Edit: funny how here you get downvoted to oblivion for saying something negative about the EU even if it's verifiably correct.
"The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommuni-cations shall be inviolable"
And I thought this was about antitrust? Or is it a "whatever it takes" sort of policy enforcement?
Not to mention that this was before the Germans got ungrateful and tampered with US companies, if any of that was done on Ike's watch you know governments would get toppled and military action was on the table, not to mention sanctions and other economic retaliation.
Given their own spying, Airbus illegal subsidy scandal combined with fierce protectionism of the most stupidly provincial things like what cheese and wine can be called and openly "How can we tear US tech down?" statements it is no wonder they are getting taken seriously as J. Jamison on Spiderman.
Are you able to expand on that please?
> Airbus illegal subsidy scandal
I don't follow any news regarding Airbus so I can't comment on that case specifically but the EU does clamp down on European companies as well.
If I had to guess why you think it only happens to American businesses then it might be just that American newspapers will focus on US businesses so you simply haven't read about EU interventions against EU businesses? To be honest, some of fines placed on companies on the mainland continent don't even make it to the UK's press - so it really wouldn't surprise me if it was never reported in the US.
> fierce protectionism of the most stupidly provincial things like what cheese and wine can be called
I don't agree with that much either myself but you have to bare in mind that the cheese and wine industry predate the EU by literally centuries so this isn't some new policy that the EU invented - they just chose not to disrupt it. However this probably feels alien to any American techies because the culture there is all about disrupting the status que; I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing either. But equally I can't blame the EU for protecting their provincial industries when that's all those regions have done for centuries (and it's not like the US doesn't promote it's own local industries where it can as well).
> openly "How can we tear US tech down?" statements
Yeah, from time to time individuals will make stupid statements but the EU is a much larger organisation than that and encompasses a variety of different cultures. I mean you wouldn't like it much if Europeans judged every CEO in Silicon Valley by the tweets made from Elon Musk yet people talk about the EU is if it was a singular individual.
The airbus illegal subsidization and agriculture were to point to incidents of protectionist tendencies. Notably I avoided their actual sincerity - such a thing would in fact vary by the individuals just like there may be some people legitimately annoyed by long commute times complaining about "forced busing" in with the dog-whistling racists. I am pointing out how they can appear untrustworthy.
It doesn't matter if either party is pure as driven snow or mustache twirlingly corrupt - given their history there are reasons not to trust their intentions. The suspicions may be wrong in this case but there /is/ a reason to be suspicious.
It also doesn't change that intention and results may differ. Public school funding was fueled by paranoid xenophobic fear that immigrant Catholics would take over as covert servants of the Pope but it was a great influence. Similarly the initial "Five Pests Elimination" program was well intentioned but killing sparrows lead to major locust problems such that paying the "bird tax" in letting the locust eaters also eat some seeds was preferable to swarms devouring farm fields wholesale. (Refusing to change after it was revealed to cause problems made it the vast disaster but that is another topic.)
The best way to prove sincerity is an expensive signal in itself - acting against your own immediate interests repeatably in the favor of integrity consistently when it comes up. That may benefit you long term.
For example: a serial con artist may be sincerely reformed and telling the truth about his new plan to fight acquifer depletion but people would rightly be skeptical. If he gave away the scheme with absolutely no monetization potential or benefits to special interests it would show it isn't a scam. It still might not work but not a scam.
Of course they aren't perfect. No government body is. Every major national government has spies and such like (including the US) and you can't really use that as an argument against protecting consumer rights nor the EU specifically. At least not if you want to make a credible counterargument rather than falling into the whataboutism cliche: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
> The airbus illegal subsidization and agriculture were to point to incidents of protectionist tendencies. Notably I avoided their actual sincerity - such a thing would in fact vary by the individuals just like there may be some people legitimately annoyed by long commute times complaining about "forced busing" in with the dog-whistling racists. I am pointing out how they can appear untrustworthy.
I'm sorry but I still don't know which case studies you're referring to.
> It also doesn't change that intention and results may differ. Public school funding was fueled by paranoid xenophobic fear that immigrant Catholics would take over as covert servants of the Pope but it was a great influence. Similarly the initial "Five Pests Elimination" program was well intentioned but killing sparrows lead to major locust problems such that paying the "bird tax" in letting the locust eaters also eat some seeds was preferable to swarms devouring farm fields wholesale. (Refusing to change after it was revealed to cause problems made it the vast disaster but that is another topic.)
Yes, none of those points are themselves wrong but that also doesn't mean they directly apply here either. I mean we could quote proverbs all day and night and still be no closer to talking directly about the EU.
> The best way to prove sincerity is an expensive signal in itself - acting against your own immediate interests repeatably in the favor of integrity consistently when it comes up. That may benefit you long term.
You mean like fining their own businesses? Like I had already commented that they do?
It may feel like US businesses get singled out if all you read about is US businesses but the reality is that's not the case.
> For example: a serial con artist may be sincerely reformed and telling the truth about his new plan to fight acquifer depletion but people would rightly be skeptical. If he gave away the scheme with absolutely no monetization potential or benefits to special interests it would show it isn't a scam. It still might not work but not a scam.
I don't think it's worthwhile arguing about what are token gestures, bluffs and double-bluffs because if you're going down that proverbial rabbit hole then you could twist any action or statement to mean whatever you wanted it to mean. While I'm not suggesting that everything can be taken at face value, I do think a debate where we second guess every motive is going to be a hugely unproductive one. And ultimately if that's how you feel towards the EU then perhaps it's safer for us just to agree to disagree?
This is much less about some parochial anti-US sentiment and much more about calling Facebook out on behaviour that is seen as unacceptable according to European cultural norms. Perhaps also laws because I'd guess there's at least some question whether Facebook's behaviour is GDPR compliant.
Were it the case that no US organisations were questioning Facebook's behaviour then you would perhaps have a point. But it's not. Much of the anti-Facebook press is coming from US institions (NY Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, ...). Several state & federal agencies are at various stages of inquiries.
So the idea that this is some move against US corporations doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.