No. That's not what these words mean.

Look... Doesn't that feel kind of like self-pitying rot to anyone here? Why are we dependent on US technology? Because we are so ethical and pure...

Here's the truth.

In the late 90s, a German student created a search engine in Germany. It was a little thing. It only scraped a few hundred media outlets. You signed up, defined some keywords, and when an article matching those keywords was published, you received a notification.

He immediately was sued and forced to shut down under copyright law. Google could operate in the US under Fair Use.

Eventually, years later search engines were legalized in Germany (and the EU). But by then the Internet was dominated by US companies. It makes no sense to spend billions to build a European Google that does exactly what Google already does.

The reason that there is no European Google is that we insist that information must be owned. No data processing without the explicit consent of the owner. Which means, we insist that some intellectual property owners should be allowed to extract rent from us all.

You're so out-of-touch if you believe that the EU is against this.

It's especially weird coming from an apparent German. You know all that rhetoric about how the internet is no "wild west". That means locking everything down. Only the properly licensed professionals are allowed to do stuff with properly regulated tools. That's how it goes in Germany.

This stuff is what Google is supposed to do.

There's no irony there. It's what Elsevier does. They have no qualms about looting research budgets and sabotaging science in the process. They won't make an exception for open source AI.

Meta must win this. Everything else would be a disaster.

Man merkt, die Leute bei W Social haben beste Kontakte zu den Medien. Ich glaube, Medienunternehmen sind finanziell involviert.

Wer eine europäische Anbindung zu Bluesky/Atproto will, kann sich jetzt schon an Eurosky wenden. W Social ist bisher nicht public. Das Einzige, was die als Qualitätsmerkmal anbieten ist, dass sie die Identität überprüfen.

Es macht mir Sorgen, dass hier der Prototyp von rundum überwachten Social Media aufgebaut wird, während gleichzeitig eine Kampagne läuft, alles andere zu verbieten.

I did ask for more info about how AI is "destroying society".

Interesting how Americans are the most concerned. I wonder what might explain that. In the US, white people are the most worried (IIRC).

Which raises 2 questions: Were they anti-slop because they saw the threat to their jobs? Or did they lose their jobs because they wouldn't match the output of AI users?

For many people, especially politicians, it was always about this. It's a rejection of the unregulated "wild west" internet, built on US ideals of free speech.

Germany used to have a fairly successful Facebook clone. Once it was a bit successful, it was forced to split up. Minors had to get their own separate service, where they could not be contacted by adults. It wasn't a hit. The "American technological hegemony" is the result of deliberate policy choices such as that.

Demanding age verification of websites and services is Europe sticking to its guns; European values.

Yes. I hesitated to post this because I understand that many here would prefer not to know. But, at least, people need a chance to learn the facts and make their own decisions. The amount of anti-AI disinformation is crazy.

I think most people won't be worrying about their own headphones.