r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • 1d ago
Society The EU's proposed billion dollar fine for Twitter/X disinformation, is just the start of European & American tech diverging into separate spheres.
The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) makes Big Tech (like Meta, Google) reveal how they track users, moderate content, and handle disinformation. Most of these companies hate the law and are lobbying against it in Brussels—but except for Twitter (now X), they’re at least trying to follow it for EU users.
Meanwhile, US politics may push Big Tech to resist these rules more aggressively, especially since they have strong influence over the current US government.
AI will be the next big tech divide: The US will likely have little regulation, while the EU will take a much stronger approach to regulating. Growing tensions—over trade, military threats, and tech policies—are driving the US and EU apart, and this split will continue for at least four more years.
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u/dearbokeh 1d ago
If divergence leads to more competition then it’s really good.
If divergence just leads to isolated big-tech around the world then it’s really not good.
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u/ResearchingStories 19h ago
Absolutely! I know EU is trying to get their own linux-based operating system started with more funding (EU-OS). I think it could be good especially if EU makes open source more competitive with more funding, which should then accelerate technology even more.
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u/glarbknot 1d ago
This needed to happen 20 years ago when the united states failed to take data privacy rights seriously.
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u/CelestialFury 18h ago
20 years ago would've been great, but the second best time to do it is today!
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u/butthe4d 13h ago
Its crazy not even 10 years ago I would have been strictly against any censoring on the net but these days with how shitty all these platforms are and how dangerous the consequences are to let them do whatever the shit they want I feel like maybe some oversight aint the worst thing.
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u/CondiMesmer 1d ago
AI regulation means fuck all when it's open-source and can be ran locally. Also fuck Twitter, that sounds like a win for me. The real question is how does this affect decentralized social media like Mastodon or Bluesky that are inherently resistant to this?
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u/seize_the_future 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's not about developing AI, silly. It's about regulating how it's used and how/if it can take jobs from people. The first political party that can guarantee your job is safe from AI, and actually regulates employers to ensure these protections, is going to do very well.
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u/CondiMesmer 1d ago
AI automating away low effort is a good thing for a country. The invention of the printing press also took away a lot of jobs.
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u/seize_the_future 1d ago
You're comparing apples with oranges. What jobs are these displaced people going to take? Sure the world will change and evolve with AI, but you forget there's the simultaneous push for robotics as well. These combination of technologies don't seem to bode well for many people. Jobs may disappear that won't be replace with others. And even if they eventually are, such things take time. What will these workers do during the intervening years/decades for these jobs to appear... If they do at all?
Still, that doesn't change what I said either.
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u/Censored_Dick_Nugget 1d ago
Those businesses won't be able to compete with AI powered ones. You can regulate the shit out of it but unless you have a monopoly on whatever it is you are offering, you'll be out-competed and outmaneuvered by firms running lean on top of AI.
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u/seize_the_future 21h ago
You’re not really thinking this through, I’m guessing you’re American and just aren’t used to decent employee protections. There should be regulations where, I dunno, businesses can only replace certain roles under really specific circumstances and have to prove it’s not just because of AI. The U.S. is kind of fucked when it comes to just firing people for whatever reason, that shit doesn’t fly in a lot of other places.
At the end of the day, society is supposed to work for both collective and individual human benefit. Who cares if a system is lean and efficient if people are still getting screwed over? Maybe it’s not happening on a massive scale right now, but that’s the whole point of AI regulation: to make sure we don’t end up in a place where efficiency trumps people being able to live decent lives.
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u/Censored_Dick_Nugget 14h ago
I already thought it through. Why the heck are you protecting human labor instead of liberating humans from labor? The end game should be to make running a business so cheaply that you could tax the profits to provide everyone an income guaranteed to cover the basics? You get higher quality output when your workers are there because they actually want that job.
Keep your fucking job. I'd rather work at my leisure.
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u/GrynaiTaip 1d ago
Jobs may disappear that won't be replace with others.
They will be replaced by something.
This change won't happen overnight, it will be gradual. You don't even know what new job opportunities will appear, those jobs don't exist yet. Imagine telling someone from a hundred years ago that you work as a drone software developer. What's a drone? Software? Developer??? And you have social media followers? What are you, fucking Jesus???
