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.
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.
Except reddit is all ai-generated bullshit now. Unless you search before 2024, searching reddit is literally useless, and that’s all going to be out of date so quickly
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.
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?
Although, in France we have a sort of proverb that says that what happens in the US happens here 10 years later. I hope we will manage to dodge what’s coming at us, this time…
Prime_Minister_Keyes@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 20:50
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Bingo. Trump already started playing with his corporate finger puppets, emboldening some, threatening others.
Same reason Zuckerberg, surely the expert on the matter, had this weird rambling about “masculine energy” very recently. What a Trumpian phrase.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 13:43
nextcollapse
Feel like that speech would have meant more when he still had the power to do anything about it. Instead of going to war against this oligarchy he chose to cash his political capital on a rushed pull out of Afghanistan, and to kill a bunch of Palestinians.
Instead of going to war against this oligarchy he chose to cash his political capital on a rushed pull out of Afghanistan
I don’t see how this is laid on Biden since Trump agreed to the withdrawal and timeline, and then R relentlessly hammered Biden for not getting on it, then relentlessly hammered him for the problems related to rushing it.
I agree with the rest of your comment.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 14:16
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don’t see how this is laid on Biden since Trump agreed to the withdrawal and timeline
Trump made the original withdrawal date and Biden arbitrarily stuck to it when he came into office.
He was under no real obligation to stick to the timeline and it was a betrayal to every Afghan citizen that worked with us. I don’t really care what Republicans bitch and moan about.
Fair opinion I guess, but I think there are plenty of things you can cleanly give Biden shit about before you get all the way down to complying with the troop withdrawal schedule that Trump committed us to.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 14:49
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Eh, I guess it’s a matter of opinion. To me knowingly finishing your opponents mistake is worse than making an honest one yourself.
I may be a little biased though, as I have had the opportunity to provide healthcare to a few of the Afghan interpreters that were lucky enough to evacuate and make it state side.
I work in orthopedics and rehabilitation, so they had all been pretty banged up, missing limbs, or had lower limbs injuries that affected their mobility. But their personal injuries were nothing compared to how much uncertainty they faced about not knowing about the well being of extended family and friends still in Afghanistan, a home they will likely never have the chance to ever visit again.
All fair points, but what do you suppose the Taliban would have done to those same people and more if the US had not pulled out when Trump told them we would?
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 16:03
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what do you suppose the Taliban would have done to those same people and more if the US had not pulled out when Trump told them we would?
I don’t really think slowing down a pull out a few weeks or even months would really upset the Taliban anymore than what we had already done, I mean we’ve been there for more than a decade.
The point would be that it would have given more time for people to make their way to the airbase, and for more than just a couple airplanes full of people evacuate.
The only reason the Taliban was able to capture Kabul so quickly is because they and the security forces knew that the US wasn’t providing any air cover.
Well, I can at least understand your point of view. Thanks for the discussion and perspective.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 17:09
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Same to you!
Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 18:19
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I chose to see this as a glass half full situation. I hope that in four years we see this speech as a starting point in which the Dems run on a platform of economic populism.
You may call me overly optimistic. However, the reason I am even remotely hopeful is that the very rich (and the media they own) are fully realigning with the GOP. This means Democrats will receive far less large donations in the future, and things will get shaken up, whether leadership likes it or not.
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.
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.
Our country is now run by Twitter and Truth Social, and too many people are already lost to social media disinformation campaigns (counter-intelligence)
rottingleaf@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 12:39
nextcollapse
A government … only in theory does. Like a church represents God, because humans are too dumb to understand him directly.
“Fact-checking” is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. “No fact-checking” is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Both sides of this fight prefer it being called such, so that one seems against misinformation, and the other seems against censorship, but they are not really different in this dimension. They are different in strategy and structure and interests, but neither is good for the average person.
You give authority to define “facts” to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC…
It’s not that I don’t understand those concerns, I just don’t think those are reasons to reject the concept, nor the obligation to make an effort.
How would you solve that problem?
I doubt I have the necessary understanding of the nuance to propose any good solution. That’s not evidence that one doesn’t exist, however. And if the folks who should be responsible for such things are choosing to abdicate that responsibility, I’m going to need a better reason than “because it’s hard.”
you seem to think that this would be some arbiter of truth with no recourse, but we have courts that deal with defamation all the time, and the scientific method… these are all tools we use to, as a collective, come to conclusions about objective (or as realistically close to) truth as we can get
And we keep the government out of finding scientific truths for good reasons. Independence of science is crucial. Also scientific trith is not absolute. No scientist worth his salt will say “x is true and y is false”. They would say “we have strong evidence to support x and we have strong evidence that y is not the case under all tested circumstances.”
Courts move slow and only in acvordance with the lae. For instance in my country politics decided to define Afghanistan as a secure country of origin by law, to make it impossible for people to seek Asylum from there. That was the legislative opinion of “fact”. And that also was while the Taliban was retaking large swaths of the country and months later took full control. Iirc. it was only stopped when the constitutional court decided much later, that clearly this is wrong.
I am not against fact checking. But if you mandate it by law, you must observe the adherence to the law. And for that you ultimately need to grant the government the definition of what is true and what is not, simply in order to measure the adherence to the law by.
And we keep the government out of finding scientific truths for good reasons.
in australia we have the CSIRO, in the US there’s NASA and NSF, in europe there ESA and CERN and i’m sure there’s plenty more.
Also scientific trith is not absolute. No scientist worth his salt will say “x is true and y is false”. They would say “we have strong evidence to support x and we have strong evidence that y is not the case under all tested circumstances.”
true, however under claims that vaccines cause autism there should be labels stating that this is misinformation, if not straight up removed
Courts move slow and only in acvordance with the lae.
okay - i didn’t put this up as the way we should do it, i put this up as an example of how we already allow the government to arbitrate truth to some degree - being the judge in an adversarial process… the bar is “beyond reasonable doubt”, with processes for appeal etc
you ultimately need to grant the government the definition of what is true and what is not
you need to grant some entity the ability to run the process that arbitrates. this does not mean that there is an arbiter of truth; this means that there is a process that arbitrates truth, and that process can ensure independence; just like we can guarantee elections with proper process
No, it is not the slippery slope fallacy. If you create an instrumemt that obligates fact checking, you have to give someone authority to define what are facts and what arent. And as this is obligatory by law, these fact checkers are subject to supervision or are directly part of the government.
So now the government gets to decide what are facts and what are not. Which can easily be abused. Especially as disinformation through so called fact checkers can move as fast as any other disinformarion.
So at the very least you need to create a sanction regime, e.g. criminal punishment for the abuse of the fact checking, as well as a right for people to have the fact checking checked and challenged, if they think it spreads lies against them. This way you can have it analysed by courts, as the most neutral authority in a state of law.
I dont get how people in Europe, where i live by the way, especially with the experience of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco fascism, as well as all the Warsaw pact authoritarianism, GDR surveillance, red scare policies in the Western countries during cold war, etc. are just treating this so lightly.
Authoritarian regimes based on lies and forbidding the truth are not some abstract. They are both an extensive reality of the recent past as well as looking at Orban, Melloni, Wilders, Merz and many others they are reemerging right now.
Facts are facts, and nothing a human says is a fact, it’s a projection of a fact upon their conscience, at best.
And those doing the “fact checking” are humans, so they are checking if something is fact in their own opinion or organization’s policy, at best.
These are truisms.
There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
This is wrong. People like to pick “their” side in power games between mighty adversaries, and to think that when one of the sides is more lucky, it’s them who’s winning. But no, it’s not them. If somebody’s “checking facts” for you and you like it, you’ve already lost. Same thing, of course, if you trust some “community evaluations” or that there’s truth that can be learned so cheaply, by going online and reading something.
Google has behind it an incoming US government that puts US economic interests first, and relishes bullying its allies. The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in. It will bend the knee.
cybersandwich@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 13:56
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:) I’m glad the EU did it. Having usb c for all of my devices is awesome.
But they waited so long to do it. I think everything except the iPhone was already usb c (iirc) and given the supply chain lead times, the timing of the reg vs the release of the new usb c phone, I really think they had the usb-c phones in flight for a couple years.
Maybe the looming threat of the reg made it happen. Maybe it made it happen faster. But it seemed like the direction they were headed.
At the end of the day, I’m glad they regulate vs what the US does. Even if their regs aren’t perfect / late, they do something for their constituents.
The only reason the regulation happened is because Apple ignored the “industry, agree on a standard or we’ll set one for you” memo: By the time the EU passed the act all other manufacturers had already shaped up.
That is: For other companies, the looming threat sufficed. Apple needed to be forced.
Apple cried and moaned about that and the battery repair regulation that was placed. They may have been planning to eventually switch but it definitly wasn’t a soon endeavor until forced by the regulation.
They even posted multiple excuses of why they didn’t agree with the decision because they felt the problem that the EU was trying to fix had been resolved since newer charging blocks had USB-C as the input so users could just swap the cable and use the same brick.
Being said, with big tech companies I think regulation is the only way, which means sadly will likely never happen in the US
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub
on 17 Jan 12:44
nextcollapse
The EU is doing great. It can pay for loads of stuff with the endless fines American tech companies rack up
Yeah… In fourth grade I was taught that there is nothing like an outer foe to create inner peace. I never imagined it to be the US to accomplish that, but here we are.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 17 Jan 12:37
nextcollapse
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
on 17 Jan 12:54
nextcollapse
They could even make it look exactly like Google. What’s Google going to do about it? Get wrecked is what.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
on 17 Jan 14:07
nextcollapse
I live in the nordics, would you like a list?
timestatic@feddit.org
on 17 Jan 22:13
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List a country with a decent population of like at least 50 mio people that competes with companies successfully and fairly. Countries with a smaller population don’t have as much of a bureaucratic overhead. But even there… where do they offer a better service in a fair competition with companies
You are posting on a social media platform solely funded by the EU.
