The WSJ for 8/1 has a front-page headline: ‘US Tech Scrambles to Abide by New EU Rules.” What kind of rules?
The new EU laws aim to push big tech companies to better police online content and to open them to more competition–with regular oversight from regulators empowered to issue fines. The article refers to “hundreds” of provisions in the new regulations.
Note that word better, referring to the policing of online content. The implication I would draw from this is that the article’s author regards top-down content control as a good thing. Maybe that’s unfair, perhaps just a matter of phrasing that doesn’t have to be as implying approval–do you think?
In any case, I’m reminded of a passage from an old science fiction story:
The intellectuals had been fretful about the Americanization of Europe, the crumbling of old culture before the mechanized barbarism of soft drinks, hard sells, enormous chrome-plated automobiles (dollar grins, the Danes had called them), chewing gum, plastics…None of them had protested the simultaneous Europeanization of America: bloated government, unlimited armament, official nosiness, censors, secret police, chauvinism…