Pirate Party needs to start learning from the alt-right and the the politicians with other totalitarian tendencies. Instead of maksimalist goals that "must be achieved at once or we are doomed", better find something analogous of "think of the children" instrument which is used by the bureaucrats to gain power and aim for gradual steps in a similar way that the alt-right is doing it. Marine Le Pen in France become a credible candidate by distancing herself from maximalist and extreme ambitions(that she probably still holds) and aim for issues that large number of people want addressed(not just elitist niches). Populism is fine, up to a point.
Equating the "Not everything that we wanted was implemented" with "We lost everything, they won" sounds toxic to me. It's also arrogant t believe that you have the perfect solution for everything, you are pure and all knowing when the others are corrupt and stupid.
I like having pirate parties as a voice but the I would never vote for them, they are extremist and maksimalist IMHO.
You are projecting, the update is not so defeatist. It starts with listing achievements, then says that overall the new document does not deserve the name of 'digital constitution' and an opportunity was wasted.
Not the opportunity. More will come and I got an impression that PP will keep fighting. I would vote for PP if I could.
The Czech Pirate Party, now in government, has basically abandoned its focus on digital topics and concentrates on power, lawmaking and who is going to get which seat on what ministry.
A huge disappointment. Their once-core positions are now good for lip service only. Even the Pirate Party Forum (an open discussion forum) is now basically concentrated on power politics and discussions about such important agendas have atrophied.
Do you have a recommendation of where I could read more about how the Czech Pirate Party has done in government, either national or local (eg mayor of Prague)? I don't see anything skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Pirate_Party and very little reading the Czech version autotranslated.
I'm under the impression that at least one of their MEPs (Marcel Kolaja; edit: indeed, quoted in the article which I hadn't read before commenting, shame on me!) does substantial work on digital issues, but I guess the incentives faced by MEPs are very different from those in national or local office. Is that right?
Kolaja is pretty much the last one standing that is still interested in digital rights. Unfortunately the MEPs aren't that important in the party (any party): spending a lot of time in Brussels means being far away from the local headquarters, where the real decisions are being made.
For an impression of how the party is ticking now, just register in their phpBB run forum: forum.pirati.cz and run the discussions through the automatic translator.
I cannot recommend any truly neutral sources about people like mayor of Prague. There is an election coming soon, he will likely lose his seat. One of the reasons is that cost of living has gone through the roof. Many people move to Prague, but almost no new housing is being built. The prices are 2,5x as high as ten years ago. People draw unfavorable comparisons to Warsaw, which is very dynamic and at the time still affordable to the middle class.
Well yeah, that's how politics works. When you are elected, you are a power broker.
Most single-issue parties fail precisely because they don't want to broker power, they just want to get the one thing they're angry about out of the way. Most people are expecting the party they vote for to have an answer on every issue imaginable, and merely shrugging your shoulders and saying "I was elected to legalize copyright infringement, not to decide what our external immigration policy should be" is not an option. If you don't play power broker, you do not get your agenda done.
I think you have mixed up the real idea behind "think of the children." It can be used as a fig leaf for things the politically powerful wish to do but are specifically unpopular. It can be used to do things that certain politicians want to do that the politically powerful are, as a class, indifferent to.
Where it doesn't work is to do things that are popular among the electorate but that the politically powerful are opposed to. No catchphrase will help you with that, unfortunately.
No I did not mixed it up, I'm suggesting that proponents of something unpopular need to obtain a tool that works to defend their positions. Not an awful lot of people are into the stuff that Pirate Party advocates, maybe they should find something to push for that an awful lot of people are interested in. "Save the kids" so far has been a very effective tool, the only time it failed as far as I remember is the Apple's auto-policing for CSAM proposal. The internet privacy and freedom advocates need to have something like that.
I used to argue against this line of thinking, but as time progressed, I have become progressively more jaded and cynical. I wonder if I am effectively becoming what I previously fought against ('think of the children' line of argumentation), but as time have shown time and time again, it simply works and I am kinda done letting technical illiterates dictate my life.
Maybe we don't have to lower ourselves to exactly that argument, but surely there are other popular takes.
So, something like "Europe and America will turn into China-style mass surveillance states if we don't demand a change in direction immediately"?
Has the benefit of being relatively true as well. Google leadership was all too eager to get in on the Chinese censorship machine (Dragonfly) as I recall:
You've convinced me. Here's a sensible compromise I can imagine:
1. Make a panel of concerned parents to review abuses by recommendation engines and to stop tracking abuses. Think of the children!
