The Post-American Internet

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

by EvanAnderson • 7 months ago

577 395 7 months ago

pu_pe• 7 months ago

If the EU repeals Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, some smart geeks in Finland could reverse-engineer Apple's bootloaders and make a hardware dongle that jailbreaks phones so that they can use alternative app stores

Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.

This makes the transition described in the article much more difficult. Although likely more urgent, from an European perspective.

sschueller2• 7 months ago

ASML could also "brick" their machines running in the US.

tonyhart74• 7 months ago

tick_tock_tick• 7 months ago

The USA basically owns ASML since they invented the tech it's why they have to ask the USA congress permission to do stuff.

yuchtman• 7 months ago

The idea of Apple and/or Google just stop selling phones in the EU seems ... unlikely. A quick search tells me something between a fourth and a third of Apple revenue is in the EU, you really think they'd just stop selling in the EU?

Gotta also remember, that even if the EU would allow this, your average phone user would not use it. Just like your average phone user doesn't root their android smartphone or installs Lineage/Graphene/eOS/whatever. Even if it were made easier (or possible) for more phones, the vast majority would not use it and Apple and Google would still make a lot of money.

jryb• 7 months ago

But in the proposed scenario, there wouldn’t be any technical hurdles or effort required by the phone’s owner - you could have this be a service offered by businesses. Maybe even the place that sells the phone would pre-jailbreak it for you.

scotty792• 7 months ago

Apple could easily block this, and in the situation described here of a complete rupture with the US, they would no longer operate and sell phones in the EU. If Google decided to do the same, that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones. Microsoft could "brick" the rest of the EU's digital infrastructure overnight if they so wished, or were compelled to do so.

All the more reasons to go scorched earth on American companies. There's a point in every blackmail where the only way forward is through.

flumpcakes14• 7 months ago

I think this is partly why the EU is trying to invest in native semiconductor technologies/companies Which is strange, because usually the EU doesn't make strategic moves like this (compare it to China, where nearly every thing it does is strategic).

dleeftink• 7 months ago

In case bricks will be thrown, the response from the receiving party will likely skew to the argument presented here--circumvention of technical locks.

You'd catch the brick, sand it and repurpose so it'll fit your home.

atherton940272• 7 months ago

Sure this could happen but that seems like a very last resort. The only reason the US economy is still competitive is tech stocks so cutting off ~35% of your income seem like it would cause a lot of downstream effects

nottorp2• 7 months ago

that essentially leaves Europeans without smartphones

... for about 20 minutes before China steps in. Or Samsung with de Googled Android models.

delis-thumbs-7e2• 7 months ago

Or maybe… Finland? There is linux phones already, so perhaps Apple and Google f-king off might not be a bad thing.

bigfishrunning• 7 months ago

Lol thank God there are so many companies outside of Europe producing technology

spiritplumber• 7 months ago

The EU is a bigger market than the US when it comes to smartphones. So Apple would block this about as much as they would block moving over to USB-C.

ben_w7• 7 months ago

Microsoft, yes and that would be catastrophic.

For security quality reasons, I hope Apple have made that suggestion impossible, but for law enforcement reasons I doubt it and anticipate a backdoor exists.

Google wouldn't block enough of Android to matter: Core is open source, EU forks/alternatives are likely already under development, and even if not a complete rupture with the US also likely means rapidly getting comfortable with China despite everything, and China already have Android forks.

However, Google docs/sheets/etc are a common business alternative to Microsoft, and therefore such a transatlantic rupture also cuts that. FWIW, I've never encountered a business using LibreOffice etc.

boudin3• 7 months ago

Security is a fallacy here because, being a US company, it is technically not secured by default as it has backdoors (or one has to assume it has backdoors and those cannot even be audited). Then it is just about the sense of security which is based on the threat model you consider threatening to you. You do not chose who you are the enemy of though and in fascist countries with no regards to the rule of law like the USA, this becomes a fairly important threat model to take into account.

Libreoffice is used quite a bit in administrations across EU. I would expect more stickiness to microsoft caused by legacy applications that requires windows to run rather than office.

flumpcakes14• 7 months ago

What I think most US people don't realise, is this would overnight start the slow but complete collapse of the US and it's economy.

Europe can make alternatives to US tech, and with it's track record it will probably be more open with more legitimate options and less predatory monopolies.

Once that is established with a home grown market of 450m people it will start competing with US in all the other markets.

Let's not forgot how many EU people work for US tech.

silvestrov• 7 months ago

The easy part of a smartphone to create for EU is the part that is done in the US.

The difficult part is the hardware. That is also why the iPhone is produced in Asia. Replacing TSMC is much more difficult than the software.

PeterStuer4• 7 months ago

Technically, sure, but as long as the US dollar is the 'world reserve currency' any attempt to do so that would threaten to be a success can be easily 'bought out' by the US just by creating a few more bits on a ledger.

kettlecorn• 7 months ago

I suspect the wheels are in motion for many such transitions away from US dependency, in software and other fields.

Whenever trust is massively breached, and I believe much of the EU feels strongly that the US has breached trust, the natural action is to regroup and then gradually begin figuring out how to not be vulnerable to the same risk again.

If the US continues escalating the Greenland situation I expect that process will speed up massively.

dash2• 7 months ago

Europe can make alternatives to US tech

Then why are there approximately no European tech companies? You remember that FT graph....

TrackerFF2• 7 months ago

Well, two issues here:

1) The moment US decides to completely exit EU and brick their devices, China will step in and provide the alternatives. Or it will trigger some tech arms race inside Europe, and we will see European providers rise up.

2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.

As others have mentioned, not only is it a danger to their own revenue, but the US stock market is being carried by these tech companies.

The US has always profited the most from providing products / services which are better and cheaper to Europe, to such a degree that organic growth has been naturally suppressed.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

general14652• 7 months ago

2) US Tech companies can't afford to pull out. They might do some short-lived performative black-outs to show European customers how dependent they are, and they will for sure run to the government, who in turn will start trade wars. But in the end they simply can't afford to just pull out completely.

Yep, case and point is current situation in Russia, where US companies "pulled" out due to sanctions, but not really.

Cthulhu_9• 7 months ago

Not only that, but also... only a small percentage of people actually wants this and / or would do this, the vast majority of consumers doesn't mess with their stuff even if they could.

Same with the alternative app store support, it reminds me of when the EU mandated Microsoft to offer a Windows without Media Player. It didn't sell, because consumers don't actually care much - Media Player wasn't obnoxiously in the way.

Quothling3• 7 months ago

I've spent a couple of decades in the Danish public sector of digitalisation and in the private sector for global green energy. 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it. So I would argue that there is more of a crack, but I'm not sure the post-american internet is going to be all that great. Because unlike the open source and decentralised platforms which are taking the place of US tech, the EU is going to regulate the internet. There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Which obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but it's how you can view the EU. With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state.

Of course that is how democracy works. You'll have multiple factions working toward their own goals with very different ideologies, and the EU has a lot of that. For the most part what comes out is great, because compromise is how you get things done when there aren't just two sides. For survailance, however, there are really just two sides and the wrong one of them is winning.

anigbrowl2• 7 months ago

With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state.

The US is doing that too, and has been pretty open about it for years.

rockskon• 7 months ago

Europe wants so very much worse in many cases.

lostlogin2• 7 months ago

The us is working to protect consumers too? Or just the surveillance bit?

thefz• 7 months ago

If you think internet surveillance is an EU first, you will be delighted to read about PRISM

tjpnz2• 7 months ago

Or XKeyscore.

mk893• 7 months ago

I think nobody in the EU believes that America is the country of freedom and privacy and anonymity. (Boolean and)

I guess what the OP meant is that in EU you might have the police knocking at your door for some reasons you don't have in the USA, not because they don't have data about you, but because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass.

