[retrodaredevil]

The thing is, the EU needs to be able to not only sell that the regulation they propose is good to the public, but also not piss off the US administration.

Most people are too non-technical to understand why this is a bad thing even when it's explained to them. Plus, whatever administration is in power in the US has a lot of influence.

Trump has already said that he wouldn't tolerate regulation that affects American companies [1], painting regulation that happens in another country as something that will affect US citizens. (I mean if you use the GDPR as an example, it's not wrong. Think of cookie pop ups while browsing the web in the US)

I would like the the EU would go harder with their regulations, because it usually results in other countries or states following their lead, but I dont see that happening. Regulation has been painted as "bad", and we have at least 3 more years until that changes.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/12/tech/us-eu-tech-regulation-fi...

[burnerthrow008]

> rump has already said that he wouldn't tolerate regulation that affects American companies

This lays bare the stupidity of applying the pay-or-consent law to only Facebook and not everyone. Every important newspaper in Europe has pay-or-consent. It does not matter that each one individually is smaller, the effect is the same.

The law was carefully crafted to ensure European businesses (newspapers) are not "gatekeepers" while ensuring American businesses (social networks) are. That fact did not go unnoticed in the rest of the world.

[microtonal]

So? There is a fundamental difference. The app stores have effectively become utility companies through the Android-iOS duopoly and it is neigh-impossible to make a new competitive ecosystem. Utility companies are regulated because they can distort the market with their power otherwise. E.g. if the power lines are owned my a single company (which is the case in many countries), if they were not regulated, they could pretty much ask any price. What are you going to do to compete? Roll out a completely new power grid? The Android/iOS duopoly is the same, the fact that they could ask for an insane 30% (!) of every transaction before the regulatory squeeze started should tell you enough.

The newspaper market is very different, because there are many players and you can always go to a competitor. There are even newspapers that make all content available and ask an optional donation (e.g. Taz in Germany or to some extend The Guardian, who do not seem actively block ad blockers).