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Comment by Kudos | Hacker News Reader

Anti-EU regulation sentiment really seems to have an uptick in line with widespread availability of LLMs.

The EU isn't perfect, but the catastrophising I read feels mostly like astro-turfing attempts at destabilisation.

It's probably more easily noticed from inside the EU.

I agree. I say this as a eurosceptic myself. HN and Twitter make it seem like the EU is borderline third world that is moments away from collapse.

Germany is the third largest economy in the world. The EU as a bloc is the second largest economy in the world.

While lagging considerably behind the US and China in services, it still is among the leaders in energy and manufacturing.

It’s in decline, but it’s really not anything that can’t be fixed.

Certainly not anywhere HN/Twitter like to make it out to be.

The EU is facing a two-front information war. A strong EU doesn’t benefit the US, Russia or China. Having said that, a lot of US criticisms that are propagandised against the EU are mostly fair criticisms, the EU makes it easy for its adversaries to propagandise low hanging fruit (such as the bureaucracy on display here)

No, there was already a steady complaints against Anti-EU regulation from within Europe around the time Eurozone debt crisis introduced sweeping changes that ultimately centralized regulatory enforcement over sovereign interests of EU member states. I think anybody from Europe would know this is the focal point when anti-EU sentiments really ticked up.

There really isn't much of astro-turfing in non-EU parts of the world that would make little sense, your narrative might make more sense if there were any actual evidence or credibility behind the claims that non-EU states are engaged in anti-EU discourse that doesn't apply to them.

The complaints against EU is a lagging effect and what you see today is cumulative, one that all federated organization eventually face. LLMs have little to do with it and its just more visible as it is quite literally in global discourse

> your narrative might make more sense if there were any actual evidence or credibility behind the claims that non-EU states are engaged in anti-EU discourse

The uptick I'm talking about is in the last 2 years.

At least one Israeli Minister has bragged about them doing it.

I don't think you need specific evidence of Russia doing it, it's widely believed to be happening by security professionals. They famously had troll farms of people employed to spread disinformation and that can only have been accelerated by LLMs.

Again the trope Russia did it is as ridiculous as Trump claiming China rigged US elections. There's simply no real hard evidence that can be examined without partisan bias.

I don't doubt the existence of troll farms either its just that the idea that you can influence online discourse in the manner claimed by both Democrats and Republicans and beyond in a left vs right rivalry is greatly exaggerated and carry their biases.

At the end of the day, you really can't change whatever beliefs that the crowd has had for ages. You can't astroturf Palestinians into changing their view against Israelis and you can't astroturf Israelis into changing their position towards Palestinians.

You're basically saying that propaganda is not effective and then building a steel man to defend it, and I cannot take that starting position seriously.

There's no "catastrophising" here. This is simply an article that rationally explains why the latest EU regulation is well meaning but poorly implemented.

It just so happens that the same is true for a lot of EU technical regulation.

At what point are we allowed to say "the EU is failing to regulate its members effectively"?

Or are we not allowed to say that because it would create some kind of catastrophe where the EU Commission loses its power over the EU27 and Russia invades (or somesuch catastrophising...?)

> feels mostly like astro-turfing attempts at destabilisation

Well it is certainly the perfect conditions for it, the EU is surrounded by friends and enemies alike who openly seek to break it up and the biggest companies in the world are doing everything they can to defy and undermine regulation efforts.

Yeah any thread on the EU is full with that on HN.

They want the lifestyle of Europe but do not want the rich to pay more taxes to support it.

But don't Switzerland or the UK have similarly comfortable lifestyles with less absurd taxation?

That's a leading framing, but comparing an individual country and a 27 member trading bloc in that way makes no sense even if it wasn't.

UK taxation is absolutely absurd. Kills the ambitious. Just look at what happens between 100-125k, both from the perspective of tax and loss in benefits for parents.

Well, as sad as it is, that's still better than what they have across the Channel. (You'd pay 44.4% tax on the equivalent of 125k GBP.) But thank you for correcting me, I wasn't aware of that!

Yes, but you'd lose childcare benefits in the UK so it's much, much worse if you are a young parent.

Everyone likes to think “it’s the bots” or whatever but GDPR came before LLMs and the reaction to that was the same. I think you’re probably seeing just the effect of a bunch of Americans on an American site in awe at the legal barriers in place in the EU.

Troll farms existed before GDPR. What I'm talking about is the supercharged disinformation capacity LLMs brought to them.

While I generally agree, the specific regulation case seems to be particularly egregious, the playbook for the regulation already existed through the VAT system. They deliberately chose to add to the single markets fragmentation. By adding additional bureaucratic loops to enter each individual market.

Somehow there is always an endless supply of coincidence theorists ready to hand wave away all criticisms of EU shooting itself in the foot. The TFA is from a seemingly legitimate Greek business with a 5+ track record of selling and publishing electronics content online. They obviously work with many others in the space and have come up with this plea for some reason.

And you are calling this astroturfing LLM based on what? It's really no different from calling tariffs so much winning and laughing at seething liberals.

What do LLMs have to do with it?

What do automated content generators have to do with astro-turfing?

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