EU countries are asleep at the wheel on matters of national security and sovereignty. Spotify is not a matter of national security. TikTok, and social networking in general, has been one for some time now. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, actual conspiracies to overthrow govt, etc have all found renewed vigor thanks to social networks.
US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.
If that’s your position, then you would be fine if EU countries were to pull out all US telco infrastructure because of their previous abuses towards European citizens?
I'd be mindful that having a NATO partner be able to spy is maybe better than having Huawei spy if you have to choose, but yes, I think it's a risk that EU countries should be aware of and probably are more aware of than with social networks.
Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. They are not in the same business. Meta is in the social networking domain, which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security. The "color revolutions" and the "Arab Spring" gave them good reason to believe that online social networks were a driver of societal change too powerful not to control. And they control it very very tightly.
> Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. Meta is in the social networking domain
Microsoft operated its own popular social network in China, called MSN Messenger. Tens of millions Chinese users were on that platform for like a decade until the release of mobile based WeChat.
> which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security
It is a matter of national security, we all saw what happened on twitter shortly before the 6th Jan 2021 attack.
That is the exact reason why everyone agreed that TikTok must host all US data and its deployed recommendation algorithm code in the US with 3rd party audit access by an appointed US entity.
The only question here is why should Meta and Google be exempted from the exact same rules if they want to operate their services in China.
MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_China
They were defeated by the QQ app and shut down in 2014.
> MSN Messenger in China was run by MSN China, a separate company run by Chinese residents (as required by Chinese law)
Microsoft retained a 50% ownership of MSN China, just check the link you cited. Microsoft also retained the full ownership of the MSN messenger software while MSN China was just in charge of its day to day operation in China.
Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
> Also interesting to see that millions of Tesla EVs are being sold in China, hundreds of millions other American cars were sold in the past, but when Chinese EVs try to crack the US market it sudden becomes a national security issue.
Why are you making it sound like China doesn't restrict Tesla for "national security"?
Tesla was asked to complete a comprehensive review to ensure its data compliance. Tesla did it and has been cleared for such data security issue, that is how Tesla sold 670k units in China in 2024.
IAPP isn't a bad source IMO but hard to evaluate their methods, but lets see.
> Level of understanding about data collection and use
Netherlands : Weak - 14%
USA : Weak - 24%
Not great, I could spend time finding more, but the summary is that the EU has regulations that require companies to limit the useage of consumers information and privacy. The EU is consumer privacy focused, wheras the US seems to be Enterprise & Organisation focused, also it's state level enforcements fracture enforcement even further.
Lets look at the US CCPA vs GDPR :
A crucial difference is that GDPR requires individuals to opt-in before businesses can collect data while there is no opt-in condition in CCPA.
That should say it all.
Edit : I forgot to add, outside of Sanctions the EU has no control to simply decide to ban a company when it feels like it.
You start off sounding like you're arguing against the idea that the EU exerts more control over media than the US, but then most of what you said seems to support the fact that they do so.
Protecting people is always the justification. “We aren’t restricting your freedom, we are protecting you.” That governments seek to “protect” people from words on a page is wild to me.
> regulations are for the companies. But they’re not banned.
So if they don’t follow the regulations they simply keep paying fines indefinitely? Until they run out of money? Until the company goes out of business? We aren’t banning those companies, instead we’ll attempt to bankrupt them if they stay in our markets; unless they do what we say. In other words, extortion?
No. Unlike a newspaper, they host videos and photos of a third of (?) the US population, have detailed reader data on who reads what when, who is friends with whom, location history, etc.
This data treasure trove may be stored in US, but it isn't protected from Chinese govt access. It is the same for data by American companies, which US Patriot act lets the US govt access.
Not necessarily. China pursues many objectives when it comes to its national security, such as intimidation and coercion of dissidents or opponents of its regime living abroad. Assuming China's equivalent of the Patriot act lets it treat TikTok user data as an open book, there is a lot for them to learn from it.
Foreign governments don't have a right to free speech in the US. They never have and the very idea is absurd. It's getting really tiresome to have to repeat this.
Compare with China though. There is absolutely no way that a company like Bytedance would be allowed to operate inside China while under American control.
I feel that the future for Python people who want type safety will eventually be TypeScript on nodejs. Go was intended as an alternative to C++. It seems that in reaction to the ungodly complexity of C++, the creators wanted to avoid adding language features as hard as possible. If the user could work around it with a little extra verbosity, it'd be ok. I feel they removed too much and maybe not the right things.
Musk in 2022: "Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic"
If the continental US can do it (and it looks like it might soon, with California voting for it) I'm not sure I buy that argument. Heck if China can survive on one timezone...
They certainly could if they had started that way, but changing it now will disadvantage at least one of the countries (Spain for example), and those countries’ politicians don’t want to risk the ire of their voters for the greater good. And DST is regulated on the EU level, so can’t be changed by individual EU members without breaking EU law, like apparently individual US states can.
It’s status quo bias and loss aversion. Similar to how it would be better for the US to change their voting system, but it will never happen because it would disfavor one of the political parties who’d have to approve the change.
Nah, the States can’t. What we actually voted for, and I voted for this too, was that if Congress passed a law that enabled States to move to permanent DST, then the legislature is authorized to pass a law to move California to permanent DST. Congress hasn’t acted, and the main guy who was pushing for this isn’t in the legislature anymore, but basically the law did nothing except send a message from Californians saying “yeah, this sounds good, do it.” but technically it was never necessary.
States can opt-out of DST, as a few have done, but cannot choose permanent DST (assuming the relevant federal law would be deemed valid/constitutional).
Is that not true for Portugal, or Finland in the other direction for example? I haven’t seen clear reasons for why a 1-hour offset would seriously affect economic relations particularly if it doesn’t affect when businesses are operating. Spain is already known (in stereotypes, so not sure if this holds up in reality) for later start/end times to the workday or other engagements than most western/central European countries, probably partly a figment of the time zone.
I think it's the changing times that people don't like, rather than standard time.
I'd prefer California to stay on standard time instead of staying on DST, so noon will be aligned with solar noon. (It is, right? I never actually checked.)
It’s tempting to want to put stock in solar noon as the the thing the day should be aligned around, but honestly it’s probably overrated. Personally, I much prefer daylight savings time over standard time if I had to pick only one.
US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.