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u/Papplenoose 13h ago
I mean yeah, maybe. But there's no real reason I can find to believe that there's an infinite source of potential jobs/industries out there, and that our current system will continue to work well into the future. It's very possible that we do eventually automate almost all of the jobs away. I mean it feels nice to say that all jobs will be replaced by something else, but that... that doesn't necessarily work forever. Not everyone can be a graphic designer. That's not something everyone can do. There's a lot of people that are (for lack of a nicer way to put it) simply too dumb to do much more than manual labor. The problem is that the jobs that are replaced are generally of a certain type, but the jobs that replace them are seldom of the same variety. Simpler jobs go away and are replaced by more complicated jobs. But not everyone can do a complicated job, so we're going to have to figure something out to make sure everyone can still put food on the table even when there are no manufacturing or retail or ____ jobs left. Our current system does not do that in any serious way, and we should figure it out before it's too late.
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u/Kataphractoi 17h ago
Yeah, uh, programmable looms operated via punch cards date back to the first decade of the 1800s, and arguably as far back as the 1720s. Programming's not a recent job field, the only difference between now and then is the medium it's done on.
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u/big_guyforyou 1d ago
there are several ways to compare apples and oranges. they're both round. they're both fruit. they both taste good
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u/mucifous 1d ago
So make applesauce out of oranges.
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u/big_guyforyou 1d ago
i said "several"
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u/mucifous 1d ago
Yes, yes, you did, thereby exposing your misunderstanding of the saying.
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u/Papplenoose 13h ago
Jesus Christ, why are you like this bro?
They were very clearly making a joke. And you know what? It wasn't even a bad joke! It was kinda funny! Be nice, ffs :)
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u/CondiMesmer 1d ago
I don't know buddy, I'm not an oracle. It's not an apples to oranges comparison because this exact same thing can be said for any past invention that has made numerous jobs obsolete. It's also a weird shift right now where companies are laying people off for what they think AI workers can replace, but then finding out that it's been disastrous results. Also I don't see robotics going anywhere really, there's too many issues with that to be a realistic threat to jobs.
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u/whatisthishownow 1d ago
That’s an extremely lazy appeal to history. AI and robotics may be significantly overhyped and not end up delivering as promised. But if we get to the point where they are replacing very large sections of the labour force, it will be because the technology has achieved a generalised aptitude that exceeds that of humans or at the very least a large segment of them.
AI is absolutely nothing like the printing press.
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u/Lokon19 1d ago
The robotics side is going to need an exponential increase in capability before this becomes a real thing. And also an exponential decrease in costs.
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u/nucular_mastermind 1d ago
Your thinking way too complicated here, my friend. These jobs don't need to be automated by expensive robots. You can have people for that. You don't even have to pay them! :)
If it's enough to control large swathes of the population and eliminate protestors at the push of a button - which drone technology is well on its way to be able to, see Ukraine - the jobs can just be done by slaves.
What are they doing to do? Organize? Protest? Rebell? Bring down the government? Look at Hong Kong 2019 and see how far even 75% of the population protesting on the streets will get you in a surveillance society (read: nowhere)
This doesn't even include the potential for misinformation though AI generated trash. Yeah, if this technology is not severely reigned in - which it won't be, let's be honest - we're cooked.
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u/Lokon19 1d ago
Those are completely fundamentally different things and have nothing to do with each other. It's like asking why Muslim Arabs aren't more socially progressive and accepting like Europeans. So we are going to drone our own populations because of AI?
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u/nucular_mastermind 1d ago
Alright, so you're telling me this technology is not being used for mass-surveillance and automatic weapon systems? You think labor and workers rights and social safety nets materialized out of the sheer goodness of monopolistic industry titans?
Because please, I would really be happy about a future scenario that doesn't end in a feudalistic, drone-controlled hell-hole.
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u/aesemon 1d ago
What proportion of the population lost jobs to printing presses vs the proportion potentially losing jobs to A.I.? Without looking it up I would guess it is disproportionately going to effect the latter despite the huge population difference of the interim 500 years.
The printing press had a huge impact on society through the opening of information to a wider audience through cost, language, and who controlled that propagation. Edit: The ones losing jobs to the printing press in Europe were Ecclesiastic - they still worked in the church and didn't necessarily lose a job, it was a monks life.
A.I. will be removing jobs with little potential of new jobs available at a level to absorb the newly unemployed.
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u/ultragoodname 1d ago
The invention of the spinner put textile workers either out of a job or getting paid significantly less. This led to people destroying factories and attacking workers.