Twitter, Tiktok, etc could never be created in the current EU.

xeonmc• 7 months ago

    As an European it was always hard for me to understand American culture. What was fascinating for me is that they like bragging about their freedom which was weird for me, because I didn't think that I have any less freedom than them. I always thought 'What is the difference'. However after this game I finally understand it. NA is just so fucking free.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/76bemv/tie...

PeterStuer4• 7 months ago

Long before that we had ECHELON.

[PDF] https://historicalarchives.europarl.europa.eu/files/live/sit...

dotandgtfo• 7 months ago

There's a clear winner of surveillance in the set of the US government, US companies, and the EU government and EU companies.

Not only is the EU miles behind the US, the US is accelerating faster towards more surveillance. Historically PRISM and the US Cloud act. More recently DOGE's recent actions in centralising data and a new crop of private enterprises working on surveillance tech like CCTV facial recognition.

I don't see the federal government applying any breaks on this development. However, I note some states are. But we do see clear attempts from the EU attempt to attempt to curb this. E.g. parts of the AI Act.

While I'm not enjoying the development certain factions are pushing through in the EU either, it is hyperbole to say that the EU is attempting to make a surveillance state, especially in this context.

jonathanstrange• 7 months ago

People also sometimes forget in this debate that the NSA is allowed and has a mandate to spy on non-US citizens and companies as they deem fit. Anything is allowed, including mass surveillance and hacking into systems. There are only restrictions when US citizens and companies are involved. European agencies probably have similar permissions but I don't think they have comparable capabilities and they also have and will continue to have smaller budgets.

nine_k• 7 months ago

Open-source software was created by people who wanted to address their own needs, and we're lucky that we share the same needs. Commercial software companies and media companies were and are unhappy about that, because they lost control and profits.

Regulated, constrained versions of Internet are being built by governments and some large corporations, to meet their needs. While EU's constraints may look benign (even though they are not), the versions built in PRC, Russia, India, Türkyie are in various degrees openly anti-citizen. As long as citizens' needs (like privacy and unrestricted access) do not align with the ideas of the governments and corporations, we, citizens, are usually the losing side.

The fix is obvious: regulations should be liberty-preserving, and for that, governments that are better aligned with our, citizens', interests should be voted in.

And here we encounter a hard problem.

exceptione5• 7 months ago

It isn't that hard. A democracy can be maximally liberal, including the internet, up to the Tolerance Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The people that govern Big Tech have said as much as that they don't believe in democracy, they show they don't believe in fair markets, and they are put to work to implement the threats of a crazy but powerful clique, attacking free and social democracies with an endless stream of sponsored garbage. If the EU had any leaders instead of weasels, they would have closed the sewers that brings lies, hate, conspiracy theories and division. If the EU does not act, it will go down, taken apart by the oligarchs.

troyvit• 7 months ago

Open source must be a part of Europe's digital sovereignty (a crucial piece of a post-american internet). The continent otherwise doesn't have the resources to pull it off. Projects like https://eurostack.eu/ are a baby step in that direction.

Unfortunately that's just one piece of the puzzle. They also need a level of physical infrastructure that will take ages (or a miraculous breakthrough) to build. That too is a hard problem.

ljsprague• 7 months ago

There is a saying about how US citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies.

Almost always easier to pick a new company than a new government.

bayindirh• 7 months ago

Almost always easier to pick a new company than a new government.

As long as the company you left doesn't buy the company you just picked.

wongarsu2• 7 months ago

That's what democracy is supposed to fix

kergonath7• 7 months ago

As long as you have decent antitrust regulation with teeth and you ignore all natural monopolies.

Traubenfuchs• 7 months ago

For computers we have linux, ok, but how are iOS and Android being replaced?

wongarsu2• 7 months ago

The EU is slowly weakening Google's grasp on Android, for example by evening the playing field for app stores. You can get google-free Android devices from both Chinese manufacturers and the Netherlands (Fairphone). They aren't terribly attractive right now, but that could quickly change if the demand exists

At that point Google would probably turn even more hostile to the open source nature of Android, leading to some sort of fork

hex-m• 7 months ago

"Google-free" FOSS Android-builds (Graphene, /e/, iodé) are available today and usable for most tasks. Just make sure your government IDs and banking apps don't depend on proprietary Google-only features.

everdrive2• 7 months ago

Mobile phones are baffling to me. I heard a story recently that the Venezuelan government is stopping people on the street and inspecting mobile phones for dissident content. In such an environment, why are people relying on phones for anything? Why trust it at all? This stupid device _could_ get you taken to prison for merely having the wrong ideas, but you've still _just got to_ use it! I'm starting to think that if mobile phones gave parents' children rapid, aggressive brain cancer, all anyone would be talking about is "regulation" and "minimizing usage."

And I know someone's going to say "not using a phone might look _more_ suspicious!" I suppose but the needle does need to turn at some point, right? This risk was pretty easily foreseeable. If you got arrested for what was found on your phone during an arrest would you ever look at the device the same way again? In 5 years, would you be using it for meaningful or private communication whatsoever?

fsflover3• 7 months ago

My daily driver is a GNU/Linux phone, Librem 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librem_5

Quothling3• 7 months ago

If the EU made a decent certification option so that the Google Store wasn't necessary for a lot of our apps, then Graphene and similar would be good replacements. As it is I couldn't use a single app on my android phone (I basically only have public sector apps + banking) without the Google Store thing. Since these all either require the Google Store themselves or the national digital ID which does

hulitu• 6 months ago

For computers we have linux

US has it. There are some non-US contributors, but, the Linux Foundation is in US, Linus is in US, kernel.org is in US.

sujsjsv• 7 months ago

You won’t ever be able to use anything but Microsoft and other American products. I feel sorry for you. Mr Trump and Lindsey are laughing directly at your face, it seems.

u_sama4• 7 months ago

There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies.

This is a Danish blindspot, Europeans do not trust their governments in large (France is fractured, Southern Europe has endemic corruption, Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out) and this is in part the source behind the flare up of "far-right" movements in the continent. The infamous EU chat law doesnt help either, and all the abuses of Germany in their misuse of hate speech to punish speech is not a positive development. We do not have real alternatives to most American tech services, and administrations are unwilling to move to Linux based alternatives.

The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.

disgruntledphd2• 7 months ago

The EU is also not interested in strengthening the domestic software market by engaging in selective protectionism like the Chinese, because of the extensive lobbying by foreign and domestic actors which are the incumbents and see no interest in a competitive and dynamic environment which would destroy them.

They don't need to though, just require all government software to be released under a free software license, with limited exceptions for national security. The US does very well in software, so the EU should commoditise their complement and focus on free software services. This is both cheaper than the current services, and produces lots of employment for EU based tech people (probably at less money though, unfortunately).

This is basically what China is doing with their open weights models.

Hizonner• 7 months ago

Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out

... and those parties would be even more authoritarian if they got in. Which they might in part because of the reaction. It's possible to get fucked from both ends...

worik2• 7 months ago

Germany is increasingly authoritarian in order to keep heterodox parties out

Please explain?

The Greens are doing well, and certainly are hetrodox.

Do you mean "keep fascists out"?

