this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' (www.tilburguniversity.edu)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (6 children)

We already have a gigantic ecosystem of libre solutions to many problems, from entire operating systems to document standards to media codecs to encryption libraries. Open source already won, there's nothing to be proven.

Nothing stops a government, much less a group as powerful as the EU block, to fund libre technology. It's an investment into a safer, more controllable and fair digital ecosystem, that will pay dividends when this same government isn't stuck paying an American company or having data stolen. There's no need for a profit.

Even then, you absolutely can turn a profit with libre software, especially if you have a massive political interest working against your competitors.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

What if the government tells a social media site they have to ban people from criticizing them or they'll lose funding?

Open source sure, that's fine. But someone's gotta pay for running the servers and if the government can cut that funding they have influence over it. That's a level of government control over the media that's a little concerning.

Better to have the the government make regulations requiring companies to make it easy to switch to another company. Like changing to another phone company, you can keep the same number (because of regulations) so people can still call you without even knowing you changed companies even if they have a phone from a different manufacturer using a different phone company.

You can do the same with things like social media, just need to have regulations requiring protocols to allow people to change services easily and connect with other services so there's not a network effect making people stay on shit services because it's what all their friends use. People should own their data, own their contacts and companies should compete by providing better services rather than by making it difficult to leave the services they're currently on.

Handing over your date to the government isn't a better solution than handing it over to a private company. The real solution is to ensure people own their data.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Germany and UK have a solution for this problem that works quite well for decades. The organisation that distributes the funds for media is not a part of government and does not takes direct orders, but operates on a strict set of rules that are mutually agreed upon, both by the government and by the media holdings. The funds come from the people who are paying small summ every month. Neither the government nor the corporations can just cut the funds if they don't like it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I know about TV licenses, but aren't they incredibly unpopular? And a government could eliminate them and replace them with subsidies (which gives them influence) and many voters might agree with that given the unpopularity of TV licenses.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

They are as unpopular as any other taxes, people don't like to give their money away, they'd much prefer to never do it.
And yes, populistic enough government can eliminate whatever public good exists, but you need to be real donald trump about it.

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