Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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Background

Europeans (citizens, businesses, and governments) heavily rely on American tech. Europe has alternatives in most categories (e.g. phone, CDN) but most have less adoption.

The US has regulations. The EU and its nations have different regulations, notably the Digital Serivces Act and Digital Markets Act. Occasionally a big company gets fined and told to change; they usually appeal, then sometimes still don't pay or change anything. The EU and its nations are widely regarded as having way more, stricter regulations and fines.

Recent events

Reaffirming our commitment to child safety in the face of European Union inaction: apparently after Chat Control 2.0's failure and Chat Control 1.0's expiration, the EU has no legal framework for companies to detect and remove CSAM, but it's still illegal. So Google etc. are allegedly worried their existing process to detect and remove CSAM (scanning private data of EU citizens, which violates ePrivacy) is illegal, but no process would also be illegal. They're asking for some legal framework, which could be Chat Control 2.0 revived, or something completely new.

Chat Control 2.0 failed: "Chat Control" was a controversial bill that allowed scanning private data of EU citizens to catch child predators and CSAM distributors. Chat Control 2.0 would've been more invasive than the existing one (requiring client-side scanning), but was rejected while the old one expired.
This Hacker News comment is a more detailed and overall better summary of the whole fiasco.

Critics say Brussels risks ceding control of its tech laws under U.S. pressure: the Trump admin is trying to get Europe to relax their regulations. The European Commission plans to negotiate and European Parliament members are criticising them.

US subpoenas tech companies for private messages of European officials enforcing the DSA: the Trump admin is criticing European governments for censoring speech, which is...true, and not just "hate speech" but sometimes just criticing politicians.

German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function: it's not mandatory and hasn't yet been implemented, but a related issue is various banking apps only working on locked-down Apple and Google phones.

France's Mistral raises $830 million in debt for AI data centre build-up: Mistral has released mostly open-weight models and tools including Le Chat (online chatbot) and Vibe (CLI chatbot). Their models are orders of magnitude smaller than Chinese and American ones, but apparently decent local LLMs.

Cloudflare-Italy-Olympics fiasco: Italy fined Cloudflare $17 million for not enforcing "Piracy Shield" which allegedly gives rightsholders wide discretion to block websites and Cloudflare 30 minutes to comply. Cloudflare is appealing and hasn't paid the fine nor complied.

Online ideas and my opinions

More radical

"The EU should ban and block US tech companies": on (pro tech freedom) Hacker News of all sites, which suprised me. Effectively a Great Firewall for the EU. I strongly disagree. More broadly, I believe people should have the freedom to stream propaganda from any nation they want: Russia, China, even Iran. I have no issue with governments directing citizens to their own propaganda and discouraging other sources, even preventing people who are so dumb they may actually believe whatever e.g. the Iran regime says. But this leads to the proposal's more significant, practical issue: way too many Europeans use American tech, and they aren't switching despite seemingly having some national pride and US dislike. European governments internally use Office and other American tools. It's near-term infeasible.

"Europe should stop protecting US Intellectual Property, from Cory Doctorow: while I'd love to see the end of IP, like I'd love to see the end of labor, this is also near-term infeasible, so I also strongly disagree. If a European nation "just stops" enforcing the DMCA, tech companies can "just stop" operating there, and remember that practically all of Europe still relies on them. Cory Doctorow has lots of interesting arguments, and I really admire and support his crusade against IP and enshittification, but his views are very extreme and some of his ideas go too far.

What I think European nations should do in the near term is provide leniencey for and encourage companies to not over-enforce IP laws; for example, by supporting companies who get sued for not taking down content from a flawed DMCA claim (DMCA takedowns are heavily abused). Likewise, they should defend companies who are wrongly sued for copyright/patent infringement, and ensure, however strictly IP is enforced, it's equally strict on small and big companies.
I'd still like to see the end of IP, but it must be done reasonably and with an alternative for deserving IP owners (particularly artists who need to make a living, and not platform owners who restrict users' content). For example, LLMs sidestep existing IP: they can scrape any website, build any app from a description, and generate copyrighted characters for personal use. Maybe European (and American) nations can accept AI companies training on copyrighted data in exchange for keeping this.

