There's a fair chance that discordant voices in the Parliament will grow increasingly stronger, party affiliations notwithstanding. It wouldn't be the first time that the Parliament has asserted its power over the Commission.

> And if they take it to the streets, they'll just copy the UK's playbook.

What is the UK's playbook in this case?

Masks have been of for a while, but as long as the EU people can't vote the EU presidency out of office, it's to no avail.

It was a (steel and coal) corp affordances union to begin with, so it's no wonder it's pandering to business rather than civic interests after all.

Von der Leyen is corrupt yet shapes EU policy without backlash, and the citizenry is left to pay the price, precisely because the EU pretends to speak for the people.

That just means they have all the infrastructure they need to bottle syrup from another source and start selling that instead - no capex needed, just maybe need to get together with other franchisees and figure out how to spend some opex on marketing and getting it onto store shelves. Coca-cola has a moat, but it's hardly protective of franchisees here.

It's arguably unhealthy that one company has such global dominance over any market, even a trivial one like soft drinks.

> So if you boycott Coca-Cola brands, maybe 20% of the impact goes to Coca-Cola US, while 80% is felt by the local company and its employees.

Assuming the person burns the money they would've spent on Cola in the first place. But they aren't, they'll probably just redirect that money to an alternative soft drink, probably a more local one.

Boycotting US tech is magnitudes easier than boycotting Chinese-made products. They're in whole different universes. Especially on a country level, let alone a EU level.

Is removing the dependence on US tech easy for the EU? No, it's tough and takes a lot of work and time. It's still a piece of cake compared to the dependence on Chinese manufacturing. They're incomparable.

You speak about India?

Yeah, EU is super fucked too since it outsourced its energy dependence to Russia, consumer manufacturing to China, defence and tech services to US, and only just woke up in the last 3 or so years that it was all a huge mistake that's now costing us dearly since we're at the whims of all 3 belligerents who know that now is the time they can squeeze us.

Trying to undo just one dependency is a slow and painful process, but fighting all 3 at the same time is a suicide mission.

The US outsourced its manufacturing too, but unlike EU, it has a strong enough economy and military that they can just snap their fingers and the likes of Taiwan and Korea will immediately onshore manufacturing of their high end chips and ships to the US, but EU doesn't have this kind leverage.

The government has to mandate it on some level with purchasing power.

If the government switched away from Microsft and refused to accept MS document formats for any legal reason - then things might shift.

Most businesses just don't care, they want they easy button.

A law firm does not want to screw around, they just click 'buy' on Word, Outlook, Teams.

There's a deep psychology to it.

I remember a developer telling me that Oracle 'was the only real database'.

It's not so much propaganda, just the propagandistic power of incumbency. People who only know one thing are hard pressed to believe there could be something else.

This is more than 50% brand, narrative etc.

We techies tend to underestimate the power of perception, even when it's of our own creation etc. i.e. people fighting over Linux and it's various distros.

It is understanably hard to stay vigilant with respect to individual everyday purchases, but services and subscriptions are an easy and continuous win.

It was also very smart of them to send their citizens to US universities and companies and exfiltrate research and IP to grow their own tech industry...

GP was not about America changing but about Europe.

I am in the reserve of the german army, so i can be called up if things escalate beyond a certain point (the so called "Verteidigungsfall").

The US already has bases on Greenland. It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and therefore is already a NATO ally territory. They already have all the "control" they need to keep it out of the hands of Russia and China. There is no need to "let" the US have "control". If the US were being run by people who understood the basis on which they have a base there, they would realise they already have all the control they need from a strategic perspective.

Very bold claim to make unsourced from an account with a very _interesting_ posting history.

Greenland invasion is just a distraction by Trump from the Epstein files. The US already have massive military presence in Greenland with permission from Denmark since the 1950s, they can already do whatever illegal things they want there (and they have, like installing a portable nuclear reactor), without the downsides that come with actual ownership of the island. They already have a really sweet deal.

Trump keeps talking about taking it because he knows the media will bite the bait and talk about that instead and forget about the epstein list and other illegal shit his administration did.

Remember how he was also talking about annexing Canada in his election? Trump just loves to bait the media by saying crazy stuff since the media feeds on sensationalist stuff like that.

The fight against “left” and “right” is just a narrative to gin up allegiance with certain groups.

The only relevance to the article is that it indicates which parties have sided with the US administration to fight consumer’s digital rights.

Just as with most parts of the EU (imo both it's strength and it's weakness) there is some complexity and bureaucracy involved with founding out the political spectrum of MEPs. You can research the EU political groups and the political alliances and the corresponding positions on these Wikipedia pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_Europe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_political_alliances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_Europe...

Yes. But if you look into the policies they push, they are all progressive for some reason.

Yes ?

Thanks for the comment. It actually perfectly illustrates my point. Most people equate GDPR with a "Delete My Account" button, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

We didn't spend thousands of hours on a deletion feature (or just development time). We spent them in total to be compliant in a healthcare environment. That time goes into:

Documenting the entire lifecycle (how, why, and where) of every single data point we process. Conducting and documenting formal risk assessments for every major processing activity (Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIA)). Drafting and negotiating data processing agreements (DPAs) with every single partner and vendor we use. Building strict role-based access and logging systems to track exactly who views and edits data and why. Implementing pseudonymization and logical data separation to ensure we meet "privacy by design" standards. Constantly coordinating between the product and dev team and the DPO to update policies and communicate changes to users.

The point I’m making is that the EU has built an incredibly expensive regulatory environment to support rights that, in practice, the vast majority of users don't seem to care about. We’re over-engineering for a "loss of control" that the average user hasn't shown much interest in reclaiming.

It's always easier to focus on a shared ennemy than to look inward. Talking about the Draghi report forces people to confront that the EU is actually extremely disunited at the moment and the political landscape is very messy. The report was buried by Germany and the Netherlands after all.

It's easy to rally behind idea that bad foreign actors conspire to torpedo customers protecting laws because it provides a theorically easy solution: just stop allowing foreigners to interfer. Meanwhile, considering how these laws might be impacting companies in a fairly cut throat international environment and if we have put the cursor at the right place between protections and economic growth is a far more complex debate. It involves a lot of trade off and shades of gray and it puts the onus of decision strictly on us.

It's complex and as with everything involving trade offs, it's very easy to rattle purists of both sides. I rarely expect a rave welcome when I start discussing these topics on the internet.

What does fascism mean to you, exactly?

Fascism: 'A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.'

Interesting because doesn't every sort of democratic state try to be 'a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls'? Depends how stringent and usually not stringent enough for many on the Left and on the Right.

When tempted to use the word 'fascism', is it not better to describe the issue with which one's concerned (maybe deeply) rather than using a fit-all word and take care not to devalue the significance of the word as it was, for instance, applied in WW2 to some of the appalling atrocities that occurred in that period and those we've seen reports of recently?