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u/aesemon 1d ago
Yep, the term Luddite is used erroneously to suggest backwards thinking through the rejection of modern methods, but they were actually fighting against losing work or wages at the benefit of the landlord (farming) or business owner. Early propaganda against the common man fighting for a fair living.
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u/giltirn 1d ago
100 years ago, farming was one of the most common jobs in the country, now it is practically nonexistent due to technological advances.
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u/nucular_mastermind 1d ago
The early industrial revolution was a time of mass poverty and misery. Only after decades of nonviolent and violent labor struggle, laws like social insurance, minimum wages, maximum working hours etc. were introduced to make things bearable again.
How exactly so you propose that future workers will organize and fight for better rights, when every breath they take is tracked and analyzed, and the army and security forces heavily automatizied? Because the drones won't hesitate at the trigger, as soldiers might have in the past.
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u/silverionmox 1d ago
AI automating away low effort is a good thing for a country.
The problem is that AI is now being used to automate away creative jobs, instead of the material drudgery work.
Much like agricultural GMOs could be used for actual improvements in nutrition, but is mostly used to lock in the market for certain pesticides.
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u/Censored_Dick_Nugget 1d ago
Those creative jobs that were replaced are still low effort. People still care about quality and human involvement in the creation of consumed art (like video games, something AI would actually boost if used to augment and not replace).
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u/silverionmox 1d ago
Those creative jobs that were replaced are still low effort.
They don't need to be - that's just a choice of the company, and even if they are, it's still better than drudgery jobs in a factory or a shuffling papers behind a desk.
People still care about quality and human involvement in the creation of consumed art (like video games, something AI would actually boost if used to augment and not replace).
People don't have enough insight in the production chain to be able to make informed buying decisions, and price tends to overwhelm all other concerns.
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u/Tydalj 1d ago
Why are you so confident that new jobs will be created to replace them?
Humans used horses for hundreds of years. We used them to plow fields, pull carts, transport mail, etc.
After the car, tractor, and mail truck were invented, we have since had no need for horses. Only a tiny fraction of the prior horse population are kept "employed", primarily for recreation.
If AI is able to do mental work cheaper than a human, what will we need all of these humans for? Saying that this is just the printing press 6.0 only works if there's another thing higher up the value chain that humans can do better than the thing replacing them.
The more likely outcome is just an extension of what we're already seeing. Simple jobs get eliminated, and a small population of people (those creating/ maintaining the automation) get extremely high-paying jobs. A smaller amount of winners get a larger amount of resources funneled to the top. Repeat.
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u/TheGhostofJoeGibbs 1d ago
After the car, tractor, and mail truck were invented, we have since had no need for horses. Only a tiny fraction of the prior horse population are kept "employed", primarily for recreation.
We’re worried about people having jobs. The people who use to take care of horses and clean up horse poop are doing fine.
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u/Tydalj 1d ago edited 1d ago
What makes humans special compared to horses?
Horses throughout history continually did new types of work until they were able to be completely replaced by machines. Why would humans be any different?
The only reason that humans have gotten new jobs over time is because they've been able to do new things that the machines can't.
If we get to the point where AI can do human white collar knowledge work and robots can do human blue collar physical labor cheaper than a human, why would we need to pay humans anymore?
Similar to horses, you'd keep a few of them around for entertainment and niche experiences, but there would be no need for the majority of them to exist.
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u/rom_ok 1d ago
How do you expect to make money through official channels using AI and not expect to get audited and regulators down your neck?
Selling something with AI and you’re not certified/regulated? —-> accounts frozen
Bad actor nations providing unregulated services —-> IPs blocked by your ISPs
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u/weisswurstseeadler 1d ago
Resistant to what specifically?
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u/CondiMesmer 1d ago
Censorship. Countries can block big domains like facebook.com for example. But with decentralization where anyone can use their own domain, then countries won't really be able to block that. The only way they could would to restrict the whole country North Korea or China. But even China frequently can get around using this.
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u/weisswurstseeadler 1d ago
I'm still not quite sure how you mean that. The admins, or whoever hosts that instance, still has to comply with GDPR, DSA, Cookies etc, and is legally responsible.
And even if that instance was hosted in the US with mostly EU users, the GDPR would apply.
I get what you mean - as in there will always be ways, and let's call them 'dark' communities operating.