Or do you mean something else?

hshdhdhj44443• 7 months ago

The idea that EU surveillance is greater than US surveillance is almost certainly mistaken.

In fact, a huge reason that the EU is looking to move away from U.S. commercial providers is that they can’t guarantee they won’t be giving the U.S. govt information about EU users even if they setup completely independent EU based entities.

The reason why it might appear that the EU is more heavy handed is because the EU is actually passing limited tailored laws, publicly, that explicitly state the limitations of those laws.

The US govt, on the other hand, has already passed broad blanket laws that allow them to get any data from any U.S. corporate entity with the flimsiest of warrants which those entities are not even legally allowed to publicly reveal.

The U.S. govt doesn’t need to pass any surveillance laws because they already essentially have unlimited power over the data being collected by US corporations.

TylerLives• 7 months ago

What about censorship?

great69• 7 months ago

I just assume it doesn’t matter where you live or who you are- anyone can have your data. It’s not admitting defeat. It’s just being safe and sane.

To the point of the post though, please note that saying the internet is American (it’s not, it’s global) or publically giving up on the U.S. because of POTUS, three letter agencies, attitudes, etc. is not helping you win the many Americans over that may join you in some cause.

gradus_ad• 7 months ago

Regulate (censor) =/= surveil

throwawayqqq112• 7 months ago

... and the reason why the US doesnt pass strong federal privacy laws is, the tech oligarchy has stronger lobbies or political ties in the US. It could be the other way around, if the US had a weaker tech sector and was leaking wealth/data to the EU, they could be protectionist. This is the common denominator. I disagree with your angle, that the EU is more corpo-sceptical, they are the same, just different lobbies.

Quothling3• 7 months ago

The idea that EU surveillance is greater than US surveillance is almost certainly mistaken.

Well yes, but that doesn't mean we want EU surveillance to replace it.

seec• 6 months ago

The reason is money and control. That's it. Believing otherwise is foolish. They don't really give a shit about privacy or whatever is the supposed agenda of the day. It's about not paying as much to the US and being able to control the infrastruscture.

I trust EU govs less than I trust US companies. At least I know that for the companies it's just about making more money and there isn't that many downsides for me outside of having to pay one way or another. EU govs are fundamentally destructive, so whatever they end up doing you can be sure it will terrible for everyone but themselves.

TacticalCoder• 7 months ago

... 10 years ago people would've laughed if you talked about leaving Microsoft and iOS in enterprise. Now we all have contingency plans for just that, ...

If, at long last, Trump doing insane things can help get rid of that piece of undescribable turd that Windows is in the EU, please just please Trump: go take the Groenland.

As an EU citizen I'm gladly giving Groenland up (even if it's not in the EU but belongs to Denmark which is, itself, in the EU) if in exchange I don't ever have to see a computer running Windows ever again in Europe.

embedding-shape4• 7 months ago

As an EU citizen I'm gladly giving Groenland up (even if it's not in the EU but belongs to Denmark which is, itself, in the EU)

Nitpicky, but I guess ultimately it kind of/might matter: Greenland belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark (Danish Realm), not Denmark. Denmark (often called Denmark Proper) is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which also Faroe Islands belong to. Denmark is in Europe + EU, Kingdom of Denmark isn't in EU, but main part of it is indeed in Europe.

I think if Greenland was actually part of Denmark, it too would be part of EU, as I don't think you can selectively "unmark" specific territories in a country to not be in EU if the country itself is in EU. But since Greeland isn't actually a part of Denmark, it isn't part of the EU.

zqna• 7 months ago

If Greenland is taken over by US, Windows will be your least of the problem. But tunnel vision is oh-so-common in Europe, both between politics and populace

aleph_minus_one• 7 months ago

There is a saying about how us citizens trust companies but not their government, and how Europeans trust their governments but not their companies. Which obviously doesn't apply to everyone, but it's how you can view the EU.

I would rather say for quite a lot of people in Germany it's that they neither trust the Federal Government nor the EU government nor the US-American tech companies.

graemep3• 7 months ago

I would rather say for quite a lot of people in Germany it's that they neither trust the Federal Government nor the EU government nor the US-American tech companies.

I think that is a healthy attitude.

I am British and do not trust my government or big tech (regardless of where it is based). IMO governments are easily lobbied to utimately tend to take the side of big business.

graemep3• 7 months ago

Now we all have contingency plans for just that, and a lot of organisations are already actually doing it.

Who has actually done it?

What are you going to use instead? You could move servers off MS cloud platforms (although very little has actually happened and there seems to be very few places with a firm commitment to do it) but I am very sceptical that anyone is going to move client devices to anything other than MS, Apple and Google controlled OSes.

css_apologist• 7 months ago

With one hand they do so much to protect consumer rights for us citizens, but with the other hand they build a survailance state.

You say this with no irony as an american..

anthk• 7 months ago

iOS was always irrelevant in Europe. No regulation was needed, ever. It was useless.

zwnow4• 7 months ago

Cory's new book is also a pretty cool read, glad I found his work. Shows the enshittification processes big tech went through really well. Also touches on the post-american internet.

ryandrake• 7 months ago

I'm not sure what benefit any country outside of the USA gets for honoring trade agreements that bind them to enforce US anti-circumvention, US copyright, and US DRM. A fortune awaits any country who has the guts to say "you know what, USA, we're going to allow blatantly copying your shit--what are you going to do, tariff us? Oh, wait, you already are!"

lelanthran3• 7 months ago

I'm not sure what benefit any country outside of the USA gets for honoring trade agreements that bind them to enforce US anti-circumvention, US copyright, and US DRM.

Sanctions?

ircumvention, US copyright, and US DRM. A fortune awaits any country who has the guts to say "you know what, USA, we're going to allow blatantly copying your shit--what are you going to do, tariff us? Oh, wait, you already are!"

What does the target country do if Microsoft and Apple stop sales and support with immediate effect?

That's the effect of sanctions. Overnight their systems are all bricked.

The petrodollar may not be relevant anymore, but almost all governments in the 1st world have to bend the knee for Microsoft.

On one hand, I kinda think they deserve it, having ignored competing systems that are both cheaper and better.

Any government threatening the US can be easily cut off at the knees overnight at the behest of the US government.

nurettin• 7 months ago

EU fines of up to 100s of millions of USD haven't stopped these companies from operating overseas. It is unlikely that they would exit a trillion dollar market because of some self-imposed security laws. Rather the opposite, the hardware would have to be free of whatever invasive security measure there is if EU wanted it. But they are rather xenophobic, so the incentives align.

scotty792• 7 months ago

Sanctions?

Go ahead. In every blackmail there's a point where the only way forward is through.

What does the target country do if Microsoft and Apple stop sales and support with immediate effect?

Apple makes luxury toy electronics. Hardly anyone is going to miss those in the world. And Microsoft support does nothing. It's way easier to fix your Microsoft products by cracking them than it is to go through MS "support". And it's often fixed this way in smaller companies and for private users. Freeing large companies to fix their MS stuff would actually improved the support.

What really locks everything in is the cloud. First step to sovereignty must be escaping US cloud services. Huh, I guess that's why everybody is trying to do what they can to move their stuff off American servers. Everybody is already preparing for post-American internet.

tjpnz2• 7 months ago

Given Trump's own track record for honoring them, zero?

renewiltord• 7 months ago

I suppose they would be placed in the same bucket as Russia. Trade sanctions are a no-trade rule. If sufficient numbers do this, it will destabilize an American-led world order, but there is huge first-mover disadvantage. Right now, being part of the global trade market is nice. Everyone would prefer it because it yields results for all.