Less radical

"European nations and/or the EU should encourage and fund European alternatives": strongly agree. In general, I want to see more variety and innovation. In particular, I think everyone using locked-down platforms (social medias, phones, mail, etc.) is really bad, and the way out is not regulation (though some is important/useful) but competition, so companies are pressured to open their platforms or at least stop degrading them.

Notably, I don't actually care whether the alternative platforms are European.
Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that governments will help here. And I myself avoid mainstream social media, but still use an iPhone and Mac because they're better.
On Mistral. AI is particularly important, so Europe will be at a big disadvantage if they don't get competitive AI and America restricts its own. Mistral makes local models (as opposed to locked-down cloud ones), so I want them to succeed. However, even with full EU backing, they'd be outcompeted by OpenAI and Anthropic, who can release local models themselves, making all their effort and work seem wasted. Except I don't think it would actually be a waste, like how acquiring weapons isn't a waste, when the deterrence from their existense makes them unnecessary.

"European nations should relax (tech and general employee) regulations to encourage innovation": agree, there are way too many. But I don't think they should relax them as far as the US. I don't know where to draw the line, and I don't have the motivation or discipline to understand existing regulations (not even getting into how they're applied in practice).

Vaguely, I believe American tech companies should be regulated more, since they seem to be damaging society and have effective monopolies due to network effects. And more importantly I want to see more tech innovation, which I think is hurt by less competition. But I don't exactly know how.

I generally think America and Europe should work together, but here, I think different regulatory frameworks and competing tech services is good.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Brainwavez 18hr ago

European tech, American tech, and regulation

tl;dr: what do you think about 1) European alternatives to American tech, and 2) European and American tech regulations?

Europeans (citizens, businesses, and governments) heavily rely on American tech. Europe has alternatives in most categories (e.g. phone, CDN) but most have less adoption.
The US has regulations. The EU and its nations have different regulations, notably the Digital Serivces Act and Digital Markets Act. Occasionally a big company gets fined and told to change; they usually appeal, then sometimes still don't pay or change anything. The EU and its nations are widely regarded as having way more, stricter regulations and fines.

Reaffirming our commitment to child safety in the face of European Union inaction: apparently after Chat Control 2.0's failure and Chat Control 1.0's expiration, the EU has no legal framework for companies to detect and remove CSAM, but it's still illegal. So Google etc. are allegedly worried their existing process to detect and remove CSAM (scanning private data of EU citizens, which violates ePrivacy) is illegal, but no process would also be illegal. They're asking for some legal framework, which could be Chat Control 2.0 revived, or something completely new.
- Chat Control 2.0 failed: "Chat Control" was a controversial bill that allowed scanning private data of EU citizens to catch child predators and CSAM distributors. Chat Control 2.0 would've been more invasive than the existing one (requiring client-side scanning), but was rejected while the old one expired.
- This Hacker News comment is a more detailed and overall better summary of the whole fiasco.
Critics say Brussels risks ceding control of its tech laws under U.S. pressure: the Trump admin is trying to get Europe to relax their regulations. The European Commission plans to negotiate and European Parliament members are criticising them.
- US subpoenas tech companies for private messages of European officials enforcing the DSA: the Trump admin is criticing European governments for censoring speech, which is...true, and not just "hate speech" but sometimes just criticing politicians.
German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function: it's not mandatory and hasn't yet been implemented, but a related issue is various banking apps only working on locked-down Apple and Google phones.
France's Mistral raises $830 million in debt for AI data centre build-up: Mistral has released mostly open-weight models and tools including Le Chat (online chatbot) and Vibe (CLI chatbot). Their models are orders of magnitude smaller than Chinese and American ones, but apparently decent local LLMs.
Cloudflare-Italy-Olympics fiasco: Italy fined Cloudflare $17 million for not enforcing "Piracy Shield" which allegedly gives rightsholders wide discretion to block websites and Cloudflare 30 minutes to comply. Cloudflare is appealing and hasn't paid the fine nor complied.