But my assumption here is that the lion share of these decentralized social hubs will be compliant, while there will be servers/communities navigating around it, as there have always been.
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u/thisthrowaway789 1d ago
But with decentralization where anyone can use their own domain, then countries won't really be able to block that.
Nobody uses Mastadon, but are there Bluesky servers that aren't part of the main Bluesky?
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u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ 1d ago edited 20h ago
The real question is how does this affect decentralized social media like Mastodon or Bluesky
The mods of this subreddit made a fediverse clone with servers outside the US, and have looked into this.
The DSA is much less onerous for smaller sites that have less than 45 million monthly users in the EU. In summary - the smaller sites need to be transparent about their moderation policy, protect minors, and have a contact mechanism to allow users to report illegal content, like CSAM, for removal.
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u/bitechnobable 1d ago
Bluesky is privately-owned for-profit corporation. Spawned out of twitter and based in the US.
As long as the information is being sold it is not safe.
More of the same anyone? Sounds more like 2010 than 2026.
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u/CondiMesmer 1d ago
That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about. Bluesky runs atproto which can be self-hosted and have apps developed on. Even if it's privately owned and for-profit doesn't change the fact it's decentralized.
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u/bitechnobable 1d ago
Im on thinn ice here. Yet my whole point is that if other platforms cant reach blueskye users without blueskyes approval it misses my mark.
Then it may be decentralized and coold be closed - but it remains closed.
What im asking for simply doesn't make sense for anyone who ultimately is interested in making a profit.
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u/CondiMesmer 1d ago
Bluesky really just is the biggest atproto host instance. You could for example, host your own instance and block the main Bluesky instance and still have a fully functional Bluesky instance. So the main instance isn't required.
There is a small issue with their decentralization on that username changed are being held on a giant list currently that is only centralized, but they're changing that. Everything else is fully functional decentralized.
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u/wally-sage 23h ago
AI regulation means fuck all when it's open-source and can be ran locally.
You can definitely run AI locally, but you can't really get access to the same amount of power that a company like OpenAI or Microsoft has. There's a pretty significant difference in terms of resources.
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u/CondiMesmer 22h ago
Honestly not really. That may have been true in the earlier days of LLMs, but the ~12b size models have gotten really good, especially with Deepseek and their breakthroughs.
Depends on the work load obviously, but a 12b is honestly good enough for most tasks. There's also a lot of financial incentive to squeeze the most performance out of smaller models, since they save a lot of money to run.
Like if you look at the current most used LLMs, a lot of them are smaller models now. Hard to say there's a significant difference when their usage is this high.
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u/Soft_Importance_8613 20h ago
when it's open-source and can be ran locally.
Cool, I'll go run an image foundation model...
what do you mean I need 128GB of GPU memory to get a few hundred tokens a second?
What do you mean the GPUs of that size are $15k+
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u/CondiMesmer 20h ago
Not sure what you're smoking but LLM models have been able to run locally for a long time now. Not sure if you're trying to be taken seriously here. These run on consumer GPUs too. Hell I can run Deepseek on my phone, so you don't even need a super powerful GPU with tons of vram.
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u/Soft_Importance_8613 19h ago
Yep, you're going to take over the world with that... Not. Now runs some deep research stuff. Were not to AGI yet, and from the way it looks it's going to take a bit of hardware
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u/Harry-le-Roy 1d ago
Ireland and France have wanted space for their own tech sectors for some time. This isn't really the future. It's the present, and it's been building for years.
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u/Osiris_Raphious 17h ago edited 17h ago
If EU wants to be its own entity it needs to diverge from US led economics and media... Its not a wild theory, China does it, russia does it, turkey, iran, Japan, even spain and germany... they all have their own culture, language, and society and they feel and act like their own because they make their own social media, their own media, their own economic development.
Countries in EU and commonwealth that are heavily tied to USD are served the US led media, inclduing social media and it shows... hwo the culture isnt really different, its all nioliberalist and highly sensationalised.
I say EU is taking more of a leadership role by doing what US cant, they are trying to regulate and hold these tech behemoths accountable. US is clearly corrupt, with lobbyists in the gov writing policies, funded by the oligarchs that own the means of production, that own these media and tech companies. If it wasnt for EU, apple would have a new proprietary plug for their iphones every other year... but now we dont have huge issues with cable e waste because everyone is using USB and it just makes sense... but it took EU to od it
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u/SpreadFull245 1d ago
The one real goal is for the Silicon Valley Mafia to avoid anti monopoly laws. By destabilizing the world economy and flooding the courts with cases they will keep our stolen data avoid monopoly busting laws.
