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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5580 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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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?

Background

  1. 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.
  2. 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

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.

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.

Oh, snap. I was sitting on an effortpost on the subject, but never got around to finishing it. Since you're bringing it up, I'll just dump the draft I had stored:

Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in Europe and a shared core value with the United States across the democratic world.

Some of you might scoff at these words if you've been keeping tabs at what's going on in Europe. Some might scoff even harder upon realizing they come from a statement from the European Comission responding to Trump's travel sanctions against Commissioner Thierry Breton, who sent a letter to Elon Musk, threatening him with regulatory retaliation, ahead of his interview with Trump. But even if you were familiar with that situation, when you find out how deep this rabbit hole goes, it might turn out all that scoffing is nowhere near enough

Recently the House Judiciary Committee released a report on EU laws' impact on American political speech. They subpoena'd the major platforms for documentation on the measures they took to comply with EU regulations, and the results were quite illuminating. One of the responses to the Twitter Files story was that it's a nothingburger. Private companies came up with private terms for using their private platform, and the government was essentially just pushing the "report" button. We've had plenty of conversations about whether that is an accurate portrayal of the situation, but aside from that, it now looks like the core premise of that response is wrong. The platforms' terms of service weren't established on their own accord, but rather under pressure from the European Commission. From the report:

starting in 2015 and 2016, the European Commission began creating various forums in which European regulators could meet directly with technology platforms to discuss how and what content should be moderated. Though ostensibly meant to combat "misinformation" and "hate speech," nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last ten years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.

The EU Internet Forum (EUIF), founded in 2015 by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs (DG-Home), was among the first of these initiatives. By 2023, EUIF published a "handbook ... for use by tech companies when moderating" lawful, non-violative speech such as:

  • "Populist rhetoric";
  • "Anti-government/anti-EU" content;
  • "Anti-elite" content;
  • "Political satire";
  • "Anti-migrants and Islamophobic content";
  • "Anti-refugee/immigrant sentiment";
  • "Anti-LGBTIQ . . . content"; and
  • "Meme subculture."

Now, some might say that just because an official government body invited some companies to have a friendly conversation about moderating their platforms, doesn't mean any pressure is actually being put on them, but the problem with that theory is that the companies themselves weren't under that impression. The report contains examples of emails such as this one from Google:

...co-chairs set the agenda under (strong) impetus from the EU Commission; decision is taken by "consensus" -- but consensus can be heavily pressed by the EC, if they disagree where it's going.

or:

The EC is opening the GAI subgroup under the Code of Practice. I assume we want to join (we don't really have a choice), but do we also want to co-chair it?

or one from TikTok about adding rules against "marginalizing speech and behaviour", and various forms of "misinformation":

This update, which was advised by the legal team, is mainly related to compliance with the Digital Services Act

Now, maybe this is just a case of overzealous bureaucrats throwing their weight around to push their private agenda? Despite the letter of support for Breton after Trump's sanctions, the official line was that was acting without authorization, so maybe this is was also the case here? Well, maybe, but said bureaucrats really wanted to make it seem like this is all done with the blessing of the top brass. For example an email from an EC official representatives at Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Bytedance signed off with:

Given the urgency, I take the liberty to use this informal channel but I want to assure you that I am addressing you with the agreement of the Vice-President (who is cooperating on this with [redacted] and [redacted]) and the knowledge of the President.

Personally, I think this casts doubt on the claims about Breton as well.

The executive summary of the report isn't a long read, and has receipts for a few other dramas like the Romanian elections.

Has there ever in history been a government that implemented any speech restrictions that didn't spread to broad criticism of the ruling party?

The US? say what you will about America, the first amendment is amazing. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "the ruling party".

Edit1: There has been certain attempts, like the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, but overall the first amendment has been a strong stalwart against government overreach.

I feel Americans are far too quick to congratulate themselves on the topic of freedoms and rights. Not only has the US government worked to censor in recent years using big tech as a proxy, it has also done so historically, such as with the case of Schenck v. United States, Charles Coughlin, McCarthyism or COINTELPRO and similar.

If the government was the owner of all major communications platforms, then yeah, the first amendment would technically be super relevant. But when American law is willing to leverage the right of a single company owner to censor speech as being equal to the right of millions of people to express themselves on that companies platform, you have a state of affairs that is effectively no different from not having any free speech rights at all. Which is exactly the case for anyone wanting to color outside the lines of American powers that be. Maybe not by putting you in jail, as is the case in Europe. But via indirect means, such as with the examples given earlier or suddenly not having a bank account or not being able to freely choose an airline or host a website by any normal means.

