 years assuming there is no push for Free Speech in the European context.
I wish them luck, but I really think the discussions about curating vs moderating content (and its motivations) needs to be separated
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Oh, it's definitely a dog and pony show. If there is any one person who can know and recall on demand every single detail about every single thing done in an organization as large as any of these four; I would be astounded. Four of them? No way
If the EC wanted real answers, they'd send the questions in writing and give everyone adequate time to research and prepare detailed answers. Any why drag all four there, on the same day, while there's still a pandemic on? There's no need for that, or for any of
This is why you have an EU (Score:5, Insightful)
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Britian has so lost so much sovereignty.
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What's the point of being powerful when you're stupid? More power doesn't make one smarter, it only makes one more dangerous. Wanting more control then starts with wanting more surveillance, because one cannot control what one cannot see. Not everybody wants this, especially when it leads to your government having more control over the narratives and interests of their citizens.
It's only a hearing so far. We'll have to see what comes out of it. Perhaps it teaches the EU how to deal with its fear and doesn't
You're assuming facts not in evidence (Score:2)
Maybe, just maybe as a sovereign nation having foreign mega corporations controlling that much of your media isn't a good thing? Maybe being bullied by the United States isn't a good thing? Maybe nation states need power in order to be stable enough to exert intelligence? Maybe Europe, which has managed to give most if not
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which is that the EU is inherently stupid (now's the point where you act aghast that I would suggest you said that because you implied it without stating it outright, ala Ben Shapiro).
Aghast? No, not at all. I'm shaking my head, because I thought of you as being a bit young, stupid and naive, and now you reply with such nonsense. You're the one who made the argument on the power of the EU being "the point" here. The EU is trying to have a talk and isn't taking any action yet, while you already talk of power and want to see the EU as victorious. The EU is being careful.
Mega corporations then don't control "your" media. It isn't yours, or the EU's media, but it's the people of the world's
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Go read Manufactured consent and get off my lawn with it's 6 digit UID.
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Go read Manufactured consent
You do realise the book criticises not social media, where people get to have almost any view they want even when its sometimes just an obviously wrong view, but that he criticises the US news media and how it fabricates consent? So I need to ask, whose side are you really on? The side of social media or that of government controlled media? Government controlled media is definitely not the same as social media. But guess what? Chomsky also doesn't like social media, because he thinks it gets used for good a
Dishonest to god, people. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US, they threatened section 230 changes, potentially tens of billions of dollars of worth (or more, some are pushing $1 trillion in worth) by allowing lawsuits, or perhaps outright breakup.
Unless they censor harrassment. Oh, and our political opposition says harrassing things.
And dangerous stuff. Oh, and our political opposition says dangerous stuff.
It works. The companies acquiesce "of their own free will".
Note facebook at one point deliberately and loudly declined to censor politicians because, in a democracy, the people need to hear what their politicians say, or it makes a mockery of democracy. And caught hell for it from Congress.
Anyway, apparently this is a hole in the First Amendment, so Europe, sans such a thing, rushes to clamp down on their opponents. The US, normally the leader in theories of freedom, leads in holes politicians can use to clamp down on freedom of speech.
Stop, humanity. Reverse course.
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This is always the end-run around the US Constitution. For the first amendment they won't 'technically' limit what you can say or force providers to do so, they will just take the mob approach and say "Well, sure would be a shame if you were sued out of existence, huh?".
They can and will take the same dreary approach to the second amendment. "Wow, we won't take away your guns! What are you, paranoid?! No, but it sure would be a shame if every victim of a legally manufactured and sold firearm could sue the
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Microsoft (Score:3)
*Microsoft homers into a bush...*
What the actual fuck? (Score:2)
How can they ask Apple to be there, but not Microsoft or Twitter?
If anything, either both Apple and Microsoft should be present, or none of them. But Twitter should definitely be present as they're on the same level as Facebook and Google.
So why did Apple end up on that list, but not Twitter?
Re: What the actual fuck? (Score:2)
Twitter is just a shitty crippled blog.
They aren't a massice company with all kinds of hardware and services and global projects.
And yes, MS should be there, but they are more like the last generation and already got plenty of spanking before.
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I have no idea why Twitter isn't on the list but one reason why Apple might be on the list is because they removed Parler from their App Store.
* Note: I am NOT commenting on whether I personally agree or disagree with Apple's decision. I'm just pointing out why Apple might be on the list.
iMessage interoperability (Score:2)
Can they require that Apple must open iMessage interoperability? Frankly though, people ought to only use messaging systems that are run by non-profit foundations -- like how Signal is. And better yet those foundation board members must have limited term lengths.
They ask the wolves to not eat sheep? (Score:2)
Thar is a little bit unrealistic isn't it?
It's like asking "Don't do your very business model."
The only difference to saying it straight as "Fuck off and die!", is that here, they can ignore it and find a way to plausibly make it look like they don't, while keep on doing it. Bad idea.
Honestly, it's not a bad idea (Score:2)
Considering what the utter mess of the U.S. has been, providing a way for the EU to sit down and talk to the CEOs of major tech companies in a venue outside the U.S. is probably not a bad idea. Or, to have a series of online video conferences. They can share goals, opinions, and suggestions going forward. It seems clear that the companies mentioned have made a lot of money and can afford to perhaps operate more like an EU company in the EU, or at least provide ways for EU regulations to be handled if not t
Truth always win... (Score:2)
I don't get it, cluestick please (Score:1)
People say the most stupid stuff online. It's a known phenomenon that has been backed by scientific study for years that people think that they are anonymous, and therefore social norms and pressure drop, and they act like, well, poo-flinging monkeys.
Why in the hell aren't they held accountable? Why in the hell are we instead arguing about free speech, social media, and a whole slew of crap that has nothing to do with the actual core problem?
"But now you're just giving up your privacy!!1!" you claim in horr