I love that the EU is cracking down on tech, but I also wish the US government could get in on that awesome rake.
Google: $2.7 billion
Apple: $14.34 billion
For everything else, there’s Mastercard
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it every time it’s proven again: US consumers get more protection from tech company overreach from EU courts than our own. Our agencies need to have big gnarly angelfish teeth, not this wrist slapping “as long as you share the profits it’s basically legal” nonsense.
That would require political system changes like making party anonymous donations illegal, putting them all on registers and setting max legal amount to $1000 per entity or something realistic. Then change preference system. The list goes on. It’s a system setup to bias corporate and “special” (rich) interest.
Honestly starting with the re-overturning of “money is people” also known as Citizens United would be a good start. This act more or less made it so money is considered free speech which allowed any type of Corporation to spend as much as they want on political groups, it was spearheaded as a thing that the country needed to avoid blocking things such as smear campaigning your opponent. But what it actually did was more or less remove the $5,000 limit that packs and super packs had on financing campaigns and and political donations, because all the Super PAC has to do now is say they aren’t politically aligned with a party and they can just funnel as much money into that party as they like, which obviously puts any party that remotely goes against profit(in most cases the democratic party because they generally want more social styled programs) at a significant disadvantage
Not to mention the federal committees that were intentionally implemented to stop corruption that happened within the government because we knew that we couldn’t be trusted to deal with important things such as communication and Airline Administration are being gutted by the same system that was supposed to protect them. While everyone’s using the excuse of well they’re not doing anything so why have them. They’re not doing anything because they can’t, hell the FCC has tried and the court system is saying they don’t have the right to rule over the department that they’re a committee over. It’s ridiculous
There is an opinion that this is what allows corporate and other power to exist legally. Otherwise it’d just all go Al Capone again, not vanish nor diminish.
google is fighting the eu and the ftc at the same time lol
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So. Niece and nephew are going for the ol’ aunt. She can take them easily… For now
Ok…but now what forces these companies to actually pay? What happens if they just DON’T pay?
Additional fines and, if necessary, sanctions. If you refuse to pay a fine imposed by the EU then guess what? You can’t do business in the EU any more.
BAN HAMMER
Ban from what exactly?
Operating in the EU?
But what if they keep doing it anyways?
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They could force ISPs to block, not allow physical hardware sales in stores, take over any assets (offices), confiscate their server farms. There’s lots that can be done.
Oh, we are being enthusiastic about the state boot again.
I mean, since corps are already using it to their ends, then it’d be probably a good thing to stomp them right back with that boot.
But I’d like a clean humanist solution more.
That’d involve, for example, commissioning a FOSS P2P post-Web system which would replace Google’s and Facebook’s and others’ services. A few dozens of nation states, not poorest on Earth, could do that.
That system would be simpler and cheaper than their missiles and jet planes and drones, while so tremendously useful to kill once and for all this particular threat.
Like those Locutus and ghost keys things, which are not a working thing yet, but very promising.