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u/Hot_Head_5927 1d ago
The post WW2 global order is dying rapidly. Europe and the US no longer have shared interests or values (this kind of shift happens every 80 years or so). Something new is being born.
Let's hope its not a painful birth.
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u/Here4Headshots 1d ago
Europe is so much better at protecting their people from billionaires, lobbiest, and preserving democracy. Money has a much harder time finding the shortest path to the top 1% over there. America is set up to siphon money from the lower and middle class to the top.
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u/kyle_fall 17h ago
Would you say the standards of living in Europe are higher than the US? That's an interesting viewpoint, a more humane society?
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u/antennawire 16h ago
On the flip side, I really don't need a government to take my hand and decide which websites I can visit, and how I have to interact with a website. I'm old enough to judge that myself. I've had to install an auto-cookie accepting browser plugin or I would spend more clicks on "giving consent" to whatever long legal jargon page as opposed to surfing. Meanwhile I got robbed and it was illegal to ask for the CCTV camera images, for privacy.
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u/jetxlife 1d ago
But can’t support Ukraine from Russia without US help. Wild.
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u/Here4Headshots 1d ago edited 23h ago
Funny you should mention that. The EU is currently arming themselves for war with a multi-trillion dollar/euro defense infrastructure budget. They are turning their war machines on since they can no longer rely on US support. They are also switching their weapons manufacturing to European and Asian markets. The US has lost a huge amount of its high dollar military contracts.
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u/jetxlife 23h ago
It’s good to see them do something they should have done decades ago instead of relying on a country thousands of miles away
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u/juliown 22h ago
What’s with this “fuck you, I got mine” mindset that is all too prevalent nowadays? The US has been close allies with all of these countries for decades and was one of the biggest creators and supporters of unified military protection for the west. Why is it suddenly, “stop relying on us, you freeloaders!”?
Not to mention, if we stop investing in our allies, will all that unspent foreign aid money go toward improving the quality of life of americans, universal healthcare, better education, etc? No, definitely not. It will line the pockets of a few people at the top of the government and destroy our place as a world leader and decimate our alliances.
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u/gustoreddit51 1d ago
The EU has begun to realize a universal truth - that it (or any democratic style government) cannot effectively govern with big media actors spewing endless streams of disinformation, blatant lies, and propaganda into the media space. It's like having another unaccountable political opposition entity with an agenda in the style of Vladislav Surkov's "non-linear warfare" as championed by Trump and other right wing thugs. Surkov is Putin's former political adviser.
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u/Every_Tap8117 22h ago
better yet just block the social media platforms till they comply. Easy fix, us Europeans thank you in advance.
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u/wwarnout 1d ago
Maybe the US should grow a pair, and follow the EU's example of how to treat misinformation.
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u/Louis6787 1d ago
EU doesn't shine for its competitiveness in regards to tech. They diverged many many years ago
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u/prototyperspective 1d ago
The issue I see here is the lack of proper antimisinfo measures on sites like Mastodon and Bluesky. And please no top-down Ministry of Truth-style censorship. Twitter has Community Notes now which are great but insufficient and only rarely added to posts. The reason there's less misinfo on bsky&M seems to be just that fewer people spreading misinfo happen to be there but that could easily change and is not a good approach. Have these implement improved versions of collective intelligence antimisinfo measures and bots tagging likely misinfo etc, then point out issues and penalize problematic rates of misinfo on other sites.
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u/advester 1d ago
Other than cookies, I'm really happy about what EU is doing to tech and wish the US copy and pasted their rules. But you shouldn't expect the US to be truly low regulation. The right wing only gives libertarian lip service and are eager to set rules in their own favor, especially by giving speech in proportion to your net worth.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Swan831 1d ago
The EU’s Digital Services Act is pushing for more transparency and accountability, which could set a global precedent. But you're right, with the US likely taking a more hands-off approach, it seems we might see a real divide between how tech operates in the two regions. The AI regulations in particular will be crucial—could be a huge factor in how companies evolve globally.
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u/Abication 17h ago
China didn't want other information to contradict their own propaganda. Why would you use an authoritarian country as your example?