Anyone who can't sell into the US-aligned world will have a hard time, particularly because the guys you've aligned with are all adversely selected for being a bit free-cannony. Russia has a lot of petroleum, which helps, but if you don't have some such valuable resource, you're in trouble.

nitwit005• 7 months ago

A lot of countries are happy to sign anything with regard to copyright, as they have no intention to enforce it.

aebtebeten16• 7 months ago

I could be mistaken, but believe that may have been tried before...

(if Lenin had observed copyright and given imperial bondholders a haircut but still made some token payments, would he have been given a seat at the farmers' poker table?)

rzerowan• 7 months ago

There is the case where SouthAfrica wanted to introduce pretty much a copy/paste US version of the Fairuse DRM law that already exists in US law and the Multicorps went ballistic , and the USG was threatening sanctions.

Not for the first time either , in the early 2000s SAfrica wanted looser patent enforcment for lifesaving HIV treatments and did get sanctioned.With resolution of the law being droppped and corps getting bought out via USAID/Pefpar payment.

So yeah whatever option that is tried , better be fully baked before the announcement.

viktorcode2• 7 months ago

If by fortune you mean the said country won’t be able to protect its own IP abroad, then I agree

mixmastamyk• 7 months ago

They get to sell into the US market.

phendrenad2• 7 months ago

"Freedom exists in the tension between equals" - TFM (one of those "self-described libertarians" this article speaks of).

Simply by being powerful, the US became the weapon of choice by the worst people to censor and block anyone they didn't like (socialists, libertarians).

Now that there is a multipolar world, with competing principles and goals, it's a lot more work to evict your enemies from the entire internet.

ares623• 7 months ago

Maybe countries need to seriously consider stockpiling old hardware. Rather than sending ewaste to Southeast Asia for “recycling”, old laptops and smartphones could be the only things usable in a future fractured world.

Towaway69• 7 months ago

I got three old laptops flying around, I’m prepared for the golden future of dialup EU internet.

Plus old nokia and ericisson phones! Need some rotary phones to be really safe. /s

Thlom• 7 months ago

They can just buy new hardware from China.

apples_oranges2• 7 months ago

Until China decides they don't want to sell to them that is.

a-v-berezkin• 7 months ago

Recent incidents with Grok creating sexualized pics is yet another example of "enshittification", IMO. This is also the result of too permissive laws + monopolies, which only erodes trust.

ACCount372• 7 months ago

How are those "recent incidents" relevant in any way?

Barathkanna• 7 months ago

This post highlights Enshittification, which in genera; is the process where platforms start out serving users, then shift to exploiting users to benefit business customers, and finally hollow everything out to extract maximum profit for themselves.

jeroenhd• 7 months ago

If the EU repeals Article 6 of the Copyright Directive, some smart geeks in Finland could reverse-engineer Apple's bootloaders and make a hardware dongle that jailbreaks phones so that they can use alternative app stores, and sell the dongle – along with the infrastructure to operate an app store – to anyone in the world who wants to go into business competing with Apple for users and app vendors.

I have twoo problems with this idea.

1. Users are extremely lazy and anything that doesn't work out of the box doesn't gain any commercial traction. See: Epic Games Store, Amazon App Store, F-Droid to some extent.

2. Apple already allows alternative app stores inside of Finland (the entire EU, actually). There's the issue of Apple's bullshit installation fees, of course, but with Epic covering those so far, cost doesn't seem to be a problem when it comes to the proliferation of app stores.

While I'm all for an iPhone running free code, commercial interests for alternative app stores won't be what will bring forth these improvements.

boudin3• 7 months ago

Allowing people to own their devices and modify them can first foster creativity and competition, which can lead to the creation of standards, alternatives and businesses around that.

The current situation makes it impossible to create a business from modifying an existing product, you need to start from blank slates, making it hard to crack a walled-garden.

darkwater• 7 months ago

If it's legal to jailbreak an iPhone (assuming it's technically possible) there will be an ecosystem of companies that make the UX friction as low as possible for casual users.

What would worry me is that the US would probably start a big scale digital warfare operation against EU citizens as soon as technically possible.

ACCount372• 7 months ago

The first problem is technical.

Jailbreaks aren't stopped by being ostensibly illegal to do. They're stopped by being a nigh-impossible attack conducted against an adversary that keeps hardening the systems against it.

Which is why the fight for unlocked bootloaders and software freedom is such an important fight. It's theoretically possible to create an "unbreakable lock" and forbid the users from having any control over the software forever.

Which is why user freedom must be legally mandated, and engineered into the hardware on the ground floor. You can't rely on being able to "hack the freedom in after the fact".

rdevsrex• 7 months ago

Why not go all the way and establish your own publicly owned central bank and establish an alternative to the dollar?

Oh, yeah, the US will send the CIA or the military in and take you out and make you take on IMF debt to ensure your future compliance.

Clearly, there are limits to what tech alone can accomplish.

calgoo• 7 months ago

You mean like the EU central bank and the Euro? That's already been in place for 20+ years in the majority of EU countries.

immibis4• 7 months ago

Like Cory says, the USA is now carrying out its threats regardless of what you do or don't do, so there's no need to care about them any more. There's nothing a country can do to influence whether the USA invades it or not, so it might as well do what it wants instead of what the USA wants.

Havoc2• 7 months ago

It does seem like something will need to be done. Not just on this but other world order matters too. The US centric version is no longer viable

drstewart3• 7 months ago

Agree, privacy lovers can flock to EU and China where surveillance never happens

Havoc2• 7 months ago

Misguided as EU rules often are on implementation I do still have more faith in that then the American system where rule of law seems to be fundamentally breaking down

flanked-evergl6• 7 months ago

European countries are de facto vassals of the US. Not because they have to be, not because it benefits them, but because this is what the politicians and their voters want.

Instead of taking care of Ukraine themselves, and providing security guarantees to Ukraine themselves, they expect the US to do it. Instead of supplying Ukraine itself, they need the US to do it. And all of this against an opponent, Russia, that is on paper almost entirely insignificant.

As things stand today, European countries cannot survive independently with US support, making them effectively vassals. And what is worse is, most of the political elite in Europe hate the Americans that they have made themselves completely dependent on.

I don't really like this status quo, as a European I think this is pathetic and embarrassing that we are entirely dependent on US without any need for us being dependent on them. But I don't get the elites that complain about the status quo on one hand, and on the other hand refuse to do anything to change it.

flumpcakes14• 7 months ago

entirely dependent on US

It's more of a co-dependence. When it comes to military we have fallen behind significantly, but the EU member states also doesn't want to spend a trillion euros a year on it.

It may seem one sided, but the EU has a lot more to gain if there was a hard split between them and the US. It will be significantly more painful for the EU, for a long time, but ultimately it would be the undoing of the US as hegemon. Unfortunately Russia would take advantage and begin an invasion into the EU, so an EU/US split is unfavourable.

Ultimately it is the security of NATO that the EU really needs the US for. And that is what it pays for in the dependency it has on the US.

flanked-evergl6• 7 months ago

I'm very conservative and in principle really aligned with Republicans in the US, but this is rotten deal. The end result is in practice worse for everyone, because the American voters do not understand why they should be underwriting out security, and their security underwriting in practice is not very reliable or good from our point of view. It has not deterred Russia, it has not countered China, and I don't think it's going to last, because American voters don't understand what they are getting for it, and neither do I.