2. Give law enforcement the tools they need to deanonymize the abusers and criminals who are trafficking our kids. We don't want them to go dark-- think of the children!
What do you think? I sure hope you're the type of person who really cares about the children, and not the kind of opportunist who would reflexively argue against #2.
And, scene.
If you've got legitimate concerns about the children with well-documented evidence, let's hear it. Otherwise you're going to be out of your league.
This whole bill is things that are popular with citizen and that companies opposed. They didn’t have to start writing a digital services act, and it’s building on privacy protections that were already better than anywhere else on earth. The assumption that big business has all the power and always gets everything it wants is prima facie disproven here.
"Think of the children" is used to pre-emptively attack any opposition to what is being proposed, i.e. "you are against this? you don't care about children?". It is despised by privacy advocates and I wouldn't support any group who used a tactic like that.
Kids' privacy seem like a very valid use-case for that. Because kids and adults are not necessarily easy to distinguish, bingo bango bongo, privacy for everyone by default.
Nope, just that people who want to gain power in a democracy and change something need to realize that they need to have tools to make large number of people vote for them.
You can't write JavaScript in a C compiler and complain that nothing compiles.
No that's not true. The decisions in the European Parliament were made by people freely elected in 2019 elections. The person who wrote this piece is a member of a minor party in the European Parliament[0] that is not happy with the decision.
The expectation that the Pirate Party, which has quite small public support, will steamroll over the politicians with large public support is appalling. Governance by all knowing computer elites who don't have a significant public support is the actual fascism IMHO.
They simply need to convince the public first in orther to change things.
> The decisions in the European Parliament were made by people freely elected in 2019 elections.
Freely electing representatives does not mean those representatives will faithfully execute the will of their voters. The people of the US freely elect their representatives, and yet:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
That is not to say the same is true in the EU, but it shows that free elections alone are no guarantee that voter preferences influence policy.
> Freely electing representatives does not mean those representatives will faithfully execute the will of their voters.
That's exactly what it means - the caveat is, not being hostile to businesses and work with the businesses is part of the reason why people will choose them. If they fail to deliver enough, they don't get elected again. That's actually the core premise of a representative democracy.
Elite cabal from a completely different species controlling the system in which we are slaves producing stuff that are sent to a galaxy far way is a fantasy. The "elites" are just people who manage the machinery that produces the stuff that the folks want. You can argue over their disproportionate compensation but when a political makes a decision in favour of an interest group, let's say steel production, they also make the decision in favour of the people who earn their living from that business.
It can be argued over the long term impacts but that's part of the process. For example, we are in process convincing people that they need to give up some of their comforts to prevent very bad things happening 50 years from now. Once they get convinced, vote in people who will work for it and they do the thing.
Most times it is a compromise because people have conflicting interests and the people voted in need to come to a solution that works good enough for everyone.
MSPs have no power to propose legislation, the Commission does that and it is not elected by the people, so it's a stretch to claim that a parliament that can only rubber stamp things is a representative democracy. Would the Soviet system be a representative democracy? It's a very similar set up.
The commission members are appointed by the elected governments of the member states(one each) and need to be approved by the European Parliament. Let's not portray it as if they are clerks of an external organisation.
Anyway, if the MP's were simply rubber stamping whatever the commissioners propose, what they were discussing for 16 hours? Obviously, the portrayal of unelected bureaucrats shovelling whatever they want down the throat of the people is false.
> The commission members are appointed by the elected governments of the member states(one each) and need to be approved by the European Parliament.
> Let's not portray it as if they are clerks of an external organisation.
I'm not sure whether that refers to the commissioners or the MSPs. Regardless, the commissioners are not elected by the people and the MSPs cannot propose legislation. That set up is essentially the same as the Soviets used and no one called that democracy (even though it technically was) so why should the EU get a pass?
> Anyway, if the MP's were simply rubber stamping whatever the commissioners propose, what they were discussing for 16 hours?
I've seen plenty of jobsworths in my time, they don't seem to have anything against appearing to be doing something, or actually doing something that serves no good use. That's not a problem for only the EU parliament, of course, but the point is whether it's a representative democracy and it clearly is not. I'm not even sure whether it could be.
> The people of the US freely elect their representatives, and yet:
Not really, due to the nature of the US political system which is strongly
based around dynamics which make sure that the parties in power stay in power.
Calling elections for a (in practice) two party system free is a bit of an stretch.
I mean sure it's better then a (in practice) one party system, but still there is (in practice) no real choice to vote for, nor can "you" create a new choice (in practice, theoretical you could but due to the dynamics of the system it doesn't work in practice EDIT: As long as not one of both of the parties fully collapse and even then it might not work).