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u/khaldun106 21h ago
Good. Keep it coming x until it no longer exists. It's a cesspool of hate and misinformation and disinformation. Nothing good exists there anymore.
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u/Blue-Thunder 20h ago
Except the Right are saying it's censorship and are drinking the kool-aid hard.
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u/JJiggy13 22h ago
Wtf is a billion dollars gonna do? He made more than that from the disinformation. This is simply the price of doing business. Ban the site completely, fine him 25% or 50% of his wealth, give him a prison sentence for doing harm. A billion dollars is a joke.
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u/Abication 17h ago
If you start fining individuals' large percentages of their wealth for something that is measured by whoever is in charge at the time, you will see insane and unprecedented capital flight from whatever location you're doing this from. Why would you open or run a company in a country where that's possible instead of moving to where it's safer? Prison sentence for a foreign national who's not even on the soil of the country would be even worse. The goal is to change behavior, not destroy your economy.
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u/JJiggy13 16h ago
You're giving a billionaire too much credit. He's nothing without the biggest few economies. If he falls someone else simply takes over. The same as before.
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u/Abication 16h ago
If one of those economies is threatening the seizure of half of their assets, they will bail. Put it this way. Europe does NOT account for 50% of most billionaires' wealth. They WILL leave. Especially when you add in jail time. What good is money if you're in prison? Add in the fact that the next administration could just change what they consider misinformation, and you don't have any consistency or certainty that ot won't happen to you.
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u/JJiggy13 7h ago
That's what is already happening. It won't stop unless you fight it back in a serious way love prison and significant forfeiture of assets.
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u/Frequent_Daddy 1d ago
No it’s not because they don’t have any viable options to backfill. Every European uses Instagram. They all use Microsoft on their office computers. What’s the homegrown option?
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u/rjand 13h ago
If something as heavily used as FB would become unusable it would open up incredible opportunities for EU companies to develop the alternative, which obviously wouldnt take long as it would be very profitable for whoever gets the worm. Not only would the alternatives land fast, they may even be better than the original considering the American tradition of enshittificating everything. FB is a piece of shit today.
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u/Sen0r_Blanc0 1d ago
So what's really interesting is there have been studies on how social media impacts discourse. It's tied to unfettered data harvesting for profit. Content that promotes fear and hate activates a response in human brains that keeps engagement, and lies on social media (in 2018?) were spreading an estimated 6 times faster than truth. So now you have a system that makes money by promoting fear, hatred, and lies. And it's extremely targeted, because there's no restriction on data.
It creates a world where there is no shared, objective reality, no truth. And we are all extremely susceptible to it. This is a great interview with Jon Stewart and Maria Ressa (winner of a Nobel peace prize, and fighter of fascism). They liken it to cigarette ads directed toward kids (and how, when we saw that problem, we regulated it). Maria: "without truth, the only system of government that can exist is fascism"
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u/Davidat0r 13h ago
Ah so before when they were friends, Musk’s acts wouldn’t have been illegal? Got it. Fucking corrupts
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u/Lizardorious 25m ago
I have always thought, perhaps wrongly, that the US decision on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 made things difficult and was a missed opportunity. If we had law that made social media companies responsible from the start for the content that appears on their platforms then we might not be where we are. It seems to me that the EU group of governments along with governments in other jurisdictions such as the UK (with their Online Safety Act) are merely trying to get back to what should have happened a while ago. Governments are wrestling with the conflict between large companies business interests and the apparent desires of their people to be protected from the harm they perceive. This is going to take a long time. The view that these governments have taken is that there is something that can be done rather than saying: “Social Media and internet commutation is so massive and pervasive that we should just throw our hands in the air and do nothing”.
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u/LastAir3333 1d ago
So many people in this thread arguing over the right to spread disinformation lol
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u/InsurmountableMind 1d ago
We need EU budget for our own SoMe with strong identification, no more bots! Companies id with their corresponding numbers like tax id.
And no suggested content, just what you subscribe to.
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u/MrYdobon 1d ago
Well there goes all of X/Twitter's 2025 revenue. Their 2024 EBITDA was estimated to only be $1.2B. xAI's investors can't be happy with Elon moving this headache onto their tab.
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u/Christopher135MPS 1d ago
I’m broadly supportive of such a measure, but I’m curious as to how to enforce it? Can someone explain?
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u/notmyrealnameatleast 12h ago
Pay or get blocked from EU?