Europe will be much better off if we can guarantee our own security. I'm not suggesting for something dumb like withdrawing from NATO without first having the next thing in place, but we need to be in a position where Putin (and his eventual successor) does not feel like they can push us around as much as the Americans will tolerate, which is precisely what Putin thinks.

We can and should be in a position where we push Russia around as much as China and India allows, and we dictate terms to them instead of cowering while they dictate terms to us. We should be in a position where if we say we are going to incorporate Ukraine into a defensive alliance that the Russians praise us and bow out of fear that we will take more of their things, instead of the reverse.

mlrtime5• 7 months ago

It's more of a co-dependence. When it comes to military we have fallen behind significantly, but the EU member states also doesn't want to spend a trillion euros a year on it.

Yes, you get it. And the American tax payers also don't want to fund EU lack of spending on military. We are all in agreement.

tokai• 7 months ago

US hasn't provided anything, except some intel, the last year. Maybe you should get up to speed with reality.

petcat6• 7 months ago

Did the Europeans build all those Patriot missile systems themselves?

They bought them from USA right?

flanked-evergl6• 7 months ago

US provides credible deterrence because the US can more or less take on all NATO adversaries at the same time, while Europe alone cannot really take on even one NATO adversary on its own. US also shown willingness to use forc, which European nations have not shown it.

In negotiations with Ukraine, one of the major sticking points is that Ukraine wants security guarantees and peacekeeping forces on the ground, and European nations have themselves said this won't work without a US backstop, which US is not going to provide.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/21/nx-s1-5336095/europe-military...

Russia has said it will not accept any troops from NATO countries being based on Ukrainian soil. And Trump has given no sign the U.S. will guarantee reserve firepower in case of any breaches of a truce. Starmer says the plan won't work without that U.S. "backstop."

If US hasn't provided anything, and Europe is willing to stand on its own, then this would not be the case, there would be no need for a US backstop.

Basically, my theory is this: If Europe didn't need the US, then the US would not have to be involved at all with Ukraine negotiations, and the war would have been stopped years ago. Instead, we have European nations lamenting that the US is not doing more, and that US is not willing to provide security assistence and guaruntees to Ukraine.

I think it should be irrelevant what the US wants to do or does not want to do with Ukraine.

OGEnthusiast• 7 months ago

Europe is in a tough spot these days, trying to unwind decades of economic partnership with the USA while simultaneously trying to fend off Russia from Ukraine.

aebtebeten16• 7 months ago

Optimists practise speaking Cantonese, pessimists— speaking Russian, realists— stripping and reassembling rifles?

dagenleg• 7 months ago

Why Cantonese?

ta20240528• 7 months ago

Trying so hard to fend off Russia, but they can't put Taurus missiles on a truck and drive them to Kiev?

Converting the Ford factory in Detroit into a tank factory is "trying hard".

petcat6• 7 months ago

USA has been strategically re-homing TSMC to the USA mainland for a long time now. 30% of TSMC's global production is scheduled to be produced in America by 2028. Several iPhone chips are already being produced domestically.

This is what I would call "trying hard".

Contrast with the EU which has done nothing to become self-reliant, and really just has no ideas. It is unfortunate.

ReptileMan3• 7 months ago

Do you have any kind of analysis not written by a partisan hack that those Tauruses will change the tide of the war? There are couple of hundred of them in existence. Ukraine will burn trough them in 2 months and China will get the data how to counter them for free.

Cthulhu_9• 7 months ago

They can, but they need to maintain their own security as well. Europe's war factories are running at full capacity at the moment. Plus there's still the political game being played as well, can't be too overt or aggressive because Russia might escalate. With nukes.

apples_oranges2• 7 months ago

But can't be bothered to avoid Palantir or Microsoft.. that would be TOO tough! Learn all those new buttons (once) and that confusion with ~ instead of C:\. Oh the difficulties! :D

b40d-48b2-979e2• 7 months ago

Your analogy kind of falls on its face considering `C:\` is `/` not `~` which would be `%USERPROFILE%`.

mlrtime5• 7 months ago

By trying to fend off, you mean stop sending Euros to Russia for energy?

twixfel6• 7 months ago

Well, by 2027, the Russian gas imports will stop altogether.

hshdhdhj44443• 7 months ago

In a sense the EU is in a bind because it refuses to accept that the U.S. has moved on.

If the EU does that they can throw off a lot of shackles that they’ve imposed on their relationship with China, and part of that deal could be China stopping funding Putin’s insanity.

energy123• 7 months ago

Not sure that's wise.

The US put pressure on India to stop purchasing Russian oil, which cost the US diplomatic capital. It was showmanship and self-sabotage of an important relationship, but those aren't the actions of a sworn enemy to the EU.

The US also gave how much material support to Ukraine over the last few years? Volatility and unpredictability is not the same thing as an enemy.

There's also the self-interest angle. Who controls the oil corridors into Europe? It isn't China. China is an economic juggernaut, but they have little power projection beyond China except somewhat in Eurasia, and especially not naval. The US has the seas locked down.

The EU could consider doing the opposite to what you're suggesting. Help the US in the Pacific instead of being non-committal. Then maybe the US would be more willing to keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars in your theatre, rather than seeing it as a one-sided relationship that won't reciprocate in a time of need.

Cthulhu_9• 7 months ago

I don't think it's definite yet that "the US has moved on". If Trump kicks it - and he will, sooner rather than later - there will be another regime change. If the politics flips back over to the Democrats again they will probably try and do damage mitigation (again, this is the recurring trend) and try and repair international relationships.

mschwaig• 7 months ago

I think outright shortening copyright terms could be a beneficial policy along similar lines.

JuniperMesos• 7 months ago

Personally, I think it would be great if various foreign countries reacted to the Trump tariffs by repealing laws compelling them to defend various intellectual property claims that primarily but not exclusively benefit large American companies. I think this is extremely unlikely to happen, in large part because this issue just has very little to do with US tariffs at all, and affects business relationships in non-US countries as well, and is clearly just Cory Doctorow's long-standing hobbyhorse that he cared about decades ago when the world and US political landscape looked very different. But I largely agree with him on this point, so sure, whatever.

I also think it would largely be good if European institutions used more free software hosted directly by the people who use it, rather than relying on software platforms ultimately run by American companies subject to American law. Like Doctorow, I thought the same thing 15 or 20 years ago as well.

There's also the important caveat that American free speech law is the best in the world, and in particular other anglophone countries, not to mention European countries in general, routinely arrest and charge people for political speech on social media that would be unambiguously protected speech in the US. Yeah, it's bad that Larry Bushart was jailed because the local sheriff's department interpreted his joke about the Charlie Kirk assassination as a terroristic threat, but this was ultimately one local sheriff and prosecutor being basically individually corrupt - charges were dropped because there is no legal basis in the US for making jokes about people getting politically assassinated on social media to be a crime, and he's apparently suing the sheriff's department over this. I hope he wins. Lucy Connolly in the UK spent a year in prison for her social media tweets and the prime minister of the UK defended the conduct of the UK criminal justice system. I do not think that a social media platform run by a company directly subject to UK speech law (or the laws of most other countries around the world) would be dramatically better than the status quo.

And speaking of ICE thugs, there are plenty of qualified technologists who have fled the US this year, one step ahead of an ICE platoon looking to put them and their children into a camp. Those skilled hackers are now living all over the world, joined by investors who'd like to back a business whose success will be determined by how awesome its products are, and not how many $TRUMP coins they buy.