But I’ve heard the USPS is not shit either. Publicly funded and run universities in the EU also provide the same or better service as those in the US for pennies on the dollar. Also, a lot of European railways are state run, like a lot of other public transit companies.
Also, the only space agencies that ever got to the moon were public. So were the ones that put the first man in space, and the first man on the moon, and the one that sent the first satellite into orbit and the farthest man-made object from Earth.
Look, the goverment is good at providing a good starter set of things you need for life. Infrastructure has no real competition so the infrastructure needs to be state owned since we can’t have it fail. I would look favorably if the government funded an open initiative to build a FOSS search index… but I think a search engine isn’t something like core infrastructure that can only reasonably exist once.
Besides… SearxNG is just a relay engine and if every european used it and relayed the search request to other search engines without them getting a dime I don’t think that would be fair.
Lemmy also isn’t developed by the state. It might get funding from the goverment but thats a very different thing - Core research that doesn’t have a straight up ROI is also one of the things where everyone benefits of it long term falls under something the government should do. I just don’t think the government is good at running an economical business and I can’t imagine living in a country where every company was like state-run with a top-down system. Competition is good, what we have is a lack of competition
You asked me to name a good service a government provides for a large number of people successfully. I named several. I get that you have ideological problems with goverments doing stuff, but governments not doing stuff results in what you can see in the US right now.
The original post is also not about a hypothetical ideological question, but that the US government was captured and dismantled by its corporations, and those corporations want to continue that societal rot over here. The EU cannot tolerate that.
Hydroquebec, alternative power practically doesn’t exist in quebev because hydroquebec kicks ass
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 07:27
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I don’t think anyone could legally compete with hydro not that they could because we invested as a society into exploiting pur natural ressources for the common good of our population rather than the good of some dickhead.
Result: cheapest electricity price on the continent.
njordomir@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 01:42
nextcollapse
I would argue that “bureaucratic overhead” is missing in companies at least as much as it is excess in governments. These double checks and regulations help guard against things like companies externalizing environmental and health impacts. They also act as a check on tendencies towards consolidation (or rather should). Consequently, companies appear to operate more efficiently, but we will have to pay to clean up and handle their externalities eventually.
I’m all for legislation that properly makes companies price in external effects. What I do not support is the state taking an active role in the market. Legislation is created for a reason but needs to be reformed and slimmed down once in a while. The government does not adjust fast enough imo and I think it should focus on core tasks instead of creating search engines.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 07:22
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Google neither competes fairly nor provides a good service. We have to endure them because they have made investment in a competitor uneconomical.
I have switched away from google mostly. Most people can do so too. Yes they do have a monopoly on search and I think the government should take steps to ensure fair competition but I don’t think the ban hammer should be wielded this lightly. If they pay the fine. Searxng is just a relay search engine and I doubt it is legal for such a big instance to use search engines as back end, have them run it for free and then have the people use Searx instead.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 21 Jan 17:53
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This is a great way to do nothing and let the problem fester. The attitude behind every rotten thing we have to deal with now.
You think email is a human right? It’s a box to send password resets. If websites all used one time paaswords, I wouldn’t need my email. You don’t actually send messages to people over email, do you?
We have things like Signal and Matrix to facilitate actually communicating with people.
Last time I sent an email to someone it bounced. Imagine spending time writing a letter and the mailman returns it to you
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
on 18 Jan 13:28
nextcollapse
I merely consider it necessary to function in modern society, and hence a service a government might conceivably provide.
You really like making assumptions about what I mean, and twisting my words, huh?
That included a 16 hour stay in a Canadian hospital because they just don’t have enough doctors to get around to you if you’re not dying
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 16:10
nextcollapse
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 details
I 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.
You block the DNS ups as well I think. Browsers should have more than one DNS address anyway in case one go down
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 17:50
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The backup is usually a different server from the same DNS provider. E.g. google has 8.8.8.8 as primary and 8.8.4.4 as secondary. Plus the backup doesn’t even always work on Windows.
Also note, it is not browsers but operating systems that do primary DNS. Browsers may use DNS over HTTPS for security and privacy instead of the one in the OS, but that usually requires the OS DNS to resolve the address of the DNS over HTTPS server, since it is considered a security feature built on top of classic DNS instead of replacement.
PS: Don’t get me wrong, EU could definitely block google.com sooner or later. It just wouldn’t be as easy as usual. The real risk is if Alphabet stops offering all of its services, chaos ensues. Companies unable to access their google spreadsheets. Services and data hosted on google cloud lost. People protesting lack of youtube…
And even if Alphabet doesn’t do that, I expect a lot of issues just with google being unavailable and most people not even knowing there are other search engines. It’s really going to be last resort to try blocking google, I expect fines or some such.
I think that if EU was to retaliate against any of the big tech players (which isn’t going to happen imho since eu institutions don’t really display the affinity for swift and decisive justice it would require) it would make more sense to start blocking the advertising and/or data collection. Like a continent-wide pi hole. Still getting the message across while not impacting the users as much. At least not immediately.
That said, the gatekeeper platforms should be prohibited from providing services like DNS resolving which are critical for the operation of other services than just theirs.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 20:19
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They probably also could just prevent EU companies and branches from buying google ads directly. Vast majority of ads is geo-located, so there would be almost no ads to show in the EU.
Nah. Demanding the ISPs to block traffic to Google domains would be quite effective.
This isn’t like the great firewall of chine where you want to prevent absolutely all traffic. If you make it inconvenient to use, because CSS breaks or a js library doesn’t load or images breaslk, its already a huge step into pushing it out of the market.
Enterprise market would be much harder, a loooot of EU companies rely on Google’s services, platforms and apps, and migrating away would take a lot of time and money.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 20:06
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Demanding the ISPs to block traffic to Google domains would be quite effective.
Filter it based on what? Between ESNI and DNS over HTTPS, it shouldn’t be possible to know, which domain the traffic belongs to. Am I missing something?
Edit: Ah, I guess DNS over HTTPS isn’t enabled by default yet.
Just filter out googles ASN and ip’s. And stop peering with them on BGP. Simples
Im not supporting this by the way. I think the internet should be free and open, without governments blocking what I can access.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 07:18
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The onpy free internet will be tor. The normie internet has been too naughty and spawned shitty giants who think they can treat us like cattle. Break the critical mass and network effects, kill the blitzscale cheaters trying to enslave us. We do not need them, they need us.
Sure, it’s crude, but again: it doesn’t have to perfect, it just needs to create havoc with Google services to push away a regular user, who has no idea what DNS even is.
A better approach though is to fine Google, with a % of revenue increasing until compliance. They’ll very quickly be incentivised to comply or shutdown.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 12:27
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The whole argument was about blocking search only, considering the damages suddenly completely blocking google would do. Yes, you can block google data centers completely, but dude, would that cause chaos.
Taking a stance against corporate overreach feels extremely necessary to me.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 19 Jan 13:28
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That is like saying standing up to authoritarianism is extremely necessary, while proposing to drop nukes on Russia. There are 100 better ways to do it.
Yes you’re right, blocking a single corporation is totally similar to dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian site, you’ve shown me the error of my ways.
What “normal solutions” are actually in progress with any real potential of happening? Be for fucking real.
Meanwhile what insane doomsday scenario do you think would happen if Google services were banned and people had the given period to find alternatives?
You’re talking about a fantasy solution that doesn’t exist then blowing the consequences of this possible action wildly out of proportion in gross hyperbole.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 19 Jan 18:03
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What “normal solutions” are actually in progress with any real potential of happening?
Fines.
Besides, your solution is in progress or “has better chance” of happening? Wake the fuck up.
Meanwhile what insane doomsday scenario do you think would happen if Google services were banned
Google runs 12% of all cloud services through google cloud. Yes, I expect a “doomsday scenario” if you just shut that down.
and people had the given period to find alternatives?
Sure, give people and companies 5-10 years to migrate and it will probably be fine in terms of chaos, though I would still be very interested to know how many billions of € would the migration cost.
I think people and societies are vastly more resilient that you’re implying, and would survive an admittedly complex 6 month period to switch necessary services. Would it be hard? Yeah absolutely. But I’ve never accepted “but it’s so hard!!” as valid reason to hold off positive progress.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 19 Jan 22:33
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Progress towards what? People migrating to equally scummy Amazon and Microsoft? What possible progress could blocking google bring, that it would be worth people potentially going without paychecks because accounting sw was not working. Or being unable to access services because they register with gmail they can no longer access. Factories shutting down because their logistics tracked everything in a google spreadsheet they can no longer access and have no backup.
Not to mention people who could outright die if some hospital software somewhere relies on some google service.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 09:03
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Ok, I disagree, but let’s say it wouldn’t. You admit yourself it would still be hard. What is the advantage of doing it? What is that mythical “progress” of yours, that would be achieved by blocking google cloud, as opposed to just search and whatever other problematic service?
Step one in saving us from the oncoming corporate technocracy?
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 09:33
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How does pushing people from google to Amazon/Microsoft cloud achieve that? Or do you expect people and companies will magically not need cloud services anymore?
My friend, you yourself have been implying this whole time that Google’s infrastructure is too vital and important to remove - how do you not see that this means they are too powerful? Remember trust-busting? Remember anti-monopoly activism? Nobody thought that by breaking up the railroads people wouldn’t need trains anymore, but they understood the danger of allowing a single company to have such market dominance and what it that would mean for consumers. Same thing here. And yes, I’m aware this requires continual diligence as the phone companies that were once PacBell are now bigger than it was, but that lacking of failure to continue enforcing anti-trust doesn’t mean the concept is wrong.
No single company should be allowed to have such influence that very idea of them going away leads to the very doomsday considerations we’ve been talking about. That’s what this is all about.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 09:55
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How do you not see, that banning one company would just increase the monopoly the remaining companies hold?