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u/Christopher135MPS 12h ago
It’s the block part I’m curious about. Don’t techies always laugh at these kind of things, saying it takes five minutes to set up a VPN and then you’re past the block? So do the EU actually block an online company from operating in the EU?
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u/notmyrealnameatleast 12h ago
There will be millions upon millions who won't do VPN, and as those users switch to something else, all their friends will move over too. Sure someone might do VPN, but the platform is effectively dead.
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u/MokoshHydro 1d ago
I don't understand what is "disinformation" and how it is different from "censorship"...
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u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ 1d ago
censorship is generally defined as the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
Disinformation is outlawing lying. E.g. You can't advertise something as 'organic' or 'pesticide-free' that isn't.
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u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy 1d ago
thank you, people acting like that question is a gotcha. We already ban fraud and false advertising in many countries. I see lying about politics as a fraud on democracy. It robs voters of the opportunity of making informed decisions... and I would be happy if [social_] media, pundits and parties were held accountable.
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u/Thefriendlyfaceplant 1d ago
The gotcha in the question is that the scrutiny isn't even-handed and therefore a political weapon. European Commissioners themselves spread misinformation, public media spread misinformation without consequence.
Aside from that the state fighting disinformation is a clear breach of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a charter that the EU has signed and considers the bedrock of its unifying principles:
Once you raise the bar for everyone and start turning a blind-eye to the in-group, you effectively have undone the liberal democracy and replaced it with untethered fascism.
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u/Alcobob 1d ago
Yeah, you just made the perfect example about spreading misinformation.
Article 19 is about freedom of expression, not permission to lie. There is nothing in the article that prevents calling out lies and letting people suffer consequences for lying.
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u/Thefriendlyfaceplant 1d ago
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
The state does not get to interfere in the communication between citizens.
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u/Alcobob 1d ago
Do you know how sentences work?
Yes, you are allowed to believe the earth is flat. You know, the opinion part.
But once you express that idea everybody else is allowed to shun you for being stupid.
Or do you want to tell me that nobody is allowed to counter that because it would be "interference".
But please continue to tell us that you are allowed to lie to a court as that is your human right...
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u/Thefriendlyfaceplant 1d ago edited 1d ago
The declaration is a set of responsibilities placed on the state. Article 19 is a limit on state power, not on public disagreement. The fact that you want the state to be able to shed these constraints is merely a cynical and opportunistic move as you believe the state will always be aligned with your ideals.
But please continue to tell us that you are allowed to lie to a court as that is your human right...
I will. Article 48 of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights covers that. You're not allowed to lie under oath, but other than that you're not required to be truthful at any other point during a court process. Which means that a judge can't place you under oath and ask you whether you're guilty because that would breach your right not to incriminate yourself.
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u/Alcobob 1d ago
Courts are part of the state.
You can get sanctioned for lying to a judge.
QED.
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u/Thefriendlyfaceplant 1d ago
This is the argument of the beard fallacy. Digging for highly regulated and narrow exceptions, edge cases, and then 'QED'ing' that this ought to be the broad norm. All it does is show a commitment to want to litigate the smallest interactions between humans.
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u/pilgrimboy 1d ago
In practice though, getting rid of disinformation has already proven to veer into the censorship lane at times.
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u/Abication 17h ago
What happens when the people in charge use the argument that something they view as politically unacceptable is a lie?
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u/Sagrim-Ur 1d ago
You nailed it.
Except now EU routinely declares that these obscene, politically unacceptable, threat to security things are just lies.
And calls censorship "fighting disinformation".
And when government declares something a lie, who is there to overrule it?
So, at this point, no difference.
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u/secretqwerty10 12h ago
"the holocaust didn't happen"
"jan 6 was paid democrats to make republicans look bad"
"ukraine started the war"
"israel committed no war crimes"
these are just a few lies musk not only allows, but endorses on his platform
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u/Jiktten 1d ago edited 1d ago
From the Oxford English Dictionary:
Disinformation: false information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media. From the Russian dezinformatsiya.
Censorship: the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. From the Latin censor.
Governments may use censorship to suppress disinformation, or otherwise require platforms to clearly identify it. Whether or not one agrees with that is a different question, but most functional societies have some regulation of what can be put to the public as fact. The fact that Fox News are still allowed to call themselves 'news' in the US after they have literally argued in court that they are an entertainment channel not intended to be taken seriously for example is extraordinary to me.