"The EU should ban and block US tech companies": on (pro tech freedom) Hacker News of all sites, which suprised me. Effectively a Great Firewall for the EU. I strongly disagree. More broadly, I believe people should have the freedom to stream propaganda from any nation they want: Russia, China, even Iran. I have no issue with governments directing citizens to their own propaganda and discouraging other sources, even preventing people who are so dumb they may actually believe whatever e.g. the Iran regime says. But this leads to the proposal's more significant, practical issue: way too many Europeans use American tech, and they aren't switching despite seemingly having some national pride and US dislike. European governments internally use Office and other American tools. It's near-term infeasible.
"Europe should stop protecting US Intellectual Property, from Cory Doctorow: while I'd love to see the end of IP, like I'd love to see the end of labor, this is also near-term infeasible, so I also strongly disagree. If a European nation "just stops" enforcing the DMCA, tech companies can "just stop" operating there, and remember that practically all of Europe still relies on them. Cory Doctorow has lots of interesting arguments, and I really admire and support his crusade against IP and enshittification, but his views are very extreme and some of his ideas go too far.
- What I think European nations should do in the near term is provide leniencey for and encourage companies to not over-enforce IP laws; for example, by supporting companies who get sued for not taking down content from a flawed DMCA claim (DMCA takedowns are heavily abused). Likewise, they should defend companies who are wrongly sued for copyright/patent infringement, and ensure, however strictly IP is enforced, it's equally strict on small and big companies.
- I'd still like to see the end of IP, but it must be done reasonably and with an alternative for deserving IP owners (particularly artists who need to make a living, and not platform owners who restrict users' content). For example, LLMs sidestep existing IP: they can scrape any website, build any app from a description, and generate copyrighted characters for personal use. Maybe European (and American) nations can accept AI companies training on copyrighted data in exchange for keeping this.

"European nations and/or the EU should encourage and fund European alternatives": strongly agree. In general, I want to see more variety and innovation. In particular, I think everyone using locked-down platforms (social medias, phones, mail, etc.) is really bad, and the way out is not regulation (though some is important/useful) but competition, so companies are pressured to open their platforms or at least stop degrading them.
- Notably, I don't actually care whether the alternative platforms are European.
- Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that governments will help here. And I myself avoid mainstream social media, but still use an iPhone and Mac because they're better.
- On Mistral. AI is particularly important, so Europe will be at a big disadvantage if they don't get competitive AI and America restricts its own. Mistral makes local models (as opposed to locked-down cloud ones), so I want them to succeed. However, even with full EU backing, they'd be outcompeted by OpenAI and Anthropic, who can release local models themselves, making all their effort and work seem wasted. Except I don't think it would actually be a waste, like how acquiring weapons isn't a waste, when the deterrence from their existense makes them unnecessary.
"European nations should relax (tech and general employee) regulations to encourage innovation": agree, there are way too many. But I don't think they should relax them as far as the US. I don't know where to draw the line, and I don't have the motivation or discipline to understand existing regulations (not even getting into how they're applied in practice).

Context

crushedoranges Russia and Ukraine are two butch lesbians fighting over a condom Brainwavez 3hr ago

Here's what will happen in Europe.

A) A study will be commissioned for ten million dollars, providing a steady sinecure for several credentialed experts, that will produce a tidy report four years too late to be timely, that has the right decisions, however...

B) Several start-ups blossom like mushrooms around the recommendations, but lacking the capital to grow and burdened by EU employment law, decamp to the United States.

C) Lacking any viable local company, it is given to a national champion alongside several billion dollars to produce a result ten years too late and too small to be of any significance.

D) The French and the Germans fight over workshare and capital of said pointless endeavor, turning it into a boondoogle as every politically connected company turns up for a feed at the trough, and it dies a miserable, pointless death.

Repeat, ad nauseam.

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