I think a secondary part is that what a lot of Americans believe doesn't seem to matter a whole lot. And even if that wasn't the case, American media has had such a stranglehold on the public that it's not as if there was ever going to be a risk of anyone believing anything truly heterodox to begin with. And if that were ever a likely case, the American government can and has stepped in to get ahead of those movements. The sheer mass of the American media and political system has been too great for any popular grass roots movement to budge it until, arguably, 2016 Trump arrived.

But even after Trump, TPTB have learned their lesson, are course correcting and we are now only celebrating 'free speech' in America because a South African bought twitter.

  1. As pointed out by @ChickenOverlord, Americans and their speech is so so so much free-er than other countries that sometimes I feel Americans don't get congratulated enough for it
  2. Yes, that's right, the question was about government overreach. Being able to does not mean it has to be easy. And yeah, the difficulty with getting your ideas and thoughts across to others is part of the friction of communication. I'm not sure what is being asked here, are you asking that political belief is to be a protected class and private companies should not use that as an excuse to offer/not-offer products and services? Either way, if people want their speech heard, nothing prevents them from taking over or recreate what they need.
  3. What Americans believe matters a whole lot. Trump's 2.0 victory is complete vindication of how what the median American thinks matters and led the country to what they want. Feels like every other presidency can be easily characterized as "newcomer with grassroots momentum that trounced the elite favorite".
  4. So the freedom of the people worked. An American, with the means and opportunities to make a change, made a change! He certainly didn't stay in South Africa to do that. He did what he did with Twitter because he had ideological and philosophical values, very American ones if I might add, that drove his actions.

1 I responded to that comment below.

2 If your free speech comes with the caveat that any sufficiently powerful person or group can effectively own the public square in part or whole and dictate what can and can't be said then I can only consider my original point, that Americans are far too quick to congratulate themselves on the topic of freedoms and rights, proven and demonstrated.

3 I'm not terribly interested in getting in the weeds on this nor do I see the relevance, but:

I don't see how Trump 2.0 can be considered to have given his voters what they wanted when there is an active middle east war and more foreign workers in the country now than before his second term began. But the MAGA base will cheer on literally anything as long as Trump does it so there's that.

If your free speech rights hinge on you becoming a billionaire to functionally buy the public square then, again, I feel I can't overstate my original point.

4 Isn't that a great refutation of your own point? He didn't compare himself to Europe and make that the barometer. He had ideological and philosophical values! He looked beyond just what's in the world and dared to dream of what was possible. Or something...

But how American are those values? The vast majority of the American elite is in favor of speech restrictions and controls. Illustrated by every other American platform having very clear speech and content restrictions that go beyond any law of the land. That's why Musk had to buy Twitter. Before that people had been getting banned for misgendering people or making political jokes that offended the ownership elite or the special interest groups that constantly drive for more censorship like the ADL. Musk's X is in a very clear minority among the elite and his platform still engages in censorship and backroom algorithmic manipulation.

How about we have our own ideologies and values and judge what's happening in the world of free speech by those? Rather than basing our barometer on what some billionaire came up with or what they are doing in Germany or wherever else.

I came from a country where people are afraid of writing too much in private chat and would rather call you up to talk. The plurality of opinions here in America is frikin amazing in comparison. People can go to whatever public square they like here. Twitter, bluesky, mastodon, reddit, random forums, random forums that had to migrate and move to their own sites. Good luck making another social media site in my country without getting a visit from the police. We obviously have very different viewpoints on this. "I didn't see the light until I was already a man". You are very vigilant of any erosion of rights, or maybe disappointed at the gap between theory and reality. Just because the American people (the elites or the masses) fail to live up to American values does not twist American values nor detract from the striving to have and keep those values. What I see is that an American can go into the streets holding a sign, or tweet it out, or make a website, or rambling posts on Facebook, on most things and won't get beaten or put away in unmarked vans, and that is the kind of freedoms I would congratulate America for.

an American can go into the streets holding a sign, or tweet it out, or make a website, or rambling posts on Facebook, on most things and won't get beaten or put away in unmarked vans

Unfortunately, this happened to Rümeysa Öztürk. That she was a (legal) immigrant Muslim who wrote an op-ed accusing Israel of genociding Palestinians - I think is just a poor excuse.

Thankfully, she's free now.

I do believe, today, the United States has overall more free speech than any other nation. I think the EU nations actually have decent free speech, at least relative to Russia, China, Iran, etc. Importantly, both America and Europe allow mocking public figures (my example is one of only a couple exceptions) and anonymous web usage (I'm sure the FBI etc. track you, but seem to only act on classified information and CSAM).

Still, I think every nation should have more.

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