alt Hacker News"regulate them" has mostly translated to "tax the most successful players in the form of non-compliance fees from byzantine EU regulatory structures".
I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software, or the cries that it's unfair that the US doesn't strangle their own tech market with equally burdensome regulation. The problem Europe's tech industry has faced is that the EU killed it in the crib with regulations, and now there's more fear of "what if there are bad side effects in being successful" than there is fear of never being successful.
Yes, it'd be great if there was a thriving market of mid-sized EU tech companies working in a well-regulated and consumer friendly market. There just isn't, though. I'm generally a fan of Doctorow, but the idea that the EU is just a few hackers reverse-engineering a new client for teams/youtube/whatsapp away from that world is hard for me to see.
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Taxing the most "successful" players and burdening them with regulations is exactly what is needed (provided those most successful players are large enough in size and few enough in number). There is room for more nuance in regulations in the sense that they can scale up more gently as companies grow, but the regulations on megacorps like Facebook and Google should only become more brutal. The existence of those kinds of companies anywhere in the world is a threat to people everywhere.
> I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software
"Encouraging allies" is a pretty damn generous interpretation of it.
Regarding what's "holding back Europe's tech market", I think that Europe has a different culture. Not having big monopolies is a feature, not a bug. In that sense, the regulations don't fail.
But it is very difficult to compete with monopolies unless you become one and lock your position. If the regulations prevent that (and again, that's a feature), then it becomes impossible.
Trying an analogy:
If we impose strict animal welfare rules on our own chicken farmers, that's a feature. But if we then allow unlimited imports of cheaper chicken raised with no such rules, it becomes unfair to our farmers, doesn't it?