You are correct, I forgot to consider they dysfunctional first-past-the-post voting system. Even so, while that gives the EU better chances at real democracy, there are still many ways to interfere with popular will, so one cannot dismiss all criticism with "well they got the votes".
Politicians really are executing the will of the people! They're not simply passing legislation that justifies unacceptable invasion of privacy and sanctions the mining of the individual's information.
> We live in a fascist system (corporations + governance),
OK, I agreee that fascism is bad but is that fascism? I don't like to see words with a precise meaning [1] being used as a catch all for everything we dislike. What you describe is a democracy of corporations, not one of the people which vote but have far less effect on decisions than corporations have. It's on a divergent axis from fascism which is dictatorship, suppression of opposition and control of economy and society.
Demos - means people. Corporations are dead entities - corpses. They have a sort of life, even though they are not alive.
Still, perhaps this is closer to the truth. The people who run corporations, get to decide what those corporations do. The corporations are just a buffer to actual individuals.
Also, its worth noting that we do not have (and never have had) democracy.
Democracy is where people make the decisions. All the decisions.
What we have is a system where we vote in people who represent us - or so it is claimed. They politicians we vote in, re-present us (read 'serve us up') and make decisions on your behalf.
PS Wikipedia is hardly a bastion of truth. But you can see a section called 'Corporatist economic system' which indicates (lightly) that corporations were a part of the control system. I would say that these apparent distinctions are a show - especially nowadays. The corporations, governance system and the media (that is apparently holding someone to account, but are really about mis-directing the conversation) are all part of the overall governance structure.
PPS In the City of London, things work as you say - corporations are able to vote.
City of London is fascinating. They are a corporation that acts like a government within a government and in the elections the residents and businesses have voting rights.
Yes, it was a misnomer because ironically I didn't have the name for that system and couldn't find it.
The (direct) democracy where the people make all the decisions was the original Greek one. However only a few people could vote, adult male citizens. It worked because of the relatively small size (a few tenths of thousands) and physical proximity of the people that could vote. What we have now is representative democracy.
About the Corporatist economic system I quote the whole section
> The Fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidoni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association Confindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-Fascist trade unions. The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes. In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and the employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.
This is what one expects any dictatorship would do: have a say on what corporations do and prevent unions from becoming kind of political parties in contrast with the government.
By the way, Confindustria still exists with that name in Italy. It's sometimes simplistically defined as the union of corporations and unsurprisingly the interests of big corporations usually prevail on the interests of small ones.
"steamroll over the politicians with large public support is appalling"
Do you really think this is about the Pirate Party? If we had a referendum on this issue tomorrow, do you really think that the position held by mainsteam politians wouldn't loose by a landslide?
> do you really think that the position held by mainsteam politians wouldn't loose by a landslide
If the referendum are not held on hackernews or reddit and the mainstream politicians are given a time to defend their positions, I think the results won't be much different than what people voted so far.
The pirate party(~parties all over the EU) are bunch of idealists who so far failed to gain any significant traction.
People love the idea that the pure and freedom loving societies are held hostage by fascist elites but that's probably the case only if a very few countries, definitely not EU, US or even Russia or Turkey. People love whatever their position is, ban this mandate that is all they want(it's just that different people want different things to banned or mandated). Notice how people tirelessly are wedging cultural wars over who should f*ck who, be called what, get dressed what, eat what.
We have whatever we have because that's whatever the people want. It slowly changes over time as new people are born and the older ones die off.
> We have whatever we have because that's whatever the people want.
So you never heard of terms like Democratic Deficit, you have never read any serious research on the subject, you have not heard that USA was declared a flawed democracy. You personal opinion trumps whatever Phds and proffesors have come up with and published as peer reviewed research?
> I think the results won't be much different than what people voted so far.
The pirate party(~parties all over the EU) are bunch of idealists who so far failed to gain any significant traction.
This is a total Non-Sequitour - the facts/arguments you are providing do not support the assertions/opinions you are putting forward.
The Green Party in United Kingdom has almost no representation. However polling has shown that if you take any green party policy, it has like 70% support across the electorate. Why do people not vote for green party? That's up for debate, maybe people are stuck in the old Labour/Tory mindset, maybe it's the First past the Post System, maybe they debate poorly, there could be a million reasons.
This is an absurd position to take with regards to new legislation that will in almost no way benefit corporations. Sure, it might be watered down and not as effective as it could have been – as alleged in the article. But it's still legislation that corporations would much rather not have and be able to do what they want.