Google is not even the largest cloud provider. Amazon’s AWS has 30%, Microsoft’s Azure 20%, Google is third with 12%.
You can’t “bust monopolies” by reducing the number of options. You need to increase the number of competitiors.
That’s exactly what the US government did under Teddy Roosevelt when it forced by law these large entities to divest and break up into smaller ones not subsidiarized to each other. And yes, they should also do this to Amazon and Microsoft.
edit: I guess I should say I understand they can’t force them to break up in this instance, but they can simply state they won’t do business with the entities at present and recommend it. If that doesn’t happen, I am confident other savvy investors will be happy to fill any hole left by these giants. The world will keep turning, I promise.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 10:54
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Right, so if you massively extend your proposal, it could maybe make sense to a nontechnical person. Congratulations. Your original idea of just blocking google is still stupid and counterproductive to your stated goal.
Anyway, the real issue isn’t lack of competitors. It is vendor lock-in and lack of independent data backups. It would take significant effort for most companies to migrate from one cloud provider to another, since different providers use slightly different, incompatible technologies. And of course, if a cloud provider went down suddenly, a lot of data would be lost.
China blocks ESNI and DoH. You have to find a DoH server that is not well known and have to fake the host name.
But if you actually do that, lol
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 07:07
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without either sparking a cyberwar or building something like the great firewall of China
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 17 Jan 21:21
nextcollapse
There’s probably a way to redirect without validation. Only respond to port 80 if needed, then redirecr. Sure the browser might complain a little but it’s not as bad as invalid cert.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 22:56
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Maybe for some rando site, Google and any half competent site has HSTS enabled, meaning a browser won’t even try to connect with insecure HTTP, nor allow user to bypass the security error, as long as the HSTS header is remembered by the browser (the site was visited recently, set to 1 year for google).
In addition, google will also be on HSTS preload lists, so it won’t work even if you never visited the site.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 01:15
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That makes me realize, what kind of country doesn’t cobtrol it’s dns space’s encryption certificates. That’s a major oversight.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 01:44
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What? What do you mean “DNS space”? Classic DNS does not have any security, no encryption and no signatures.
DNSSEC, which adds signatures, is based on TLDs, not any geography or country. And it is not yet enabled for most domains, though I guess it would be for google. But obviously EU does not control .com.
And if you mean TLS certificates, those are a bit complicated and I already explained why forging those would be problematic and not work on Chrome, though it could be done.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 07:06
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Yes I mean tls certs as those control what dns records are considered valid.
The Eu should control which tls are considered valid within its territory and that should be considetedpart of their security apparatus. It’s crazy irresponsible to have left that up to unaccountable private foreign entities. This is what would make it difficult to control their own independant version of the dns namespace.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 12:30
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No. At the end of the day, I control which certificates I consider valid. Browsers just choose the defaults. There is no way I quietly let some government usurp that power, considering how easy to abuse it is.
Yes I mean tls certs as those control what dns records are considered valid.
No they don’t. That is not what TLS really does. But I guess close enough.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 19 Jan 04:16
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Ok but my grandma can’t
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 19 Jan 14:45
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Even more reason to have relatively neutral organizations transparently curate the list of trusted CAs. While I am sure governments also closely monitor the process and would step in if they deemed it a threat.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 19 Jan 18:30
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Google is a threat. They should know they can be subverted if they continue in their ways with the questionably ethical human experimentation (for instance, undisclosed A/B testing including full context)
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 19 Jan 18:39
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What does that have to do with TLS?
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 19 Jan 18:54
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One of the reasons to create a domestic redirect of google.com
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 19 Jan 19:01
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So we come full circle. The government having the ability to impersonate a site is exactly what I believe must not happen.
If the EU wants to create search.eu or any other search site, more power to them. I certainly wouldn’t use it, but hey, if you want to trust them, you can.
If they want to block google search… Eeeeh… I guess that is fine?
But they shouldn’t be able to create a fake certificate for google.com or any site for that matter, not only allowing them to impersonate the site, but also intercept encrypted traffic between users and that site.
So no. Governments should not control the TLS infrastructure.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 20 Jan 05:52
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TLS certificate infrastructure is a major national security concern. Sure, for religious reasons it can be controlled by a private entity but the governement is certaily already pullibg all the strings there. The problem in the EU is this control is in America now. So they need to wake up and have their own.
Then the can enforce a google ban and seamless redirect to search.eu or whatever. The important thing is to both block google while not breaking the search button on everything that foolishly hardcoded google.com in the code.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 07:03
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You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. America does not have any more or less of an ability to forge certificates compared to Europe.
Not wanting to live in a surveillance state is not religious, it’s common fucking sense.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 20 Jan 10:15
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There is 0% possibility the US gov cannot publish a certificate in all major browser that could usurp any dns from a registrar in a country under US dominance.
Just because they haven’t used that card uet doesn’t mean they can’t. The clearnet is already a surveillance cesspit. There is no escaping state forces anywhere on it.
It’s just the europeans being complacent about leaving this capability to the americans. For now they depend un US cyber command for it, and they won’t do it to google for the sole benefit of europeans.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Jan 10:21
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There is 0% possibility the US gov could do it covertly.
Sure, they could force it overtly but the rest of the world would have forks of Browsers like 15 minutes after it went through.
Besides, there is no need to go after the browsers. If you want a fake cert for a few days, EU has trusted certificate authorities just like the US that can issue a cert for any website (CAs are usually not restricted to specific TLDs). The CA would just get removed from browsers within days, same as browsers being replaced.
PS: Btw, iTrusChina is also a trusted CA. If the US is not concerned about their main adversary, China, forging certificates, why should EU be worried about an ally doing so?
Just block payments from advertisers by revoking their business licence.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 23:17
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Yes, I mentioned that in a comment deeper down. And even before that, just fine them. Chances are they will pay and if not, you can probably seize some bank accounts.
I am not trying to say Google can afford to completely defy the EU, just found it interesting how hard it is to block just google search specifically.
PS: Also mentioned in a burried comment, there actually is a way for ISPs to block google, since DNS over HTTPS is not enabled by default yet in browsers I think. I forgot this since I enabled encrypted DNS like 8+ years ago for myself and just assumed people also have it by now.
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
on 17 Jan 20:36
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lemmy.ml with the stupid authoritarian takes again.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 17 Jan 21:18
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believing instance url means anything is beyond stupid
timestatic@feddit.org
on 17 Jan 22:11
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People from hexbear or lemmygrad are atrocious tho. ML is a bit better but still
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 07:14
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Lemmy provincialism wow
You think I even know a single thing about this lemmy. Ml thing? I wouldn’t even remember what the url is if you hadn’t told me. It’s irrelevant. I just picked a server at random, likely the first one in the list.
What a hopeless nerd you have to be to care about the dns instance name.
So much for having a reasonably discussion. Calling me a hopeless nerd. You sure must be fun to be around.
Its not just an server name since the moderators there remove stuff that doesn’t fit their narrative and people with according ideology often are on these servers. It makes a real difference. You can check it out because users that find an instance that fits their personal beliefs create their account there and its a Marxist Leninist community. But you don’t actually seem to care.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 21 Jan 13:13
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1/6 of all lemmy users are on that server. It has been the default recommended server long enough that nothing can be taken for granted about the users of that server.
And this idea that one should give a microsecond of attention to which server to create an account on, is why mastodon is a desert that even twitter refugee don’t want to go to.
Lemmy instances should not even know the usernqmes of their users. User accounts should just be encrypted files being served.
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
on 17 Jan 22:17
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Nah, if you voluntarily join a tankie instance, you are the one who’s stupid.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 18 Jan 07:09
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Listen bucko nobody cates about that nerd shit.
ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk
on 17 Jan 21:28
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It would have to be an EU run search engine, otherwise which government?
You can do things decentralized, and if you look into it, the EU is happy to fund projects to create decentralized internet services. Case in point, Lemmy’s primary funder is the EU.
They are not just funding existing projects like Lemmy, they are actively encouraging new projects by providing funding for “open internet” style stuff.
Though yes you are right, it is different from directly hiring people, since if they did that, it would be very hard to relinquish direct control of the project. Corps can’t act solely for the common good, governments have that as their stated mission.
I’m fine with some funding for other people who are running things for public benefit. The difference is a meaningful one, since governments have rules about how they do contracting work. It ends up with companies that focus on government contracts that know all the rules and have the connections.
A couple of people running an open source project don’t have the same restrictions
The EU. I don’t use google search. I use a degoogled android rom firefox and only use the bare minimum of google search engines. I think the government should promote conditions where fair competition against google is actually possible.
The eu doesn’t it to block the search engine from the internet. It only needs to block the google cash-flow from inside EU to Ireland and then it’s shareholders.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Jan 12:54
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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.
The DSA contains provisions for combatting disinformation and as a very large online platform google is required to implement suitable practices. The DSA is a regulation, that is, immediately applicable law in all of the EU. As is usual for laws it’s written pretty generically and abstract, though, so the commission is also publishing more detailed documents that companies can use as check-lists.
In essence, the difference between the tax code and the finance ministry publishing a paper on accounting best practices. You’re free to ignore the latter but that will likely make your life harder than it needs to be.
It’s set to become mandatory, i.e. law. According to the article.
And this isn’t a free speech issue. It’s about disinformation. Folks can say what they want, but a political ad needs to clearly be a political ad. And disinformation can’t be profit motivated.
It’s all in the article you just linked. You can say what ever you want, but if it’s bullshit, Google will need to flag it or face fines.
It isn’t law yet though, and it is the current iteration that Google won’t follow. We have yet to see how they will react if it actually becomes law. My guess is that they will, begrudgingly, bend the knee.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk
on 17 Jan 12:57
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Who decides what the facts are?
muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee
on 17 Jan 13:00
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henfredemars@infosec.pub
on 17 Jan 13:28
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I’m OK with this risk. The incredible rise of stupid arguments that we attempt to treat as equal for consideration is unreasonable. If we want to continue having meaningful discourse, we have to remove disinformation.
