Ireland looks good, at least on paper. I'm attached to the U.S., but if I was looking at relocating to Ireland I'd want to talk to people I knew who are on the ground there, or at least friends of friends who are. A puff piece, but has some interesting tidbits: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shourjyasanyal/2018/11/27/is-ir...
And I suppose you have done research on the Irish legal system, its liability protections for 3rd party content providers, its jurisprudence on hate speech, defamation and libel ? (hint: it's part of the EU)
I have not, and never claimed I did. I said it looks good on paper. A number of sources have said it is startup friendly.
If the EU's laws are so burdensome, why is there a thriving startup ecosystem in the EU? I have read about EU's stances on hate speech, defamation, and libel (though I wouldn't call that hobby reading research), and I am fine with their stances.
I think we could use more hate speech protection, when I see reports that as much as 60% of the tweets in the current U.S. political conversations are done by biased bots.
And no, I am firmly against EARN IT and the other 230 attacks. We need internet legislation that is thoughtful, created by technical SME staffers and constitutional law SME staffers, not broad-brush legislation pandering to votes, FUD, or special interests.
> If the EU's laws are so burdensome, why is there a thriving startup ecosystem in the EU? I have read about EU's stances on hate speech, defamation, and libel (though I wouldn't call that hobby reading research), and I am fine with their stances.
There is nothing particularly thriving about it. There are just a lot of them because it costs almost nothing to incorporate a company and 'startup' sounds cooler than a 'small consulting business' or a 'software house'.
Can you name many EU startups that IPOd or got acquired for an impressive amount during the last decade or were even considered "unicorns" at any point by anyone other than themselves ?
In any case, Section 230 isn't about startups per se but specifically about 3rd party content providers - know any such companies that are EU-based ?
> I think we could use more hate speech protection, when I see reports that as much as 60% of the tweets in the current U.S. political conversations are done by biased bots.
Have you considered the possibility of those reports being disseminated by biased bots ?
> And no, I am firmly against EARN IT and the other 230 attacks. We need internet legislation that is thoughtful, created by technical SME staffers and constitutional law SME staffers, not broad-brush legislation pandering to votes, FUD, or special interests.
You sound confused. How do you expect those hate speech protections to materialize if not by modifying or cancelling Section 230 ?
I mean there's always the option of cancelling the 1st amendment - no one seems to like that pesky thing anyway today.
> Can you name many EU startups that IPOd or got acquired for an impressive amount during the last decade or were even considered "unicorns" at any point by anyone other than themselves ?
In Addition to what sobani said:
HelloFresh, Transferwise, N26, Revolut, Telegram (if you stretch the meaning of Europe), Klarna, Auto1 Group to name a few
Of course not all of them operate globally but that isn't a requirement
> Can you name many EU startups that IPOd or got acquired for an impressive amount during the last decade or were even considered "unicorns" at any point by anyone other than themselves?
You mean besides companies like Spotify, Rovio (Angry Birds) or Mojang (Minecraft)?
That's really not that much to show for an economic superpower of almost half a billion people and none of these companies rely on the protections offered by Section 230.
I mean maybe if you got creative enough in minecraft you could trigger some but it's owned by Microsoft now so you'll have to deal with their censorship first.
Well for one it's a super expensive country and the cost of doing business is huge, but we aren't talking about general business-friendliness rather about a very specific set of legal protections provided by Section 230 enabling the business models of facebook, twitter, google, reddit et al.
I don't know the specifics of Swiss legal system in that regard but the fact that nothing similar ever came out of there probably says something.