>We live in a fascist system (corporations + governance), where the government undertakes and waves through the legislation the corporations want.
That's not what fascism means.
>Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism[1] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy
It's sad that "fascist" became one of those words that are thrown around for anything (ie. politicians/parties/system of governance) that one doesn't like.
To be fair, I think they are referring to the fascist form of corporatism[1]. Which although that isn't quite its meaning (corporations + governance), it's a lot closer to using a correct aspect of fascism than most people who use the term do. I suppose Plutocracy or the less common, Corporatocracy, would suit better.
> Cross-border removal orders issued by illiberal member states without a court order can take down media reports and information that is perfectly legal in the country of publication.
It is bad, but what's worse is that this is not even all that consequential. Remember the case with Leica advert featuring the famous Tiananmen shot taken with one of their cameras? After CCP's outrage, Leica took it down at its own initiative (and nearly apologized to boot).
Which means, people in liberal member states will no longer be indifferent towards the actions of the illiberal ones. Maybe if the illiberal states don't share the values of the liberal ones, they shouldn't be in the same union? The thoughts an prayers being with the democrats of Hungary is not enough, Hungarians might better choose if they want to be a part of the society that tolerates stuff or go live in a system where Putin-like governance is the way to go.
I'm kind of hoping for a similar thing happening globally. The actions of states like Saudi Arabia are well tolerated only because their actions don't have any real impact in EU or USA.
I think this is going to expose the core problem in Europe, that the political classes of the "liberal" member states are just giving lip service to the "fraternity equality liberty" crap and care no more for free speech or free association than their "authoritarian" neighbours.
So the result here is going to be even more content/account bans without possibility of complaint on all digital platforms? And inability for Google competitors to enter the market because they can't afford a massive AI autibanning system to comply with requirement.
Our EU seriously seems to try to regulate competition out of existence :/
The phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" comes to mind.
Whilst they are focused upon the larger outlets and targeting that, the lesser, future platforms will be burdened with an entry cost far higher than before; Pushing that opertunity of inivation further from the reaches of those on the otherside of wealth.
Just ironic that the intentions of the EU upon this only fuel anticomepative divides via that entry cost barrier to compete.
> lesser, future platforms will be burdened with an entry cost far higher than before; Pushing that opertunity of inivation further from the reaches of those on the otherside of wealth
Yet again, HN doesn't even bother to read before commenting.
The law applies to platforms with more than 45 million users. By the time you have that many, you're not a "lesser platform that's hurting".
pewdiepie isn't a platform. It's also a major business with plenty of turnover and the ability to obey the laws of the juristiction the company operates in.
[edit] Reading the actual regulation text a bit closer, it looks like there are additional categories than those presented in EC's overview page. Some of the elements do not apply certain small companies defined "a small enterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million" (+some additional restrictions on things like ownership. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...)
Oh it's far worse than that. The next fundamentalist quasi-dictatorship in Romania, Poland or Hungary gets to decide what's illegal and immoral and therefore censored in Belgium and Sweden.
I agree with regulation, but some of this is very concerning. By the Polish government's actions, pointing out the very real Polish pogroms and Polish informants who turned in Jews could be considered misinformation. This will be abused by some the increasingly illiberal and nationalist states in the EU.
So long as you don't have millions of users, you are exempt from "Section 3" requirements. If you got millions of users, I'm sure such companies can afford implementing the mentioned regulations.
Honestly, it currently doesn't look extremely bad for small/micro businesses but we will see.
Patrick Breyer is a member of the Pirate party which holds a minority position and isn't quite happy with the results. While their views are, of course, a valuable part of the discussion, they portray the DSA in a deliberately bad light.
I agree, that the results are not as bad as stated in the article. But it is still way less, than initially drafted. And it would not have come to this, if the affected companies didn't heavily lobbied to water it down.[1]
True and it's very important to have that discussion.
However, whenever a law gets passed at least one side is less than enthusiastic and, at least for me, it's helpful to get a first impression from a (more) neutral source which didn't take part in the drafting process.
After that I take a look at what the involved parties are saying about the new legislation and how it came to be.
I know Breyer's agenda while ascertaining what EURACTIV's agenda is seems like year long endeavor. Plus their About page actually has the phrase EURACTIV content is produced in full impartiality, a phrase whose laugability is a major BS marker. EURACTIV is not impartial and then refuse to clearly state their bias; they're dishonest from the very beginning.