Yeah, but the question was; who decides what is disinformation? If it was some truly competent and unbiased AI system then I perhaps wouldn’t be as concerned about it, though I can see issues with that too, but humans are flawed and I see this as a potenttial slippery slope towards tyranny and censorship.
Imperfect need not be the enemy of good. Failure to combat disinformation is absolutely a path to tyranny, and a lie going halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on is effectively censorship if the truth comes out only by the time the public has lost interest.
Yes, there are problems combating it, but we have to show up to the fight somehow. I’ll take a fallible fact checking system over none at all, because the court of public opinion makes a poor fact checker.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
on 17 Jan 13:30
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At times like early covid there wasn’t much facts and evidence available. Back then masks didn’t stop the spread of the virus but vaccines were supposed to. Who decides what the facts are in times like that?
You rely on what you know and check if the assumptions are still correct when you have more information at hand. That’s what government agencies are supposed to be for.
Paid fact-checkers spread across all member states.
“The new Code will extend fact-checking coverage across all EU Member States and languages and ensure that platforms will make a more consistent use of fact-checking on their services. Moreover, the Code works towards ensuring fair financial contributions for fact-checkers’ work and better access to fact-checkers to information facilitating their daily work.”
Essentially, everything will have Snopes attached to it. Including political ads and other forms of advertising. As well as more blatant propaganda.
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.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 13:47
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And not a single bit of this would matter at all if YOU PEOPLE* would just know a damned thing!
*present company excepted, of course.
rob200@endlesstalk.org
on 17 Jan 15:18
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Can’t believe Google’s doing this, they seemed to be the most dedicated to this of the big companies. Especially on Youtube.
SoftTeeth@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 17:50
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The rich are trying to pivot the Trump vicory into world domination before we can organize and dethrone the oligarchy.
Google/Meta helping to spread misinformation is a big part of that.
I wish I was kidding.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 19:40
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Or fortune… but you can’t take it with you so your point still stands.
Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 01:38
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Honestly, the most humane and least distasteful solution is to dispossess the billionaires of their billions. Not a drop of their blood need to be shed, should this be done.
Too bad the billionaires just bought the government of the United States
Let me know when you figure out how to peacefully redistribute the wealth of people who want to rule the world
Jumpingspiderman@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 01:36
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The evidence so far is that the primary response of the heinously rich when they fear for their lives is to spend more or much more on their security and their politicians rather than to change their evil greedy behavior at all. Those looking for any real solution to oligarchs need to consider this fact when evaluating what should be done.
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.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 17 Jan 20:24
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wish the eu would just actually ban american companies there is really no need for them anyway
Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip
on 17 Jan 20:35
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I like this. I don’t think I need a large company fact-checking anything tbh. They already got too much influence and power, I don’t need them to control the narrative even more.
DicJacobus@lemmy.world
on 17 Jan 21:36
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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
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Jan 21:43
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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
timestatic@feddit.org
on 17 Jan 22:08
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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
Oh that was long ago. it’s for not having a baby if you’re female now. Megacorps run usa and now the worst (which is best for some reason) ceo in the history of man will again be president and continue the clear path to government dismantling
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.
Shardikprime@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 05:26
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God I hope this happens, it will be absolutely hilarious when the gcp services on which the EU infraestructure for telecommunications, research and development, industry, transportation, banking, agriculture, logistics and health is built up, crashes burning to the ground.
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
Lawsuits. As it stands the US supreme court is that social media companies can not be held liable for the things their users publish. Fact checking companies can be sued, news companies can be sued (see fox news and the voting machines lawsuit), Facebook can’t be held responsible in the same way
I hate community notes, it’s a cost free way of fact checking with no accountability.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, but it can be harmful if done on a platform that has a significant skew in its political leanings, because it can then lead to the assumption that posts must be true because they were “fact checked” even if the fact check was actually just one of the 9:1 ratio of users that already believes that one thing.
However, on platforms that have more general, less biased overall userbases, such as YouTube, a community notes system can be helpful, because it directly changes the platform incentives and design.
I like to come at this from the understanding that the way a platform is designed influences how it is used and perceived by users. When you add a like button but not a dislike button, you only incentivize positive fleeting interactions with posts, while relegating stronger negative opinions to the comments, for instance. (see: Twitter)
If a platform integrates community notes, that not only elevates content that had any effort at all made to fact check it (as opposed to none at all) but it also means that, to get a community note, somebody must at least attempt to verify the truth. And if someone does that, then statistically speaking, there’s at least a slightly higher likelihood that the truth is made apparent in that community note than if none existed to incentivize someone to fact check in the first place.
Again, this doesn’t work in all scenarios, nor is it always a good decision to add depending on a platform’s current design and general demographic political leanings, but I do think it can be valuable in some cases. (This also heavily depends on who is allowed access to create the community notes, of course)
I get what you’re trying to say, they can incentivise accuracy and they do at least prompt people to be more accurate lest the community holds them to account. But what i don’t like is that there is no standard that the notes are held to and there is no accountability if either the original post or the community note are wrong.
I also don’t like that the social media publishers are pushing the fact checkers onto the community to be done for free, but at the end of the day they own the community note and can delete it if they don’t like it. We are doing their work for them and taking accountability away from them
I hate community notes, it’s a cost free way of fact checking with no accountability
And it lets certain communities brigade the notes with misinformation/disinformation to try and control the narrative.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 18:35
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Ironically, for authoritarian communist countries that recorded high rate of newly minted billionaires in the past five years, China and Vietnam are doing something right cracking down on billionaires.
Very fair, the persecution of Jack Ma was very interesting. Haven’t heard of what happened in Vietnam though?
You shouldn’t need to be authoritarian to crack down on these systems though. I really liked what I saw Lena Khan doing in the US, what Brazil did to twitter or what Julie Inman Grant did here in Australia
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 23:32
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There is a Vietnamese billionaire who is found guilty of scamming her victims. The court ordered her to pay what she stole within a deadline or else she will face execution. I don’t remember if she is ordered to pay either only a portion or all of what she scammed.
These companies are built on extracting content out of people anyway. They get paid because users get sold shit they don’t need while users are the ones providing the content.
When you stop to think, they really don’t offer us anything other than a named place we all agreed to meet
PeroBasta@lemmy.world
on 18 Jan 07:00
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I wonder how it will work and how can be enforced. Weekly I can easily find non fact checked article on “respectable” newspaper.
If its the newspaper themselves that prioritize click baiting over fact checking, I don’t know how can we ask Google or meta to fact check their userbase
Weeby_Wabbit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 18 Jan 08:11
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France’s tech sector: “Zis is mon’ Chanz to shine!”
Aesthetically I like reading technical texts in French.
(Contrary to the stereotype, romantic texts not so much, that’s where English is better ; and despite trying my best, I still haven’t found a way to like Dutch ; neutral on German.)
But the point is - has anything big lifted off in France in the last 20 years or so?
I’m not talking about quite a few particular people whose names should be in history books. I’m talking about companies and systems.
There is a french tech sector: Doctolib, BlaBlaCar, and a few other original ideas have opened new types of services and taken their hold over Europe. Yet, those services cannot be adapted to individualistic north America.
I don’t think “individualistic” is a bad thing or prevents those from working there. Maybe you meant “atomized society”, but US is not the worst country in that regard, that would be the one I live in.
A modern and more global take on Minitel would be cool.
In its early days, Qwant heavily relied on Bing’s API to provide search results. […]
Qwant began transitioning to its own indexing system in February 2013, but this process was gradual. The company started using its own engine for indexing social media accounts and the “shopping” part of search results, […]
Today, Qwant’s search results are a mix of its own indexed content and results pulled from Bing.
France have VLC
France is one of the birthplace of the worldwideweb (admittedly with swisserland).
France had a sortof internet while the US still were playing around with BBS.
France absolutely have a tech sectors
I mean Putin’s weaselly little far right lackeys are scarily close to being in government in a few European countries now (or already are, Hungary and Slovakia). So who knows
threaded - newest
Good, hope they get banned in the EU so people will switch to competitors
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.
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.
Luckily google bought exclusive rights to query Reddit
Except reddit is all ai-generated bullshit now. Unless you search before 2024, searching reddit is literally useless, and that’s all going to be out of date so quickly
Reddit search engine? Hell nah I want more federated communities. Reddit has a contract with google anyways that blocks out foreign web crawlers.
That’s what I mean. Their own native search that only searches Reddit. I’m not saying it would be great, just better than Google for many uses cases.
This isn’t me talking up Reddit—I haven’t been back in over a year. This is me trashing Google.
I would love that. I still use google products, because I was too lazy to switch, a ban would give me the incentive to move to another platform
DuckDuckGo: Use us because Google is so evil they were banned in Europe
They use bing tho. I personally like Qwant as they fall under GDPR and are european. Also they are working on building an independent search index.
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.
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?
Yes. We will now export our fascism, making it essentially just the same imperialism we’ve been engaged in forever.
To be fair, you haven’t invented fascism.
Although, in France we have a sort of proverb that says that what happens in the US happens here 10 years later. I hope we will manage to dodge what’s coming at us, this time…
Me too!
Bingo. Trump already started playing with his corporate finger puppets, emboldening some, threatening others.
Same reason Zuckerberg, surely the expert on the matter, had this weird rambling about “masculine energy” very recently. What a Trumpian phrase.
In other news, A Lot of Americans Are Googling ‘What Is Oligarchy?’ After Biden’s Farewell Speech.
Feel like that speech would have meant more when he still had the power to do anything about it. Instead of going to war against this oligarchy he chose to cash his political capital on a rushed pull out of Afghanistan, and to kill a bunch of Palestinians.
I don’t see how this is laid on Biden since Trump agreed to the withdrawal and timeline, and then R relentlessly hammered Biden for not getting on it, then relentlessly hammered him for the problems related to rushing it.
