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Europe's strategy seems to be to bring down the U.S. tech sector by attempting to impose more onerous regulations like GDPR on it. See, for example, the "Online Safety Act" and how the UK's Ofcom is unsuccessfully enforcing it by emailing threats to American companies, notably ones not under UK jurisdiction.
No, the obvious answer is the true one here. Europe and the UK really really hate that the fundamental, society-altering technology that all of their citizens are using >5hrs a day is completely out of their control, as is the AI that they are hoping will become the new basis of their economy. And they are fundamentally incapable of conceiving that the answer might be less regulation rather than more. The closest American example is when America legislated the sale of TikTok (did that ever go through?).
I personally have mixed feelings about this. Having your public places under the control of another country is in some ways safer than having them under the control of your own country - broadly I like that Musk can tell Starmer to take a long walk off a short pier. But this cuts both ways, and I don't blame the various governments involved for being antsy around it.
This is in no way the obvious answer. The actual reason Europe and the UK hate the US tech companies, especially recently, is that the first amendment allows for freedom of speech which European governments absolutely cannot abide - exposure of the scandals of the elite and what they are doing is anathema to the corrupt and honestly evil governments that they have in place (see the recent disclosures about Peter Mandelson). Less regulation would in no way achieve their goals of censoring speech and keeping their population ignorant, which is why they are simply trying to use their existing powers to shut down foreign sources of uncensored communication services.
Yes, it did, and users are now abandoning the platform in droves due to the removal of pro-Palestinian content, the mandatory amplification of Trump/Zionist content and censorship which means private messages containing the word "Epstein" cannot be sent.
Gosh, I'm so glad all the Americans are explaining to us poor benighted Europeans how it is that we hate Mom and apple pie.
Here was me thinking GDPR, massive pain in the backside though it is, was to prevent data scraping and turning customers into commodities by selling every single jot and tittle of information you hand over to these companies.
Nope, it's because bald eagle screech as it flies overhead, Marine Corps march by, Star Spangled Banner flies proudly in the wind as 'America the Beautiful' is sung by the Tabernacle Choir we hate all the good things!
You'd think that the whole Tea App debacle - Tea App not having been usable in its purpose in Europe due to being obviously wildly GDPR incompliant - would have shown that there are in fact reasons for GDPR other than just hobbling the US tech sector.
You'd think that the EU making more money from fining American companies, than from taxing it's own tech sector, would have shown that it is about hobbling the US tech sector, and the Tea App debacle ia just a happy coincidence.
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While there is some validity to the general point, the idea that Mandelson/Epstein is an example of a specifically European need for censorship to conceal elite depravity is silly - the decision to do the Epstein cover-up was taken in the US, and the British have promptly thrown every Epstein associate under the bus as soon as the Americans allowed their involvement to become public. The deroyalling of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and banning from the financial industry of Jes Staley remain the only meaningful punishments of Epstein clients, and Mandelson is now the subject of a criminal investigation. The reason why the UK police investigation into Mandelson only just started is because the Americans kept details of his wrongdoing secret in order to protect US elites who participated in his crimes - in the case of Mandelson particularly, Jamie Dimon, and in the case of the Epstein files more broadly Donald Trump.
90+% of what European authorities want to censor is either accurate information about the harm caused by immigration, or malicious lies exaggerating the harm caused by immigration. And, of course, the reason why free speech is an issue in the first place is the difficulty in distinguishing between the two.
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That is the same thing that I said, in much more polemical language, but it's only part of the story. Yes, various European and non-American (Aussie, UK, Canada) governments are very upset that, from their perspective, unfortunate dirty laundry is being aired in public. Some of them surely have things they would like to hide, others rightly or wrongly believe that the country would be better off and less febrile if matters weren't presented in a maximally inflammatory way and optimised for engagement.
But there are also lots of other things that people are concerned about. They really don't like the effect that addictive Instagram and TikTok etc. are having on the ability of young people to concentrate or socialise, they don't like Grok in general and the nudifying features in particular, etc.
Ultimately, both voters and governments generally prefer for regulation to be possible, even if they decide not to do it. Having a big part of life subject to the whims of Washington and Silicon Valley rubs people the wrong way.
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We Euros love regulation and censorship both. It's not just one or the other.
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Yeah, it is funny to see that underneath all that socialism and all that postmodern philosophical masturbation, Europe really still believes in feudalism and is furious that us new world peasants won't pay the King's Tax! Don't we know that they are our betters!
I don't know how to say this but you're the richest and most powerful people in the world. This kind of discussion always turns into a Bravery Debate but regulation like GDPR is more about clawing back some agency from America than it is trying to tax US industry.
As the Right discovered five years ago, and the Left discovered when Musk bought X, network effects and the overall stack just don't allow for 'make-your-own' social media.
(I don't actually like or agree with the vast majority of this regulation, though I think that GDPR specifically was a step in the right direction of forcing companies to give more than absolutely zero shits about the privacy of their customers).
Normally I wouldn't be quite so thin-skinned but the Greenland fiasco drove home for me just how worrying it is that half of the most powerful country in the world thinks of us as being essentially a pantomime villain from a Mel Gibson movie.
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We do, though. In 2024, US tech companies paid more in fines alone (€3.8 billion) than the income tax revenue of the entire European tech sector (€3.2 billion).
https://atr.org/brussels-exploits-american-tech-companies-by-enforcing-heavy-fines-for-regulatory-non-compliance/
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