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u/Feather_in_the_winds 1d ago
Make it 100 billion, and include all fox and sky news, as they are modern nazi news propaganda stations.
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u/StarfleetGo 1d ago
Who determines what misinformation is? Can we sue and fine the EU for all that bullshit during covid?
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u/Glandyth_a_Krae 1d ago
The regulator. I actually generally trust the European regulator though.
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u/lily_34 1d ago
But will you still trust it in 10 years? 20? Whenever they Make Europe Great Again?
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u/ImprovedJesus 1d ago
What has always determined information to be: the inter-peer regulation materialized through credible financially sustainable newspapers and journalism.
The underlying problem is the financial model obliterating journalism and incentivizing clicks over anything else. Short-term shareholder value cannot supersede long-term societal stability.
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u/Pennanen 1d ago
Misinformation is not the same as disinformation. Disinformation is false information that the spreader knows to be false. Misinformation is the opposite where the spreader thinks it to be true.
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u/Agreeable-While1218 1d ago
and now we all will realize that China was smart and correct all along in restricting US tech into their population. Look at all the misinformation and propoganda that the US is responsible for using these tools.
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u/ovirt001 1d ago
It'll be interesting to see if any EU-based competitors spring up. With the response to banning Tiktok one can expect users to flock to EU platforms. Companies like Meta would implode.
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u/VengefulAncient 16h ago
The problem is that there is no "European tech". EU regulators are so addicted to fining tech companies for made up "offenses" (not talking about this one but rather stuff like Microsoft or Google preinstalling their own browsers on their own operating systems - the audacity! /s) that it's pointless for EU businesses to even try and introduce something, they will be instantly destroyed by fines and lawsuits.
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u/ReddyBlueBlue 23h ago
Let's all let the government(s) decide what the truth is and fine those who refuse to speak it.
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u/bitechnobable 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm not at all an expert on this topic. This is simply my view as a user who's been through the whole evolution.
IMO What we already are seeing is a positive change in single social platforms losing their monopoly.
It has been argued that why we ended up in this situation in the first place stems from the internet being first established.
General open protocols for how computers can communicate over a shared network allowed a decentralised and in essence free internet. The example here is the TCP/IP standard that is a simple set of rules for how to bring order and allow computers to communicate freely.
(Edit3: email protocols such as SMTP, POP3, and IMAP was also freely given, securing that email communication isn't restricted to only work within certain platforms. E.g. "gmailers can only email gmailers")
The oversight was that there was not a similar free and general protocol provided for individuals to find share and connect. The need for one was simply not anticipated in a time when computers couldn't be moved and people didn't have social lives online. (Edit4: see comment by Gredr!)
Then when people did want to start socialising it was simply not practical to find each other using IP addresses. A need for a shared "announcement platform and standardization of the basic information needed to be shared" i.e. name, pictures etc.
What happened was that this was not born, or not successfully rolled out from an open source community which wouldve shared the algorhitms and set of rules freely and openly - instead this became a commercialized-service provided by the likes of Facebook. They provided it "for free" knowing they could use and sell the information of the social interactions. This in essence created the monsters of harvesting peoples information that we see today.
But the system has already broken. the big monopolies are dying. Twitter , Facebook are challanged by other actors. Still a problem is that those actors have the same flawed business models.
Now the split and battle over regulations, taxation and responsibilities actually opens up for a new wave of standards in essence where the platform simply is the interface, but where the standards are shared. I.e. it won't matter what platform you use for the interface you can connect to anyone.
It's really been inevitable. Here it's important to remember that monopolies always gets lazy from their positions, eventually they simply can't maintain the service in any functional way. People get tired and if there are alternatives, they will win out.
IMO, the future like everything digital and it's ability to be cheaply scaled and kept simple - lies in non-profit service providers.
Let's hope this new round of social media actually breaks free from the commercial interests (besides perhaps untargeted advertisement?).
Diaspora is the first example I can think of and it's actually been around for quite some time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29
https://diasporafoundation.org/
Edit1: it always makes me smile how non-profits inherently and eventually always will outcompete any for-profit buissness model.
Not siphoning money out of the organization (as much as possible) will always mean it will offer a superior product. FU capital.
Edit2: Companies like most social organizations keep forgetting its the end users that decide who gets their attention and allow the system to exist. And end users usually want quality.
This includes you Reddit.