I agree with the rest of your comment.
Trump made the original withdrawal date and Biden arbitrarily stuck to it when he came into office.
He was under no real obligation to stick to the timeline and it was a betrayal to every Afghan citizen that worked with us. I don’t really care what Republicans bitch and moan about.
Fair opinion I guess, but I think there are plenty of things you can cleanly give Biden shit about before you get all the way down to complying with the troop withdrawal schedule that Trump committed us to.
Eh, I guess it’s a matter of opinion. To me knowingly finishing your opponents mistake is worse than making an honest one yourself.
I may be a little biased though, as I have had the opportunity to provide healthcare to a few of the Afghan interpreters that were lucky enough to evacuate and make it state side.
I work in orthopedics and rehabilitation, so they had all been pretty banged up, missing limbs, or had lower limbs injuries that affected their mobility. But their personal injuries were nothing compared to how much uncertainty they faced about not knowing about the well being of extended family and friends still in Afghanistan, a home they will likely never have the chance to ever visit again.
All fair points, but what do you suppose the Taliban would have done to those same people and more if the US had not pulled out when Trump told them we would?
I don’t really think slowing down a pull out a few weeks or even months would really upset the Taliban anymore than what we had already done, I mean we’ve been there for more than a decade.
The point would be that it would have given more time for people to make their way to the airbase, and for more than just a couple airplanes full of people evacuate.
The only reason the Taliban was able to capture Kabul so quickly is because they and the security forces knew that the US wasn’t providing any air cover.
Well, I can at least understand your point of view. Thanks for the discussion and perspective.
Same to you!
I chose to see this as a glass half full situation. I hope that in four years we see this speech as a starting point in which the Dems run on a platform of economic populism.
You may call me overly optimistic. However, the reason I am even remotely hopeful is that the very rich (and the media they own) are fully realigning with the GOP. This means Democrats will receive far less large donations in the future, and things will get shaken up, whether leadership likes it or not.
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.
It’s by design, the politicians only need 28% to win, easier to scrape those votes off the bottom of the barrel of knowledge
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.
Our country is now run by Twitter and Truth Social, and too many people are already lost to social media disinformation campaigns (counter-intelligence)
A government … only in theory does. Like a church represents God, because humans are too dumb to understand him directly.
“Fact-checking” is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. “No fact-checking” is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Both sides of this fight prefer it being called such, so that one seems against misinformation, and the other seems against censorship, but they are not really different in this dimension. They are different in strategy and structure and interests, but neither is good for the average person.
Dude, facts are facts or they are not. There is no rejection of fact checking that will result in more truths being exposed to the world, only less.
You give authority to define “facts” to a fact checking institution. That institution may not be sufficiently independent. Because of meddling the institution spreads lies under the claim they would be facts and declares actual facts as lies.
Just think about a fact checking under the authority of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, AIPAC…
That’s a solvable problem, not a reason to reject fact checking as a concept.
So if the US would make obligatory fact checking under a Trump administration. How would you solve that problem?
In the end it always boils down to the current administration getting to decide what the facts and what the disinformation is.
This is easily abusable and for instance Goerge Orwell predicted such problems with the “Ministry of Truth” in his book 1984.
It’s not that I don’t understand those concerns, I just don’t think those are reasons to reject the concept, nor the obligation to make an effort.
I doubt I have the necessary understanding of the nuance to propose any good solution. That’s not evidence that one doesn’t exist, however. And if the folks who should be responsible for such things are choosing to abdicate that responsibility, I’m going to need a better reason than “because it’s hard.”
you seem to think that this would be some arbiter of truth with no recourse, but we have courts that deal with defamation all the time, and the scientific method… these are all tools we use to, as a collective, come to conclusions about objective (or as realistically close to) truth as we can get
And we keep the government out of finding scientific truths for good reasons. Independence of science is crucial. Also scientific trith is not absolute. No scientist worth his salt will say “x is true and y is false”. They would say “we have strong evidence to support x and we have strong evidence that y is not the case under all tested circumstances.”
Courts move slow and only in acvordance with the lae. For instance in my country politics decided to define Afghanistan as a secure country of origin by law, to make it impossible for people to seek Asylum from there. That was the legislative opinion of “fact”. And that also was while the Taliban was retaking large swaths of the country and months later took full control. Iirc. it was only stopped when the constitutional court decided much later, that clearly this is wrong.
I am not against fact checking. But if you mandate it by law, you must observe the adherence to the law. And for that you ultimately need to grant the government the definition of what is true and what is not, simply in order to measure the adherence to the law by.
in australia we have the CSIRO, in the US there’s NASA and NSF, in europe there ESA and CERN and i’m sure there’s plenty more.
true, however under claims that vaccines cause autism there should be labels stating that this is misinformation, if not straight up removed
okay - i didn’t put this up as the way we should do it, i put this up as an example of how we already allow the government to arbitrate truth to some degree - being the judge in an adversarial process… the bar is “beyond reasonable doubt”, with processes for appeal etc
you need to grant some entity the ability to run the process that arbitrates. this does not mean that there is an arbiter of truth; this means that there is a process that arbitrates truth, and that process can ensure independence; just like we can guarantee elections with proper process
this is mostly an american take, and most of the rest of the world tends to disagree with this “free speech absolutism”
it’s the slippery slope fallacy
No, it is not the slippery slope fallacy. If you create an instrumemt that obligates fact checking, you have to give someone authority to define what are facts and what arent. And as this is obligatory by law, these fact checkers are subject to supervision or are directly part of the government.
So now the government gets to decide what are facts and what are not. Which can easily be abused. Especially as disinformation through so called fact checkers can move as fast as any other disinformarion.
So at the very least you need to create a sanction regime, e.g. criminal punishment for the abuse of the fact checking, as well as a right for people to have the fact checking checked and challenged, if they think it spreads lies against them. This way you can have it analysed by courts, as the most neutral authority in a state of law.
I dont get how people in Europe, where i live by the way, especially with the experience of Mussolini, Hitler and Franco fascism, as well as all the Warsaw pact authoritarianism, GDR surveillance, red scare policies in the Western countries during cold war, etc. are just treating this so lightly.
Authoritarian regimes based on lies and forbidding the truth are not some abstract. They are both an extensive reality of the recent past as well as looking at Orban, Melloni, Wilders, Merz and many others they are reemerging right now.
yeah… and some things are just straight up facts… this is literally the perfect example of slippery slope
Facts are facts, and nothing a human says is a fact, it’s a projection of a fact upon their conscience, at best.
And those doing the “fact checking” are humans, so they are checking if something is fact in their own opinion or organization’s policy, at best.
These are truisms.
This is wrong. People like to pick “their” side in power games between mighty adversaries, and to think that when one of the sides is more lucky, it’s them who’s winning. But no, it’s not them. If somebody’s “checking facts” for you and you like it, you’ve already lost. Same thing, of course, if you trust some “community evaluations” or that there’s truth that can be learned so cheaply, by going online and reading something.
<EU> Яндекс it is or you can Bing It.
Google has behind it an incoming US government that puts US economic interests first, and relishes bullying its allies. The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in. It will bend the knee.
lol ok
Have you ever looked at a map? America can just float anywhere
Hows apple lightning cable doing?
I gotta say that seemed pretty performative considering apple was obviously already moving that way with usb-c on all their devices.
Not often I actually lol at a comment. Well done
:) I’m glad the EU did it. Having usb c for all of my devices is awesome.
But they waited so long to do it. I think everything except the iPhone was already usb c (iirc) and given the supply chain lead times, the timing of the reg vs the release of the new usb c phone, I really think they had the usb-c phones in flight for a couple years.
Maybe the looming threat of the reg made it happen. Maybe it made it happen faster. But it seemed like the direction they were headed.
At the end of the day, I’m glad they regulate vs what the US does. Even if their regs aren’t perfect / late, they do something for their constituents.
The only reason the regulation happened is because Apple ignored the “industry, agree on a standard or we’ll set one for you” memo: By the time the EU passed the act all other manufacturers had already shaped up.
That is: For other companies, the looming threat sufficed. Apple needed to be forced.
Apple cried and moaned about that and the battery repair regulation that was placed. They may have been planning to eventually switch but it definitly wasn’t a soon endeavor until forced by the regulation.
They even posted multiple excuses of why they didn’t agree with the decision because they felt the problem that the EU was trying to fix had been resolved since newer charging blocks had USB-C as the input so users could just swap the cable and use the same brick.
Being said, with big tech companies I think regulation is the only way, which means sadly will likely never happen in the US
The EU is doing great. It can pay for loads of stuff with the endless fines American tech companies rack up
The EU and its allies is bigger than Trump’s rogue oligarchy
hahahahahahahahahahaha
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/europe/article/2025/01/08/meta-studying-eu-impact-of-end-to-fact-checking-says-french-minister_6736836_143.html
It’s hardly about US economic interest so much as the interests of a small in-crowd. See: tariffs.
Yeah… In fourth grade I was taught that there is nothing like an outer foe to create inner peace. I never imagined it to be the US to accomplish that, but here we are.
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
They could even make it look exactly like Google. What’s Google going to do about it? Get wrecked is what.
The government, running a service that doesn’t suck? Call me when it happens
I think it’s time you woke up and smelled the roses.
Post your phone number
I live in the nordics, would you like a list?
List a country with a decent population of like at least 50 mio people that competes with companies successfully and fairly. Countries with a smaller population don’t have as much of a bureaucratic overhead. But even there… where do they offer a better service in a fair competition with companies
You are posting on a social media platform solely funded by the EU.
But I’ve heard the USPS is not shit either. Publicly funded and run universities in the EU also provide the same or better service as those in the US for pennies on the dollar. Also, a lot of European railways are state run, like a lot of other public transit companies.
Also, the only space agencies that ever got to the moon were public. So were the ones that put the first man in space, and the first man on the moon, and the one that sent the first satellite into orbit and the farthest man-made object from Earth.
