[onlytue]

I hate to beat a dead horse and have people downvote me but: the EU has always been corrupted. The knowledge and effects are not evenly distributed until it hits each niche group. Then they find out the hard way that they were useful idiots. It’s ok to be wrong/admit. Let’s just move past the infighting and see those in power for the evil that they are.

[epistasis]

The question isn't if there's corruption, the question is who is behind the corruption.

Condescendingly and incorrectly assuming that others think that corruption is impossible is kinda rude and also dodges attempts at correcting the corruption.

[AnthonyMouse]

Not only that, "corruption" is pretty squishy. Let's apply Hanlon's Razor for once.

Google et al go to the government and say they've got this attestation thing that can something something security. No one is taking a bribe but also no one they're hearing from is telling them that doing this is going to cement the incumbents. "Security" is good, right? So it makes it into the law.

That doesn't meet most formal definitions of corruption. It's more like incompetence than malice. But the outcome is indistinguishable from corruption. The bad thing gets into the law.

The difference is, if the politicians are taking bribes and you get mad at them, they fob you off because they're more interested in lining their pockets. But if the politicians are just misinformed bureaucrats and you get mad at them, they might actually fix it.

And attributing everything to "corruption" discourages people from doing the latter even in cases where it would be effective.

[fragmede]

> Google et al go to the government and say

The money that goes into lobbying in order to have that say is, depending on who you ask, corruption. I, as a random citizen, don't get the same say that a multi billion dollar international corporation does.

[AnthonyMouse]

That seems like a pretty useless definition of corruption. It implies that retirees writing letters to Congress is "corruption" because working people don't have the same amount of free time to do that.

It's also kind of weird to propose it as an asymmetry. Google's parent company spends around $4M on lobbying in the US:

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

That's around $0.01 per capita. Your per capita contribution for individuals to out-spend Google on lobbying is two cents.

[coliveira]

The day a low income retiree can have meetings with politicians to lobby for their favorite policies is the day this comparison will be useful.

[AnthonyMouse]

You don't think the AARP has meetings with politicians to lobby for things?

[fragmede]

Money or equivalents (watches, golf tee times) changing hands would be the difference.

[danielmarkbruce]

Anything involving trust cements the incumbents or at least creates a force to an outcome of few players. It is what it is.

It's not a given that it's incompetence.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Anything involving trust cements the incumbents or at least creates a force to an outcome of few players.

I don't think that's even true, unless you're using "trust" as a synonym for centralization.

Suppose you had actual competing app stores. Google doesn't control which ones you use; you can use Google Play or F-Droid or Amazon or all three at once and anyone can make a new one. You could get Android apps through Apple's store and vice versa. And then you choose who you trust; maybe you only trust F-Droid and Apple and you think Google and Amazon stink. Maybe you install 90% of your apps through F-Droid but are willing to install your bank app on GrapheneOS from Google Play because you trust your bank and you also trust Google enough to at least verify that the bank app is actually from your bank.

This is the thing that doesn't help the incumbents, right? The bank and the customer both trust Google to distribute the bank app but Google isn't allowed to prevent the user from trusting F-Droid for other apps as a condition for getting the bank app from Google Play. You can have trust without centralization.

[danielmarkbruce]

You have given a situation where there are a 3 players - a very concentrated market. Give an example with 30 players and think through all the implications for all the actors. You'll quickly realize it's a total disaster. Building broad trust requires scale on some dimension.

[AnthonyMouse]

How is it in any way a disaster?

Consider how Linux distributions work. Every distribution is distributing variants on the same kernel and utilities, but there are hundreds of distributions and dozens of popular ones each with their own repositories. You can choose whichever you like, and make a different choice than someone else.

Coming in at #31 on DistroWatch is a lightweight distribution called Alpine Linux. It's popular on things like firewalls and VoIP servers but is rarely recommended to ordinary users because that isn't its niche. It doesn't matter that most people haven't heard of it because the people relevant to it have. It's fine for things to have a niche, and the people in that niche are the only ones who need to be familiar with it.

Meanwhile around half of Linux users use Debian derivatives. Debian and Ubuntu are very similar, but their repositories are maintained by different organizations, so even when choosing between two things that are nearly the same, you have different options.

And the distribution is not the only place to get software. Maybe you like a stable distribution in general but you want the bleeding edge drivers for your GPU. You can add the repository for the hardware vendor and still get everything else from the distribution. The vendor doesn't even need to maintain their own full distribution to have enough of a reputation for people to make an informed choice about where they want to get their drivers.

> Building broad trust requires scale on some dimension.

The flaw is in assuming that broad trust is a requirement. Narrow trust is good.

[rvz]

Exactly. I have said this for a very long time and the EU (and many other governments) are not our friends and they are just as corrupt. Remember ChatControl?

Anytime anyone criticises the EU here, you will get downvoted even after trying to warn the EU defenders that they are not our friends at all.

I was asking for evidence about the EU digital ID wallets about what the "disinformation" was around it 3 years ago [0] and not a single link of it was given.

At this point, being an EU defender and supporting the "open web" are incompatible since you will be using your EU digital identity wallet [1] with your phone to login to your bank and the internet will push age verification with it, locking you out if you don't sign up.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36105002

[1] https://eudi.dev/latest/

[palata]

> Remember ChatControl?

That thing that got refused multiple times already?

Because not all politicians think like you does not mean they are corrupt. Seems like enough politicians have voted against ChatControl until now.

I always wonder what people who say stuff like "politicians discussed this topic I hate and refused it, but the mere fact that they discussed means that they must all be corrupt" understand about politics. You know that it is about people with different opinions (representing people with different opinions) discussing stuff, right?

[miohtama]

The Commission got it through on the last round, though, so eventually it passed.

[EmbarrassedHelp]

Chat Control hasn't passed yet. But the Chat Control lobbyists are still lobbying for it behind the scenes, and are currently pushing for all phone calls in the EU to be covered.

Source:

https://www.patrick-breyer.de/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/861...

https://digitalcourage.social/@echo_pbreyer

[izacus]

So what should be done about it? EU Commission issue a decree that it should never be spoken or debated again in public? Never proposed? Any other tyrannical idea?

Do you have a list of other things that shouldn't be brought in front of the elected parliament?

[surgical_fire]

Bullshit.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/eu-parliament-blocks-m...

[palata]

So ChatControl was accepted and is in the process of being implemented is what you say?

[dijit]

(ignorant) people proposing things does not mean corruption: the fact that these things are voted down and never pass is proof that the system works, not evidence of corruption.

Corruption would be if it passed despite it being unpopular, because some corporate or rich peoples interests desired it.

[surgical_fire]

> Exactly. I have said this for a very long time and the EU (and many other governments) are not our friends and they are just as corrupt. Remember ChatControl?

The EU parliament shot down ChatControl.

In fact, without the EU, most likely many member states would have ChatControl in some shape. National governments are the ones all in on this crap.

[graemep]

Governments are place a higher priority on controlling internal threats than external ones. In this case the EU wants to control its own people more than it wants to avoid deoendence on the US. It would like both,but the former is more important