This is wishful thinking - the average person actively evading ICE right now is a low-wage laborer from a 3rd world country who either snuck over the US border or overstayed a visa years ago because they judged that living illegally in the US was better than staying in their shitty 3rd world country. Any person who is actually a qualified technologist probably has some better options than illegally immigrating to the US with their minor children.

Also any children that an illegal immigrant has on US soil are legally natural-born US citizens by the 14th amendment. ICE has no power to deport them, and indeed those anchor babies can potentially use their legal status as a way to get other members of their family including the illegal-immigrant parents who bore them some kind of legal status in the US.

Rich, powerful people are, at root, solipsists. The only way to amass a billion dollars is to inflict misery and privation on whole populations. The only way to look yourself in the mirror after you've done that, is to convince yourself that those people don't matter, that, in some important sense, they aren't real.

This is simply not true. The way to amass a billion dollars is to either be a local elite in a 3rd world country taking advantage of oil resources, or to be a founder or extremely early investor in a company that gets world-changingly big. Misery and privation is the default state of humanity, humanity has only conquered that to the extent we have so far by technological innovation, and a lot of important technological innovations come from companies that got to be huge by selling stuff that people find valuable and pay money for. This is the exact opposite of inflicting misery and privation on people.

Think of Elon Musk calling everyone who disagrees with him an "NPC,” or all those "Effective Altruists," who claimed the moral high ground by claiming to care about 53 trillion imaginary artificial humans who will come into existence in 10,000 years at the expense of extending moral consideration to people alive today.

Elon Musk calling people who disagree with him NPCs is him acting exactly the same way as an edgy, extremely-online, pseudonymous shitposter. Which is frankly novel for someone with his immense level of wealth, and makes him more akin to the average internet shitposter than most billionaires. Bill Gates wasn't doing this kind of thing when he was the richest person on earth.

Effective altruists who buy into extreme longtermist moral theories that put a lot of weight on trillions of sentient beings who might exist in the far-future are certainly weird from the perspective of the average person; but moral philosophies that have unintuitive consequences are nothing new, and have more to do with very smart, high-openness academic nerds than the ultra-wealthy.

I think that bringing up extreme-longtermist EAs in this section of the essay betrays an important lack of understanding on Doctorow's part. He's trying to argue that the software products produced by well-known American corporations are bad because they allow those companies to control what their users can do, and wield this control towards earning more money from ads - sure, fair enough, this is a reasonable criticism. He then pivots towards attacking AI on the grounds that it will let these companies replace their programmers and produce more bad code - this is, I think, failing to really think about the promises and risks of this fairly-new set of technologies, but okay, yeah, in principle someone could use AI to generate code that is bad for some purpose.

Then he starts talking about tech company CEOs he dislikes and throws in this jab at effective altruists in general - and this clearly has nothing at all to do with his actual argument. Doctorow is basically free-associating about people he dislikes, and some bay area tech company CEOs are vaguely socially-adjacent to some bay area tech effective altruists and some effective altruists think that extreme-longterm visions of humanity's future imply that there will be astronomically more sentient beings existing then than exist now, and this has unintuitive moral consequences.

Not all Effective Altruists are extreme-longtermists in this way - the modal EA cause is trying to reduce human suffering and death in Africa today by making anti-malarial bednets more widely available - and there's certainly plenty of reasonable moral-philosophical debate to be had about exactly what various visions of the long-term future of humanity imply about how we ought to act now. Doctorow doesn't care about this, he isn't even thinking about it, he's tossing off a throwaway line in an essay because he wants to complain about a group of people he thinks are obviously bad. This is lazy and unprincipled writing.

flumpcakes14• 7 months ago

Personally, I think it would be great if various foreign countries reacted to the Trump tariffs by repealing laws compelling them to defend various intellectual property claims that primarily but not exclusively benefit large American companies.

This would have been the best move. (Un)fortunately diplomacy takes a soft approach. The current US administration take advantage of that. You don't even have to be consistent with your stances to get respect from the US in the current climate, you just have to be impolite and take a hard stance.

The US taking Greenland militarily would be the rubicon for international relations. No one really cares about the US taking out a dictator, even if it was not done to the apparent international standards (i.e. UN resolutions, etc.). I have a feeling the long standing people working in the US Gov know this. I am starting to think it won't matter though and the US really does have a mad king now.

Where is congress in all of this? "Checks and balances"? How has the Supreme Court freely given the executive ultimate and final power for all things?

aucisson_masque• 7 months ago

That’s a long speech but it’s interesting. I recommend to read it, it brings interesting point. Although experience tell me none of them will become true.

goldenarm• 7 months ago

I've noticed some OSS orgs have been shifting their center of gravity to europe recently. Notably the Eclipse, Linux Foundations, and soon WikiMedia.

VCs and politicians forgot that Silicon Valley did not appear out of thin air, it was the product of public research and open-source ecosystems that made the internet revolution possible.

If the US betrays these ecosystems too much, they could migrate and make another tech industry flourish somewhere else.

wt__• 7 months ago

There's a lot of interesting stuff in here – e.g. the Polish trains and the ventilators.

Though I wish he'd tone it down a little occasionally. (This is why I'm not an activist.)

It's interesting as for the first time I've found myself mildly encumbered by DRM, notably some old Apple FairPlay files I bought prior to 2007 (or 2009) - which I can't play in non-Apple software.

But these are minor inconveniences compared to servicing costs of trains, tractors and so on, which get passed on to the rest of us indirectly.

I'm not sure if "disenshittificatory" will ever catch on. I'd propose d17n for disenshittification, except there's already a d18n for a project that masks sensitive fields in databases..

_zagj• 7 months ago

The irony of this talk is that the prospect of the US having its own de facto "Great Firewall," albeit one imposed from without rather than from within, doesn't sound that bad to any American old enough to remember what the Internet was like before its successive waves of global Septemberings: https://old.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1l5bhfo/total...

The Twitter/X location experiment/debacle laid this bare, showing how much low-effort, divisive, often racially or religiously antagonistic content directed at Americans was actually foreign (e.g., the Indians LARPing as white nationalists with classical statue avatars).

globalnode• 7 months ago

halfway through reading it and while i like this guys attitude and agree wholeheartedly with what hes saying, if any country does what hes suggesting they'll be sanctioned, have their leaders kidnapped or get nuked... who's gonna go for that? best you can do right now is step quietly and try to build your nations strength for the coming conflict.

yyyk• 7 months ago

Obvious problem is anticircumvention laws are just as much an interest of the EU and others. These laws pass power from the individual, and the EU (its corps and govs) are just as interested in exercising power over the individual.

stevenally• 7 months ago

Crappification is a better word.

mpalmer• 7 months ago

You're a bit late

KingOfCoders• 7 months ago

With the incoming invasion of Greenland this will massively accelerate.

ta9000• 7 months ago

Americans aren’t your enemy. We’re just as upset by these idiots running our government as you are.

Cthulhu_9• 7 months ago

It's not an either / or though; enough Americans are in support of the government, that's how democracy works. Nobody can speak for everyone.

monooso2• 7 months ago

I don't think there's any suggestion that Americans are the enemy.

Indeed, the article makes it clear that (a) the issue is not individuals, and (b) the desired changes would be good for most (non-billionaire) Americans.

BadBadJellyBean4• 7 months ago

Possibly. But the people who matter the most in this discussion lost their trustworthiness. The government and the tech giants are working together to be a bad partner.

It unfortunately doesn't matter if the average Joe is not with them unless they do something about the state of things.