Look, the goverment is good at providing a good starter set of things you need for life. Infrastructure has no real competition so the infrastructure needs to be state owned since we can’t have it fail. I would look favorably if the government funded an open initiative to build a FOSS search index… but I think a search engine isn’t something like core infrastructure that can only reasonably exist once.
Besides… SearxNG is just a relay engine and if every european used it and relayed the search request to other search engines without them getting a dime I don’t think that would be fair.
Lemmy also isn’t developed by the state. It might get funding from the goverment but thats a very different thing - Core research that doesn’t have a straight up ROI is also one of the things where everyone benefits of it long term falls under something the government should do. I just don’t think the government is good at running an economical business and I can’t imagine living in a country where every company was like state-run with a top-down system. Competition is good, what we have is a lack of competition
You asked me to name a good service a government provides for a large number of people successfully. I named several. I get that you have ideological problems with goverments doing stuff, but governments not doing stuff results in what you can see in the US right now.
The original post is also not about a hypothetical ideological question, but that the US government was captured and dismantled by its corporations, and those corporations want to continue that societal rot over here. The EU cannot tolerate that.
Hydroquebec, alternative power practically doesn’t exist in quebev because hydroquebec kicks ass
I don’t think anyone could legally compete with hydro not that they could because we invested as a society into exploiting pur natural ressources for the common good of our population rather than the good of some dickhead.
Result: cheapest electricity price on the continent.
I would argue that “bureaucratic overhead” is missing in companies at least as much as it is excess in governments. These double checks and regulations help guard against things like companies externalizing environmental and health impacts. They also act as a check on tendencies towards consolidation (or rather should). Consequently, companies appear to operate more efficiently, but we will have to pay to clean up and handle their externalities eventually.
I’m all for legislation that properly makes companies price in external effects. What I do not support is the state taking an active role in the market. Legislation is created for a reason but needs to be reformed and slimmed down once in a while. The government does not adjust fast enough imo and I think it should focus on core tasks instead of creating search engines.
Google neither competes fairly nor provides a good service. We have to endure them because they have made investment in a competitor uneconomical.
I have switched away from google mostly. Most people can do so too. Yes they do have a monopoly on search and I think the government should take steps to ensure fair competition but I don’t think the ban hammer should be wielded this lightly. If they pay the fine. Searxng is just a relay search engine and I doubt it is legal for such a big instance to use search engines as back end, have them run it for free and then have the people use Searx instead.
This is a great way to do nothing and let the problem fester. The attitude behind every rotten thing we have to deal with now.
What is the search engine your government hosts? Or maybe they do email? Do tell
Those are some pretty specific additional qualifiers. Did I hit a nerve?
I’m responsing to someone claiming governments inherently cannot be good providers of essential services, which is patently untrue.
The nordics are home to numerous government institutions, providing a variety of services that are perfectly satisfactory, and often excellent.
Are you claiming that email or search engines not being among them today, means the rest mean nothing, or that they never will be?
If the current services are anything to go by, those things getting added to the list, will be fucking great.
Who said anything about essential services? It’s the nonessential services that I have a problem with
You classify email and internet search as non-essential?
And what does how they are classified have to do with the ability/inability of government to provide them in a sufficient manner?
You claimed something that HAS HAPPENED, could not. There’s no comeback here for you to find.
You think email is a human right? It’s a box to send password resets. If websites all used one time paaswords, I wouldn’t need my email. You don’t actually send messages to people over email, do you?
We have things like Signal and Matrix to facilitate actually communicating with people.
Last time I sent an email to someone it bounced. Imagine spending time writing a letter and the mailman returns it to you
I merely consider it necessary to function in modern society, and hence a service a government might conceivably provide.
You really like making assumptions about what I mean, and twisting my words, huh?
It’s not necessary
Also, you’re digressing.
You have become normalized to a country that allows a convicted felon to be president
.
OK zoomer
lol oops I replied to the wrong post and look like a dumbass now
Epic 😂
As well as a political party that actively tries to make public services shitty so people won’t miss it when it’s dismantled.
What’s your phone number?
I recommend traveling.
I’ve been to half a dozen countries after COVID.
That included a 16 hour stay in a Canadian hospital because they just don’t have enough doctors to get around to you if you’re not dying
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 details
I 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.
You block the DNS ups as well I think. Browsers should have more than one DNS address anyway in case one go down
The backup is usually a different server from the same DNS provider. E.g. google has 8.8.8.8 as primary and 8.8.4.4 as secondary. Plus the backup doesn’t even always work on Windows.
Also note, it is not browsers but operating systems that do primary DNS. Browsers may use DNS over HTTPS for security and privacy instead of the one in the OS, but that usually requires the OS DNS to resolve the address of the DNS over HTTPS server, since it is considered a security feature built on top of classic DNS instead of replacement.
PS: Don’t get me wrong, EU could definitely block google.com sooner or later. It just wouldn’t be as easy as usual. The real risk is if Alphabet stops offering all of its services, chaos ensues. Companies unable to access their google spreadsheets. Services and data hosted on google cloud lost. People protesting lack of youtube…
And even if Alphabet doesn’t do that, I expect a lot of issues just with google being unavailable and most people not even knowing there are other search engines. It’s really going to be last resort to try blocking google, I expect fines or some such.
I think that if EU was to retaliate against any of the big tech players (which isn’t going to happen imho since eu institutions don’t really display the affinity for swift and decisive justice it would require) it would make more sense to start blocking the advertising and/or data collection. Like a continent-wide pi hole. Still getting the message across while not impacting the users as much. At least not immediately. That said, the gatekeeper platforms should be prohibited from providing services like DNS resolving which are critical for the operation of other services than just theirs.
They probably also could just prevent EU companies and branches from buying google ads directly. Vast majority of ads is geo-located, so there would be almost no ads to show in the EU.
Nah. Demanding the ISPs to block traffic to Google domains would be quite effective.
This isn’t like the great firewall of chine where you want to prevent absolutely all traffic. If you make it inconvenient to use, because CSS breaks or a js library doesn’t load or images breaslk, its already a huge step into pushing it out of the market.
Enterprise market would be much harder, a loooot of EU companies rely on Google’s services, platforms and apps, and migrating away would take a lot of time and money.
Filter it based on what? Between ESNI and DNS over HTTPS, it shouldn’t be possible to know, which domain the traffic belongs to. Am I missing something?
Edit: Ah, I guess DNS over HTTPS isn’t enabled by default yet.
Just filter out googles ASN and ip’s. And stop peering with them on BGP. Simples
Im not supporting this by the way. I think the internet should be free and open, without governments blocking what I can access.
The onpy free internet will be tor. The normie internet has been too naughty and spawned shitty giants who think they can treat us like cattle. Break the critical mass and network effects, kill the blitzscale cheaters trying to enslave us. We do not need them, they need us.
IP block it. Boom there goes eSNI and DNS.
Sure, it’s crude, but again: it doesn’t have to perfect, it just needs to create havoc with Google services to push away a regular user, who has no idea what DNS even is.
A better approach though is to fine Google, with a % of revenue increasing until compliance. They’ll very quickly be incentivised to comply or shutdown.
The whole argument was about blocking search only, considering the damages suddenly completely blocking google would do. Yes, you can block google data centers completely, but dude, would that cause chaos.
I said that multiple times already.
Worthwhile chaos. It’s exactly that fear of consequences that enables their power
Unnecessary chaos
Taking a stance against corporate overreach feels extremely necessary to me.
That is like saying standing up to authoritarianism is extremely necessary, while proposing to drop nukes on Russia. There are 100 better ways to do it.
Yes you’re right, blocking a single corporation is totally similar to dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian site, you’ve shown me the error of my ways.
Holy fucking hyperbole, Batman!
.
When looking at the relative difference between cost of your solution, it’s benefits and cost of normal solutions, yes. It is extremely similar.
But go ahead nitpicking my exact choice of comparison instead of addressing the glaring issue with your argument.
What “normal solutions” are actually in progress with any real potential of happening? Be for fucking real.
Meanwhile what insane doomsday scenario do you think would happen if Google services were banned and people had the given period to find alternatives?
You’re talking about a fantasy solution that doesn’t exist then blowing the consequences of this possible action wildly out of proportion in gross hyperbole.
Fines.
Besides, your solution is in progress or “has better chance” of happening? Wake the fuck up.
Google runs 12% of all cloud services through google cloud. Yes, I expect a “doomsday scenario” if you just shut that down.
Sure, give people and companies 5-10 years to migrate and it will probably be fine in terms of chaos, though I would still be very interested to know how many billions of € would the migration cost.
I think people and societies are vastly more resilient that you’re implying, and would survive an admittedly complex 6 month period to switch necessary services. Would it be hard? Yeah absolutely. But I’ve never accepted “but it’s so hard!!” as valid reason to hold off positive progress.
Progress towards what? People migrating to equally scummy Amazon and Microsoft? What possible progress could blocking google bring, that it would be worth people potentially going without paychecks because accounting sw was not working. Or being unable to access services because they register with gmail they can no longer access. Factories shutting down because their logistics tracked everything in a google spreadsheet they can no longer access and have no backup.
Not to mention people who could outright die if some hospital software somewhere relies on some google service.
None that insane hyperbole doomsday scenario would happen. None of it.
.
Ok, I disagree, but let’s say it wouldn’t. You admit yourself it would still be hard. What is the advantage of doing it? What is that mythical “progress” of yours, that would be achieved by blocking google cloud, as opposed to just search and whatever other problematic service?
Step one in saving us from the oncoming corporate technocracy?
How does pushing people from google to Amazon/Microsoft cloud achieve that? Or do you expect people and companies will magically not need cloud services anymore?
