[pms]

That's a great point. I agree that's a danger, but please note DSA doesn't cede the control of content to government, but rather it creates an institution of (national) Digital Service Coordinators (DSCs) that decide whether a researcher's access to data is well-reasoned. In most cases that institution will be in a different country (the country of company's EU's HQs) than the researcher. That said, there could be malicious players involved, e.g., researchers and respective DSCs secretly recruited by a government to influence elections. This, however, sounds implausible, since in principle both the DSCs and researchers are independent from national governments.

Also, we can have depolarized recommendation algorithms. We don't need to go back all the way to timelines.

[thesmtsolver]

That's quite optimistic given EU's track record in practice.

E.g., DieselGate. Europe was more impacted but US caught Volkswagen cheating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal#E...

[pms]

It's also quite optimistic to think that the industry will self-regulate, as the recent history of Boeing 737 MAX shows...

[mc32]

It’s also optimistic to think the gov will do what’s good for the people as exemplified by Chernobyl.

There is no “good” answer. Each has its pros and cons.

[pms]

Yes, which is why we need to balance who has power, and facilitate independent research, rather than to give away to either industry or government.

[thesmtsolver]

No one is saying that the industry will self-regulate. There is a right amount of regulation and all evidence points that the EU is over that limit. The US is below (probably) but closer.

[pms]

That's not clear to me at all. Would you mind elaborating?

[Workaccount2]

Europe has a borderline shrinking economy and failed to become a player in the advanced technologies driving the world economy today. It's because they created an extremely hostile business environment, leading to founders going to the US to start their business there instead.

So now Europe is a continent full of people using American made software, running on American and Chinese made hardware, going on American social media to talk about how Europe is totally fine because they only work 9 months out of the year and don't allow young people to become billionaires.

[pms]

I do think Europe should become more self-reliant. I also work a lot and rarely take any vacation time, but I don't see any sense -- except for egoism -- in working so much just to spread more AI slop online, mislead and polarize societies, or support a genocide. I think Europe has learned its lesson during the World Wars.

[terminalshort]

This reads to me like: "please note DSA doesn't cede the control of content to government, but rather it creates a more obfuscated and shady government that pretends not to be a government, but is actually 10x worse and completely devoid of democratic control, and then it cedes control to that."