And not trying to get too political: the GOP and Trump did win the electorate and the popular vote. So the USA kinda wanted this.

kergonath7• 7 months ago

I have a lot of sympathy for the American people, and many personal American friends. Still, in a democracy everyone is collectively responsible for the government. "It’s not us, it’s our government" only work for so long.

0_gravitas• 7 months ago

It's not a democracy (by definition)

rakoo• 7 months ago

That's assuming that the population has any power, which in pretty much all countries in the world is not true. "Democracy" isn't just a value to behold, if the population has no power, it has no power and a country can't be called as such out of nowhere. Now, the people might have no actual power, but it's in their hands to get it.

aebtebeten16• 7 months ago

We’re just as upset by these idiots

The former soviets were upset with their empire, and got rid of it themselves.

Is there any reason you all would not be capable of doing what they did?

TrackerFF2• 7 months ago

There's no mechanism for the people to remove the president.

You can't have a loss of confidence vote that every eligible voter can partake in. There's no coalition system where one part can pull out and essentially dissolve the sitting coalition. No snap election.

By now it should be clear to anyone that the only way to remove the president, by lawful means, is to impeach and remove him. But with politicians choosing party over people, that will likely not happen anytime soon.

The median senator and congressman in the US has a net worth close to a million dollars. Other than in the very unlikely event that the US invaded, they will really never feel the effects of bad presidents.

At worst they will live under the threat of being primaried.

US politics is very much a case of "you've made your bed, now lie in it" for minimum the next 4 years.

tomaskafka• 7 months ago

Oh no, they did not. USSR collapse was precipitated by decades of economic war, where trying to keep up with US advancements depleted more and more of russian budget, finally plunging the country into collapse deep enough for elites to accept formal change of regime (of course while ensuring they stay on top).

The actual soviet people were bystanders.

flumpcakes14• 7 months ago

I mean this kindly - but Americans need to ditch their current administration fast. I don't understand how a Democrat can be a lame duck for four years but the current president can literally threaten NATO members with invasion and nothing happens. If the US goes too far, it won't be coming back. There are no more Obama years of stability. No more soft power. No more tacit agreement from the rest of the democratic world with whatever hair brained scheme US wants to do.

The US is great at making money from monopolies. It has thousands of billionaires and it has more money than sense. It is not a technological supremacy. It is at a stark risk of turning away 450m highly educated people, who traditionally would align with the US as 'shared democracies'. Imagine those same people aligning with China, not out of shared principle, but out of necessity. That would end the US hegemony in a single day.

I don't think the average US person realises what their government is doing. All empires end eventually, but your America is running towards the finish line chasing some dream of 'greatness' and imperial ambition. Meanwhile the average schmoe doesn't even have universal healthcare.

nbates80• 7 months ago

From the article:

And never forget that the post-American internet will be good for Americans. Because, in a K-shaped, bifurcated, unequal America, the trillions that American companies loot from the world don't trickle down to Americans. The average American holds a portfolio of assets that rounds to zero, and that includes stock in US tech companies.
The average American isn't a shareholder in Big Tech, the average American is a victim of Big Tech. Liberating the world from US Big Tech is also liberating America from US Big Tech.

627467• 7 months ago

I like the initial emphasis on the trade treaties of his talk.

IMO the scope and amount of these treaties have been unacceptable and the only reason they passed were due to the framing of thia magical thinking that any increased trade is always great "enlarging the pie" and everyone ignores the fact that it creates a huge monoculture that is unable to accommodate people's with vastly different needs.

These treaties alienate people in the same same supranational orgs like EU does.

The framing of "rules" based order masks the fact that its "rules set mostly by the hegemon in its favour"

aebtebeten16• 7 months ago

[trade] creates a huge monoculture that is unable to accommodate people's with vastly different needs

How so? Cash on the barrelhead doesn't care which cultures are on either side. During the Cold War, capitalists and communists traded with each other. I myself have traded with people whose language and culture I hadn't the foggiest of.

Monoculture is problematic, yes, but its roots must be in something other than trade.

4bpp• 7 months ago

Unfortunately, all it will take is an appropriate choice of story about "Nazis"/"child predators"/"pirates"/"terrorists"/"Russian bots" sideloading unregulated apps or disabling the GPS trackers on their cars, and every prospective member of Doctorow's great new coalition (including most everyone in attendance when the talk was given) can be peeled away with ease.

sarmike31• 7 months ago

This is powerful stuff, I think these trends will grow rapidly and it’s bound to become a hot topic

viktorcode2• 7 months ago

We wouldn't tolerate secrecy in the calculations used to keep our buildings upright, and we shouldn't tolerate opacity in the software that keeps our tractors, hearing aids, ventilators, pacemakers, trains, games consoles, phones, CCTVs, door locks, and government ministries working.

Construction industry if full of privately owned technologies and closed source software, from architectural drawing board up to the last glass panel in a window.

Building are staying upright not because of openness, but because of the enforced standards for construction. Same can be applied to software orders.

Want to prevent a government office suite to be bricked remotely? Put forth requirements for autonomous work, self hosting, multiyear coverage for critical patches and ability to export the data at any moment in the format of your preference. Whoever provides this will get the contract.

This seems to me far more realistic aim than trying to enforce global legal straight jacket to be universally applied to all software and hardware products available for purchase in your country

piyuv• 7 months ago

He wrote “calculations”

Attrecomet2• 7 months ago

Legal straight jacket? Doctorow is arguing for abandoning the legal straight jacket, not creating one. It seems you severley misread the article.

kardianos• 7 months ago

That's where Trump came from: a coalition of billionaires, white nationalists, Christian bigots, authoritarians, conspiratorialists, imperialists,

Uh, no.

I've been told my entire life it is good for me to ship jobs overseas and for the country I live in, to be a "service" industry. I thought it was crazy then, as I do now.

The Trump coalition is the ONLY administration who has meaningfully reversed policies that push jobs away from my own country.

twixfel6• 7 months ago

Those jobs are never coming back, meanwhile they're torching the entire world order that was built purely to your benefit, betraying all allies, embarking on imperialist adventures abroad and making huge amounts of money for themselves and their families in the process. Art of the Deal.

pentagrama2• 7 months ago

Reading this from South America, there is another layer that often gets lost in US-centric discussions like this.

For many people here, the move away from US platforms is not primarily about surveillance, product quality, or even conscious digital sovereignty in the European sense. It is more visceral and historical. There is a long-standing anti-US sentiment rooted in decades of interventionism in Latin America. For some users, avoiding US tech products is simply a symbolic refusal to participate in systems that come from a country associated with coups, economic pressure, and political interference in the region.

This is not necessarily about whether European alternatives are better. Often they are chosen precisely because they are not American. That conversation has been present for years, but it intensified during the Trump era, especially as his international posture became more openly aggressive, erratic, and performative. The image projected abroad is less diplomatic and more about asserting power at any cost.

The recent capture of Nicolás Maduro brought this sentiment back to the surface. This is not about defending Maduro or denying authoritarianism in Venezuela. It is about the methods. The way the US exercises power, bypasses norms, and frames these actions as demonstrations of dominance reinforces long-held distrust, regardless of who the target is.

From this side of the world, it often looks like a superpower acting out of anxiety. A fear of losing its central position as China, Russia, and other actors gain influence. That fear translates into unilateral actions and a public discourse that feels unhinged compared to the more restrained, protocol-driven communication of previous administrations.