My friend, you yourself have been implying this whole time that Google’s infrastructure is too vital and important to remove - how do you not see that this means they are too powerful? Remember trust-busting? Remember anti-monopoly activism? Nobody thought that by breaking up the railroads people wouldn’t need trains anymore, but they understood the danger of allowing a single company to have such market dominance and what it that would mean for consumers. Same thing here. And yes, I’m aware this requires continual diligence as the phone companies that were once PacBell are now bigger than it was, but that lacking of failure to continue enforcing anti-trust doesn’t mean the concept is wrong.
No single company should be allowed to have such influence that very idea of them going away leads to the very doomsday considerations we’ve been talking about. That’s what this is all about.
How do you not see, that banning one company would just increase the monopoly the remaining companies hold?
Google is not even the largest cloud provider. Amazon’s AWS has 30%, Microsoft’s Azure 20%, Google is third with 12%.
You can’t “bust monopolies” by reducing the number of options. You need to increase the number of competitiors.
That’s exactly what the US government did under Teddy Roosevelt when it forced by law these large entities to divest and break up into smaller ones not subsidiarized to each other. And yes, they should also do this to Amazon and Microsoft.
edit: I guess I should say I understand they can’t force them to break up in this instance, but they can simply state they won’t do business with the entities at present and recommend it. If that doesn’t happen, I am confident other savvy investors will be happy to fill any hole left by these giants. The world will keep turning, I promise.
Right, so if you massively extend your proposal, it could maybe make sense to a nontechnical person. Congratulations. Your original idea of just blocking google is still stupid and counterproductive to your stated goal.
Anyway, the real issue isn’t lack of competitors. It is vendor lock-in and lack of independent data backups. It would take significant effort for most companies to migrate from one cloud provider to another, since different providers use slightly different, incompatible technologies. And of course, if a cloud provider went down suddenly, a lot of data would be lost.
China blocks ESNI and DoH. You have to find a DoH server that is not well known and have to fake the host name.
But if you actually do that, lol
There’s probably a way to redirect without validation. Only respond to port 80 if needed, then redirecr. Sure the browser might complain a little but it’s not as bad as invalid cert.
Maybe for some rando site, Google and any half competent site has HSTS enabled, meaning a browser won’t even try to connect with insecure HTTP, nor allow user to bypass the security error, as long as the HSTS header is remembered by the browser (the site was visited recently, set to 1 year for google).
In addition, google will also be on HSTS preload lists, so it won’t work even if you never visited the site.
That makes me realize, what kind of country doesn’t cobtrol it’s dns space’s encryption certificates. That’s a major oversight.
What? What do you mean “DNS space”? Classic DNS does not have any security, no encryption and no signatures.
DNSSEC, which adds signatures, is based on TLDs, not any geography or country. And it is not yet enabled for most domains, though I guess it would be for google. But obviously EU does not control .com.
And if you mean TLS certificates, those are a bit complicated and I already explained why forging those would be problematic and not work on Chrome, though it could be done.
Yes I mean tls certs as those control what dns records are considered valid. The Eu should control which tls are considered valid within its territory and that should be considetedpart of their security apparatus. It’s crazy irresponsible to have left that up to unaccountable private foreign entities. This is what would make it difficult to control their own independant version of the dns namespace.
No. At the end of the day, I control which certificates I consider valid. Browsers just choose the defaults. There is no way I quietly let some government usurp that power, considering how easy to abuse it is.
No they don’t. That is not what TLS really does. But I guess close enough.
Ok but my grandma can’t
Even more reason to have relatively neutral organizations transparently curate the list of trusted CAs. While I am sure governments also closely monitor the process and would step in if they deemed it a threat.
Google is a threat. They should know they can be subverted if they continue in their ways with the questionably ethical human experimentation (for instance, undisclosed A/B testing including full context)
What does that have to do with TLS?
One of the reasons to create a domestic redirect of google.com
So we come full circle. The government having the ability to impersonate a site is exactly what I believe must not happen.
If the EU wants to create search.eu or any other search site, more power to them. I certainly wouldn’t use it, but hey, if you want to trust them, you can.
If they want to block google search… Eeeeh… I guess that is fine?
But they shouldn’t be able to create a fake certificate for google.com or any site for that matter, not only allowing them to impersonate the site, but also intercept encrypted traffic between users and that site.
So no. Governments should not control the TLS infrastructure.
TLS certificate infrastructure is a major national security concern. Sure, for religious reasons it can be controlled by a private entity but the governement is certaily already pullibg all the strings there. The problem in the EU is this control is in America now. So they need to wake up and have their own. Then the can enforce a google ban and seamless redirect to search.eu or whatever. The important thing is to both block google while not breaking the search button on everything that foolishly hardcoded google.com in the code.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. America does not have any more or less of an ability to forge certificates compared to Europe.
Not wanting to live in a surveillance state is not religious, it’s common fucking sense.
There is 0% possibility the US gov cannot publish a certificate in all major browser that could usurp any dns from a registrar in a country under US dominance.
Just because they haven’t used that card uet doesn’t mean they can’t. The clearnet is already a surveillance cesspit. There is no escaping state forces anywhere on it.
It’s just the europeans being complacent about leaving this capability to the americans. For now they depend un US cyber command for it, and they won’t do it to google for the sole benefit of europeans.
There is 0% possibility the US gov could do it covertly.
Sure, they could force it overtly but the rest of the world would have forks of Browsers like 15 minutes after it went through.
Besides, there is no need to go after the browsers. If you want a fake cert for a few days, EU has trusted certificate authorities just like the US that can issue a cert for any website (CAs are usually not restricted to specific TLDs). The CA would just get removed from browsers within days, same as browsers being replaced.
PS: Btw, iTrusChina is also a trusted CA. If the US is not concerned about their main adversary, China, forging certificates, why should EU be worried about an ally doing so?
Just block payments from advertisers by revoking their business licence.
Yes, I mentioned that in a comment deeper down. And even before that, just fine them. Chances are they will pay and if not, you can probably seize some bank accounts.
I am not trying to say Google can afford to completely defy the EU, just found it interesting how hard it is to block just google search specifically.
PS: Also mentioned in a burried comment, there actually is a way for ISPs to block google, since DNS over HTTPS is not enabled by default yet in browsers I think. I forgot this since I enabled encrypted DNS like 8+ years ago for myself and just assumed people also have it by now.
lemmy.ml with the stupid authoritarian takes again.
believing instance url means anything is beyond stupid
People from hexbear or lemmygrad are atrocious tho. ML is a bit better but still
Lemmy provincialism wow
You think I even know a single thing about this lemmy. Ml thing? I wouldn’t even remember what the url is if you hadn’t told me. It’s irrelevant. I just picked a server at random, likely the first one in the list.
What a hopeless nerd you have to be to care about the dns instance name.
So much for having a reasonably discussion. Calling me a hopeless nerd. You sure must be fun to be around.
Its not just an server name since the moderators there remove stuff that doesn’t fit their narrative and people with according ideology often are on these servers. It makes a real difference. You can check it out because users that find an instance that fits their personal beliefs create their account there and its a Marxist Leninist community. But you don’t actually seem to care.
1/6 of all lemmy users are on that server. It has been the default recommended server long enough that nothing can be taken for granted about the users of that server.
And this idea that one should give a microsecond of attention to which server to create an account on, is why mastodon is a desert that even twitter refugee don’t want to go to.
Lemmy instances should not even know the usernqmes of their users. User accounts should just be encrypted files being served.
Nah, if you voluntarily join a tankie instance, you are the one who’s stupid.
Listen bucko nobody cates about that nerd shit.
It would have to be an EU run search engine, otherwise which government?
Nah I don’t think the government should run a search engine
Agreed.
Who do you trust more, Google or the EU?
I trust neither
That’s fine, but then who does the search engine?
You can do things decentralized, and if you look into it, the EU is happy to fund projects to create decentralized internet services. Case in point, Lemmy’s primary funder is the EU.
I use brave, but only the search
Funding an existing project like Lemmy is different than hiring people to create a lemmy
They are not just funding existing projects like Lemmy, they are actively encouraging new projects by providing funding for “open internet” style stuff.
Though yes you are right, it is different from directly hiring people, since if they did that, it would be very hard to relinquish direct control of the project. Corps can’t act solely for the common good, governments have that as their stated mission.
I’m fine with some funding for other people who are running things for public benefit. The difference is a meaningful one, since governments have rules about how they do contracting work. It ends up with companies that focus on government contracts that know all the rules and have the connections.
A couple of people running an open source project don’t have the same restrictions
The EU. I don’t use google search. I use a degoogled android rom firefox and only use the bare minimum of google search engines. I think the government should promote conditions where fair competition against google is actually possible.
The eu doesn’t it to block the search engine from the internet. It only needs to block the google cash-flow from inside EU to Ireland and then it’s shareholders.
If the links in the article are accurate, this doesn’t seem to be a “law”, but this thing: …ec.europa.eu/…/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.
The DSA contains provisions for combatting disinformation and as a very large online platform google is required to implement suitable practices. The DSA is a regulation, that is, immediately applicable law in all of the EU. As is usual for laws it’s written pretty generically and abstract, though, so the commission is also publishing more detailed documents that companies can use as check-lists.
In essence, the difference between the tax code and the finance ministry publishing a paper on accounting best practices. You’re free to ignore the latter but that will likely make your life harder than it needs to be.
It’s set to become mandatory, i.e. law. According to the article.
And this isn’t a free speech issue. It’s about disinformation. Folks can say what they want, but a political ad needs to clearly be a political ad. And disinformation can’t be profit motivated.
It’s all in the article you just linked. You can say what ever you want, but if it’s bullshit, Google will need to flag it or face fines.
It isn’t law yet though, and it is the current iteration that Google won’t follow. We have yet to see how they will react if it actually becomes law. My guess is that they will, begrudgingly, bend the knee.
Who decides what the facts are?
The fact checkers obviously
Reality
Who decides what reality is?
