Do They Even Get the Internet?

The difference in attitudes towards freedom of speech and being practical about what is do’able is quite severe between Europe and the US. This is repeatedly brought out in all its gory detail every time you see the attitudes of the two sides when it comes to the Internet. Others say the clashes on Internet policy is not really an attitudinal one; rather, it is rooted in European resentment that all the big Internet companies are American (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple) with barely any European company. Regardless of the reason, take a look at recent European rulings on these two topics.

Germany has framed a new rule to fine Internet companies upto €50 million if they don’t quickly remove offending content. As Mike Masnick wrote:
“Three loosely defined (and easily abused) categories: hate speech, criminal material and fake news.”
And as with so many other instances in the past, the Europeans still don’t understand that Facebook, Twitter and Google don’t create content; rather, they are forums for people to post content. So how is it right to fine the platform but leave the person(s) who created the content go scot-free? Methinks the Germans should pay the world for the pollution that their precious Volkswagon’s have inflicted by manipulating emission tests worldwide. But of course, holier-than-thou Germany will say that is somehow different.

The other instance is when the EU fined Google €2.42 billion for abusing “its market dominance as a search engine… (to rank higher) its comparison shopping service”. At first sight, this sounds like a sensible ruling. But think a bit more and you discover the devil in the details, says Ben Thompson:
-         Is Google truly a search monopoly given that it is the easiest thing in the world to switch to a different search engine?
-         Yes, on the Net, network effects are very strong (if everyone is on Facebook or WhatsApp, why would you join a competitor). But is that by definition a bad thing? Since Ronald Reagan, this is the US stance on monopolies:
“The U.S. is primarily concerned with consumer welfare, and the primary proxy is price. In other words, as long as prices do not increase — or even better, decrease — there is, by definition, no illegal behavior.”
-         If Google chose to rank its own entity high even though it is bad, surely people would switch to alternatives.
-         In any case, ranking items is a subjective choice, so in what sense can one say that Google’s ranking is not just wrong or bad, but criminal?

As always, European rulings are so poorly thought through that one can barely make any sense out of it. Unless, of course, it is just based on spite for American companies…

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