So when people here talk about abandoning US platforms, it is not always a tech debate. Sometimes it is a political and emotional one, shaped by memory, history, and how power is experienced from the outside rather than from the center.

Disclaimer: this comment was written in Spanish and translated and edited with the assistance of ChatGPT, which is, admittedly, a US-based tool.

nwhnwh• 7 months ago

Reading this from South America...

From a lot of other places too.

pwdisswordfishy• 7 months ago

So, not so much digital sovereignty, but sovereignty full stop.

Disclaimer: this comment was written in Spanish and translated and edited with the assistance of ChatGPT, which is, admittedly, a US-based tool.

DeepL is based in Europe, just so you know…

ExtraRoulette• 7 months ago

There's a great podcast (That's now in it's second season) that discusses US intervention in Latin America called "Under The Shadow", by Michael Fox.

pentagrama2• 7 months ago

Thank you. Will check it out. Here is the link if it helps to other readers https://therealnews.com/under-the-shadow

PoignardAzur2• 7 months ago

Disclaimer: this comment was written in Spanish and translated and edited with the assistance of ChatGPT, which is, admittedly, a US-based tool.

You could use DeepL! It's a German company.

ranyume• 7 months ago

South America is a big place, and there are a lot of countries. The situation isn't this simple. For example, Argentina is historically the most anti-US country of all South America, yet it's government and their supporters celebrated the US attack calling everyone who opposed it "communists" (all this while the government allows Chinese goods to be massively imported). Argentina's government will be trying to make a block of countries that are us-friendly (and be their leader of course).

Also, adding context, argentine elites are pro-us, but not as much as Brazil's elites and their supporters (who wear the US flag in protests)

dzonga• 7 months ago

That's why they're so fucking horny to have chatbots shit out software at superhuman speeds. That's why they think it's good that they've got a chatbot that "produces a thousand times more code than a human programmer."

Then when you think with some certain people saying yeah use A.I to write your code .... we will become forever renters. if you can't write code by hand & have to depend on A.I what happens when the providers raise prices ? same thing with cloud computing ?

a certain crowd - SF people - VCs etc want people to be technoserfs

Cthulhu_9• 7 months ago

That's exactly what they want, or what all companies want in the end.

flumpcakes14• 7 months ago

It is the American way. I have a feeling a lot of Americans would be happier living with European attitudes. The billionaires wouldn't. I think all the talk of 'freedom' really has blinded a lot of US citizens. Europe is a lot freer, in a lot of ways, and it also tries to stop the average joe from getting mugged by mega-corporations.

EGreg• 7 months ago

It's not clear that the EU can force Apple to write code that opens up the iOS platform for alternative app stores and payment methods, but there is one thing that the EU can absolutely do with 100% reliability, any time they want: the EU can decide not to let Apple use Europe's courts to shut down European companies that defend European merchants, performers, makers, news outlets, game devs and creative workers, from Apple's ripoff, by jailbreaking phones.

This is my approach to far-reaching private property in general, not just IP: just have courts decline to enforce it. That is less violence and more libertarian than anarcho-capitalists.

Imagine having the courts vigorously defend your personal property rights and your first 3 homes, but gradually less guarantees for your 10th and 100th house. It would be hard for, say, Blackrock to buy up all those houses or Bill Gates to buy up all that farmland.

This is philosophically in step with the Lockian proviso, and just closer to natural law in general. A lion, no matter how strong or clever, can’t defend and enforce his rules on a swath of land past a certain point. Humans just came up with these systems due to abstract concepts like property ownership, corporations, countries etc. having no limits.

PS: This guy is onto something. Repealing or relaxing laws benefiting others is exactly the way you get back at them. Tariffs are not.

PoignardAzur2• 7 months ago

Think of [...] all those "Effective Altruists," who claimed the moral high ground by claiming to care about 53 trillion imaginary artificial humans who will come into existence in 10,000 years at the expense of extending moral consideration to people alive today.

That's not an accurate summary of what most Effective Altruists preach or do. The stereotypical EA interventions are "direct cash transfer to super-poor communities", "buying mosquito nets to fight malaria" and "lobbying for animal welfare", long-termism is much much more niche.

juliob• 7 months ago

If so, it may be time to re-brand because the niche is what most people now assume.

notepad0x90• 7 months ago

A post-American Internet that is possible because Trump has mobilized new coalition partners to join the fight on our side.

I'm sorry, was the pre-trump era more pro-privacy or respectful of European's sovereignty? Is Snowden forgotten now? What about the State department cable leaks?

I didn't know people relied on governments being friendly for internet security so much.

In politics, coalitions are everything.....That's where Trump came from: a coalition of billionaires, white nationalists, Christian bigots, authoritarians, conspiratorialists, imperialists, and self-described "libertarians" who've got such a scorching case of low-tax brain worms that they'd vote for Mussolini if he'd promise to lower their taxes by a nickel.

Ok, inflammatory wording aside, this isn't wrong, but the item over which a coalition is built is important. Building a coalition because of some group membership will always result in toxic cesspools in my opinion. But coalitions build around policy can be productive. quid-pro-quo coalitions of "I'll support you on X if you support me on Y" is also how political parties start and they result in terrible results for regular people.

A lot of anti-privacy law these days is also coming out of Europe (recent one: Chat control). I think current politics and trump are good recruitment tools, but they're not effective in terms of getting things done. For example, I disagree on just about everything with trumpers, but I guarantee you can build a coalition that includes many trumpers/MAGAts when it comes to stopping things like chat control. Point being, if you have a goal, stick to it. Build coalitions and policies around it. Thinking like this does more harm than good, now it is a social/cultural/national warfare. If I didn't know better, I would feel like I should oppose this person simply as a result of being an American myself.

How can you talk about coalitions and make a point about excluding people from your coalition. Your coalition in other words is built not around policy, or enacting change but around opposing groups of people. It's worded and crafted as if supporters of this cause must view it as a means to opposing other people, instead of making changes.

Even something as simple as "let's stop using Microsoft office" makes sense, we can then talk about funding something that can compete with it. But if you worded it as "let's oppose america" umm..ok, I guess people that don't really care about america either way probably don't have a place in your coalition?

That's one thing I'm disliking heavily, the nationalization of open source and privacy related things.

neves3• 7 months ago

As always a nice article that make us think.

But the greatest pillar is his alliance is governments. They must fund these projects.

O1111OOO• 7 months ago

Verbose, meandering and hopeful all spelled out in over 8,000 words. My own conclusion.... the cowardly countries of the world will do nothing to upset the US, they will not even consider uniting as a coalition because they don't trust each other enough. It's a dog eat dog world now.

They will do less to empower their own people. In fact, empowering people seem to be on the bottom of the list for most countries.

If we keep believing hopeful dribble like this, we get nowhere. There was nothing actionable here, no call to arms, no organization, no solutions.

You can't undo 25 years of a well engineered, intertwined logistical nightmare maintain by trillions of dollars and millions of people... by the "possible" action of a single country that may possibly, hopefully, maybe... repeal a thing.

It's this kind of hopeful rhetoric that keeps the current system humming happily and the billionaire class drinking champagne. The world has changed. There is a new world order coalescing and gaining strength. It is the one that entered a sovereign country and stole their oil.

There is a true ruling class emerging and the rest of us that will serve them.

classified• 7 months ago

This anticircumvention law is criminally stupid and scandalous. It has to go.

rajnathani• 6 months ago

I thought this article would have to do with the transfer of ICANN's power from the US government to a general non-profit thing in 2016.

The Post-American Internet

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