Physics
I’m OK with this risk. The incredible rise of stupid arguments that we attempt to treat as equal for consideration is unreasonable. If we want to continue having meaningful discourse, we have to remove disinformation.
Yeah, but the question was; who decides what is disinformation? If it was some truly competent and unbiased AI system then I perhaps wouldn’t be as concerned about it, though I can see issues with that too, but humans are flawed and I see this as a potenttial slippery slope towards tyranny and censorship.
Imperfect need not be the enemy of good. Failure to combat disinformation is absolutely a path to tyranny, and a lie going halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on is effectively censorship if the truth comes out only by the time the public has lost interest.
Yes, there are problems combating it, but we have to show up to the fight somehow. I’ll take a fallible fact checking system over none at all, because the court of public opinion makes a poor fact checker.
Evidence and records mostly ?
At times like early covid there wasn’t much facts and evidence available. Back then masks didn’t stop the spread of the virus but vaccines were supposed to. Who decides what the facts are in times like that?
You rely on what you know and check if the assumptions are still correct when you have more information at hand. That’s what government agencies are supposed to be for.
Your teachers always gave you back assignments face down didn’t they.
Teachers do that?! Damn, I was bullied by all my teachers.
Assuming you’re asking in good faith, the code is here.
…ec.europa.eu/…/code-practice-disinformation
Paid fact-checkers spread across all member states.
“The new Code will extend fact-checking coverage across all EU Member States and languages and ensure that platforms will make a more consistent use of fact-checking on their services. Moreover, the Code works towards ensuring fair financial contributions for fact-checkers’ work and better access to fact-checkers to information facilitating their daily work.”
Essentially, everything will have Snopes attached to it. Including political ads and other forms of advertising. As well as more blatant propaganda.
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.
And not a single bit of this would matter at all if YOU PEOPLE* would just know a damned thing!
*present company excepted, of course.
Can’t believe Google’s doing this, they seemed to be the most dedicated to this of the big companies. Especially on Youtube.
The rich are trying to pivot the Trump vicory into world domination before we can organize and dethrone the oligarchy.
Google/Meta helping to spread misinformation is a big part of that.
I wish I was kidding.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Or fortune… but you can’t take it with you so your point still stands.
Honestly, the most humane and least distasteful solution is to dispossess the billionaires of their billions. Not a drop of their blood need to be shed, should this be done.
Too bad the billionaires just bought the government of the United States
Let me know when you figure out how to peacefully redistribute the wealth of people who want to rule the world
The evidence so far is that the primary response of the heinously rich when they fear for their lives is to spend more or much more on their security and their politicians rather than to change their evil greedy behavior at all. Those looking for any real solution to oligarchs need to consider this fact when evaluating what should be done.
“Don’t be evil”
picking up the sarcasm
Fascism is good for business.
.
Given that we are going full authoritarian fascist now, perhaps the EU should ban Google, given the US tik tok precedent.
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.
Democracies around the world rightly shouldn’t tolerate the blatant corruption and manipulative business practice of American tech companies.
America itself seems fine with it.
Oh wait, you said Democracies right. My bad.
wish the eu would just actually ban american companies there is really no need for them anyway
I like this. I don’t think I need a large company fact-checking anything tbh. They already got too much influence and power, I don’t need them to control the narrative even more.
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
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
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
Start criminal proceedings to imprison the leadership responsible for non-compliance. Seize their assets to pay for any fine.
Why do we accept that all solutions to corporate crimes should be fines and kiddie gloves?
Because our legal system is made in a way where they technically are not a crime
I want to live in a world where the EU bans Google, but we all know the EU will just roll over and accept this.
Damn.
Wish the rest of us could just ignore all laws & not face any consequences.
What a fucking joke this entire system is.
They don’t have a problem giving someone 100 years for a quarter bag of weed though. For a first time offense.
Oh that was long ago. it’s for not having a baby if you’re female now. Megacorps run usa and now the worst (which is best for some reason) ceo in the history of man will again be president and continue the clear path to government dismantling
So, another “cookie banner” coming then, but this one says: “facts not checked”
Sovereign citizens are really getting out of hand. Oh wait it’s google.
Commence operation “find out”!
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.
God I hope this happens, it will be absolutely hilarious when the gcp services on which the EU infraestructure for telecommunications, research and development, industry, transportation, banking, agriculture, logistics and health is built up, crashes burning to the ground.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/73fd8e90-04b0-439d-bdeb-6384b441f4f6.jpeg">
Gigachad move on googles part. Who wins, the EU or google?
oligarchs win and you die. fin
I am an oligarch so
The lemming oligarch 🫡🫡🫡
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
Who holds fact-checking companies accountable?
Lawsuits. As it stands the US supreme court is that social media companies can not be held liable for the things their users publish. Fact checking companies can be sued, news companies can be sued (see fox news and the voting machines lawsuit), Facebook can’t be held responsible in the same way
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, but it can be harmful if done on a platform that has a significant skew in its political leanings, because it can then lead to the assumption that posts must be true because they were “fact checked” even if the fact check was actually just one of the 9:1 ratio of users that already believes that one thing.
However, on platforms that have more general, less biased overall userbases, such as YouTube, a community notes system can be helpful, because it directly changes the platform incentives and design.
I like to come at this from the understanding that the way a platform is designed influences how it is used and perceived by users. When you add a like button but not a dislike button, you only incentivize positive fleeting interactions with posts, while relegating stronger negative opinions to the comments, for instance. (see: Twitter)
If a platform integrates community notes, that not only elevates content that had any effort at all made to fact check it (as opposed to none at all) but it also means that, to get a community note, somebody must at least attempt to verify the truth. And if someone does that, then statistically speaking, there’s at least a slightly higher likelihood that the truth is made apparent in that community note than if none existed to incentivize someone to fact check in the first place.
Again, this doesn’t work in all scenarios, nor is it always a good decision to add depending on a platform’s current design and general demographic political leanings, but I do think it can be valuable in some cases. (This also heavily depends on who is allowed access to create the community notes, of course)
I get what you’re trying to say, they can incentivise accuracy and they do at least prompt people to be more accurate lest the community holds them to account. But what i don’t like is that there is no standard that the notes are held to and there is no accountability if either the original post or the community note are wrong.
I also don’t like that the social media publishers are pushing the fact checkers onto the community to be done for free, but at the end of the day they own the community note and can delete it if they don’t like it. We are doing their work for them and taking accountability away from them
Sorry if you replied to this already, but I wanted to add that what I meant to say is that they hide behind the accountability we give them
.
And it lets certain communities brigade the notes with misinformation/disinformation to try and control the narrative.
Ironically, for authoritarian communist countries that recorded high rate of newly minted billionaires in the past five years, China and Vietnam are doing something right cracking down on billionaires.
Very fair, the persecution of Jack Ma was very interesting. Haven’t heard of what happened in Vietnam though?
You shouldn’t need to be authoritarian to crack down on these systems though. I really liked what I saw Lena Khan doing in the US, what Brazil did to twitter or what Julie Inman Grant did here in Australia
There is a Vietnamese billionaire who is found guilty of scamming her victims. The court ordered her to pay what she stole within a deadline or else she will face execution. I don’t remember if she is ordered to pay either only a portion or all of what she scammed.
And that probably means she was late paying a kickback to a party boss.
It’s possible to to the right thing for the wrong reasons.
These companies are built on extracting content out of people anyway. They get paid because users get sold shit they don’t need while users are the ones providing the content.
When you stop to think, they really don’t offer us anything other than a named place we all agreed to meet
I wonder how it will work and how can be enforced. Weekly I can easily find non fact checked article on “respectable” newspaper.
If its the newspaper themselves that prioritize click baiting over fact checking, I don’t know how can we ask Google or meta to fact check their userbase
France’s tech sector: “Zis is mon’ Chanz to shine!”
France has a tech sector?
Aesthetically I like reading technical texts in French.
(Contrary to the stereotype, romantic texts not so much, that’s where English is better ; and despite trying my best, I still haven’t found a way to like Dutch ; neutral on German.)
But the point is - has anything big lifted off in France in the last 20 years or so?
I’m not talking about quite a few particular people whose names should be in history books. I’m talking about companies and systems.
There is a french tech sector: Doctolib, BlaBlaCar, and a few other original ideas have opened new types of services and taken their hold over Europe. Yet, those services cannot be adapted to individualistic north America.
OK, TIL. As someone in Russia, I wouldn’t know.
I don’t think “individualistic” is a bad thing or prevents those from working there. Maybe you meant “atomized society”, but US is not the worst country in that regard, that would be the one I live in.
A modern and more global take on Minitel would be cool.
France has its own independent search engine, Qwant.
thedroidguy.com/does-qwant-search-use-bing-search…
I was curious if it relied on Bing, as most 3rd party search engines do. Which seems to be the case.
I’ve been using Qwant for a while now. Better results than Google, that’s for sure.
France have VLC France is one of the birthplace of the worldwideweb (admittedly with swisserland). France had a sortof internet while the US still were playing around with BBS. France absolutely have a tech sectors
Google is basically saying the EU couldn’t do its own subpar search and they’re not brave enough to try.
Perfect time to implement sky-high fines for non-compliance.
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.
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!
Yes, the EU will certainly kowtow to him and bend the knee. 🙄
I mean Putin’s weaselly little far right lackeys are scarily close to being in government in a few European countries now (or already are, Hungary and Slovakia). So who knows
The good news is that, when Putin goes, they’ll go too. There are some other dependancies that you can easily work out.
I’m not convinced Putin isn’t an immortal Reptilian
I hope we could disconnect the cable tbh.
Just imagine a yankless internet. How glorious it would be
Time for EU to simply ban Google then for non compliance.
Unbelievable 2025 is turning out to be a stellar year
Fuck Google
Google, this is t he EU, not America, they’re not going to suck up to you.
Just sanction the US then. Kick them out of rammstein and rota and all the place they’re currently occupying.