It seems like most of these problems can be alleviated by two actions:
1) don't have servers in Europe
2) don't hire Europeans
If Europe wants to regulate themselves into the stone age, they should be free to do it.
1) don't have servers in Europe
2) don't hire Europeans
If Europe wants to regulate themselves into the stone age, they should be free to do it.
This is probably the same reaction regulators have around the world, where they'd prefer to have their own walled garden where they apply their own rules and don't need to talk to anyone else. Except when there's lot of money down the line, then they'll do an effort and make exceptions.
That's how many US services reacted to GDPR. That's how many Japanese services reacted to VISA/Mastercard ban on sexual content. That's how China is reacting to many things. I think we'll see more and more example of it down the line.
On one side, balkanization can probably help to get more diversity and allow local content to thrive with less competition. On the other side, it's basically reversing decades of cultural evolution that happened on the net, which I personally think sucks a lot.
I don't like the trend of balkanization, but I have to say that this is kind of suffering from a lack of perspective. What you call "their own walled garden" a lot of people call "national sovereignty", especially people who dislike the fact that the "unregulated" internet was actually regulated by the United States for all intents and purposes, and so "lack of regulation" was equivalent to letting the US run a critical piece of their national infrastructure. It should be understandable that people kinda didn't like that.
But I prefered a kind of status quo where the big players are in a standstill and can't make bold moves that could destabilize the whole board. Basically the state where the US couldn't abuse too much their position in fear of the other entities calling it quit, and the other entities couldn't completely close their borders in fear of losing too much as they retreat.
In recent years we've seen more and more moral/cultural rules getting applied to critical infra (payment, communications etc.), and I guess we're not getting that standstill back anytime soon. That also means we're back to black market style communication, as it was in the earlier decades, when we were looking for a common ground less constrained by national limitations.
This really depends on what the response to that is. People tolerated centralized chokepoints because they were neutral. That was why they historically feared doing otherwise -- it would give people an incentive to disintermediate them.
So now people are going to try to disintermediate them. Question is how long it takes to happen.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fz...
To illustrate, let's subtract some spending categories from that disposable income which tech companies generally don't compete for: Germans spend $13713 + $1604 on housing/lodging vs $22624 for Americans, education $255 vs $1226, food $5706 vs $8289, health $1632 vs $5452.
So comparatively Americans are already down $14681 of that disposable income, which definitely won't be spent on whatever some American tech darling produces - food, housing, education, and health spending is generally considered more important than getting a Meta Quest headset. At the end of the day US/Germany spend the same amount of money on entertainment/recreation almost to the dollar. France is similar in that regard and together Germany and France are already a market of close to 150 million people.
Numbers are from 2021 using the historic EUR/USD exchange rates.
The point is: drill down to some category and compare actual spending in it. You'll be surprised how wildly some things vary even between countries that nominally have the same disposable income.
US Data: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm
German Data: https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Einkom...
4) Get a good lawyer who is well versed in international jurisdiction issues to avoid getting dragged to an EU court anyway. Possibly operate from a non-extradition country.