this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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[–] Foni@lemm.ee 281 points 1 week ago (16 children)

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.

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 175 points 1 week ago (11 children)
[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 65 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Letme@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's by design, the politicians only need 28% to win, easier to scrape those votes off the bottom of the barrel of knowledge

[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 59 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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?

[–] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 176 points 1 week ago (53 children)

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

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 67 points 1 week ago

They could even make it look exactly like Google. What's Google going to do about it? Get wrecked is what.

[–] DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (50 children)

It would likely be impossible to redirect google.com without either sparking a cyberwar or building something like the great firewall of China, quite possibly both.

Blocking is somewhat possible, but to redirect, they would have to forge google certificates and possibly also fork Chrome and convince users to replace their browser, since last I checked, google hard-coded it's own public keys into Chrome.

Technical detailsI say blocking in somewhat possible, because governments can usually just ask DNS providers to not resolve a domain or internet providers to block IPs.

The issue is, google runs one of the largest DNS services in the world, so what happens if google says no? The block would at best be partial, at worst it could cause instability in the DNS system itself.

What about blocking IPs? Well, google data centers run a good portion of the internet, likely including critical services. Companies use google services for important systems. Block google data centers and you will have outages that will make crowd-strike look like a tiny glitch and last for months.

Could we redirect the google DNS IPs to a different, EU controlled server? Yes, but such attempts has cause issues beyond the borders of the country attempting it in the past. It would at least require careful preparations.

As for forging certificates, EU does control multiple Certificate authorities. But forging a certificate breaks the cardinal rule for being a trusted CA. Such CA would likely be immediately distrusted by all browsers. And foreig governments couldn't ignore this either. After all, googles domains are not just used for search. Countless google services that need to remain secure could potentially be compromised by the forged certificate. In addition, as I mentioned, google added hard-coded checks into Chrome to prevent a forged certificate from working for it's domains.

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[–] AceSLS@ani.social 151 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Good, hope they get banned in the EU so people will switch to competitors

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 72 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago

Then you got people like Musk using their websites as foreign influence platforms to restore Nazis into power so I'd imagine there's an appetite for not being so reliant on the increasingly belligerent US media oligarchy, which itself is the victim of Fox News and Murdoch.

Plus everything is already enshittified anyway so easy to create better.

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[–] MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world 102 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Damn.

Wish the rest of us could just ignore all laws & not face any consequences.

What a fucking joke this entire system is.

[–] OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They don't have a problem giving someone 100 years for a quarter bag of weed though. For a first time offense.

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[–] xenomor@lemmy.world 76 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Given that we are going full authoritarian fascist now, perhaps the EU should ban Google, given the US tik tok precedent.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Toribor@corndog.social 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Democracies around the world rightly shouldn't tolerate the blatant corruption and manipulative business practice of American tech companies.

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 73 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ours@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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!

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[–] oh_@lemmy.world 64 points 1 week ago

Time for EU to simply ban Google then for non compliance.

[–] timestatic@feddit.org 60 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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

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[–] Geobloke@lemm.ee 52 points 1 week ago (14 children)

I hate community notes, it's a cost free way of fact checking with no accountability.

I also hate these big international tech companies. Forget too big to fail, these are too big to change. We are all techno peasants and they are our tech lords

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[–] HaiZhung@feddit.org 51 points 1 week ago

I get the sentiment, who doesn’t want to dunk on Google?

But the headline is needlessly inflammatory. There is no law yet; and google essentially is saying please please don’t implement it, it totally doesn’t make sense.

Don’t get me wrong, the EU should still implement it. And once it is law; Google will also comply.

[–] DicJacobus@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Didn't a year ago or so, Some European lawmaker made a vague hint in support of something that involved regulations on social media, and Elon replied "go fuck yourself" verbatem?

Play hardball, or surrender and give them what they want. there's no compromise or middle ground with these techbro fascists

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

Google is basically saying the EU couldn't do its own subpar search and they're not brave enough to try.

[–] Ste41th@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 week ago

Fuck Google

[–] penguinclaw@lemm.ee 23 points 1 week ago

Unbelievable 2025 is turning out to be a stellar year

[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fascism is good for business.

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[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 22 points 1 week ago (5 children)

If the links in the article are accurate, this doesn't seem to be a "law", but this thing: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/code-practice-disinformation

Anyone know more about it than I could quickly find? Is this in any way legally enforceable?

Obviously, I believe that governments have no legitimate business whatsoever telling us on the Internet what we can talk about, say to each other, etc.; but I would still like to know more about this particular attempt by the EU to do so anyway, so would appreciate more information.

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[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

We need fact checkers more than community notes. Because disproving a claim takes a lot of time and skill, and notes will be abused for financial and personal gain in the long run. Perhaps it is also better to use the word content moderator instead of fact checker, as finding the ultimate truth isn't possible, unless you just present a mathematical proof.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 week ago

wish the eu would just actually ban american companies there is really no need for them anyway

[–] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

Sovereign citizens are really getting out of hand. Oh wait it's google.

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 15 points 1 week ago

Google, this is t he EU, not America, they're not going to suck up to you.

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