Unsurprisingly, the article simply repeats EU marketing speak and the facts in it are in the vein of bathing in nuclear waste will kill cancer cells.
The article lists everything the law does. It doesn’t list everything they wanted and didn’t get because, as Journalists, they arent suppose to want anything and therefore cannot list their disappointments.
Yes, the article is a bit sterile. Maybe politico.eu will have a better writeup for people interested in the politics more than the law. But to not see that the guy you’re agreeing with is drowning in opinion is almost comically lacking in self-reflection.
FWIW, on the merits, this is 100 % good for the consumer/citizen. There is nothing in it for companies, except that it maybe could have ended worse. It isn’t a compromise where each side got a bit of what they wanted. It started out with ideas of completely fucking over tech companies, now it graciously settled on just mildly tying them down and setting a bit of their clothes on fire.
But I’m sure that will be entirely lost on the „yet-again-these-corrupt-sellout-manufactured-consent-soros-etc-etc-crowd“
> But to not see that the guy you’re agreeing with is drowning in opinion is almost comically lacking in self-reflection.
While I find Breyer's text infinitely more valuable than that of the suggested supposedly impartial Fact Reciter, I'm not in lockstep with his position, and most importantly, I have no trouble separating his opinions from facts. On lack of self-reflection, I don't feel like I'm particularly guilty of it but then again I guess I wouldn't. I did read the EURACTIV About page and it wouldn't surprise me if something rubbed off of there. Whether it did or not, as far as lack of self-reflection goes it's a prime exhibition.
An impartial publication is a work of fiction. Claim you are one? You cosplay one.
> FWIW, on the merits, this is 100 % good for the consumer/citizen. There is nothing in it for companies, except that it maybe could have ended worse. It isn’t a compromise where each side got a bit of what they wanted. It started out with ideas of completely fucking over tech companies, now it graciously settled on just mildly tying them down and setting a bit of their clothes on fire.
It's the EU once again fiddling with the Internet. It doesn't really matter what the marginal benefits are in the short term if you don't trust them with that power to begin with and believe their unending need to make use of it will eventually ruin the Internet. Drop the citizen and I'm with you.
Reading the posts here I have to take a radically different point of view. Maybe even an unpopular one.
These topics, as with most politically discussed topics just aren't important. At least to most constituents. If I look around and talk to people they don't care about digital privacy. On the contrary. They don't want these cookie banners. They blame the GDPR for those. They are pissed because online and offline they need to click banners or fill out paper forms to get even basic services.
If I think about the GDPR related things I had to fill out at doctors, veterinarians and such when I (or my animals) needed help I can relate. You just want help not read page after page of legalese.
People were trained to correlate data privacy with stuff that annoys them.
So no. It doesn't matter. Not to the majority of people I believe. Especially not when it is at the EU level.
The consumer protection aspects of this law are simply cover for its real purpose: installing tighter controls on what people are allowed to say and read on the internet, in the convenient guise of clamping down on "disinformation" and "hate speech". The ruling elite are furiously scrambling to censor, stamp out and criminalize any mass communication that they perceive as a threat to their entrenched power.
68 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadEquating the "Not everything that we wanted was implemented" with "We lost everything, they won" sounds toxic to me. It's also arrogant t believe that you have the perfect solution for everything, you are pure and all knowing when the others are corrupt and stupid.
I like having pirate parties as a voice but the I would never vote for them, they are extremist and maksimalist IMHO.
Not the opportunity. More will come and I got an impression that PP will keep fighting. I would vote for PP if I could.
A huge disappointment. Their once-core positions are now good for lip service only. Even the Pirate Party Forum (an open discussion forum) is now basically concentrated on power politics and discussions about such important agendas have atrophied.
I'm under the impression that at least one of their MEPs (Marcel Kolaja; edit: indeed, quoted in the article which I hadn't read before commenting, shame on me!) does substantial work on digital issues, but I guess the incentives faced by MEPs are very different from those in national or local office. Is that right?
For an impression of how the party is ticking now, just register in their phpBB run forum: forum.pirati.cz and run the discussions through the automatic translator.
I cannot recommend any truly neutral sources about people like mayor of Prague. There is an election coming soon, he will likely lose his seat. One of the reasons is that cost of living has gone through the roof. Many people move to Prague, but almost no new housing is being built. The prices are 2,5x as high as ten years ago. People draw unfavorable comparisons to Warsaw, which is very dynamic and at the time still affordable to the middle class.
Most single-issue parties fail precisely because they don't want to broker power, they just want to get the one thing they're angry about out of the way. Most people are expecting the party they vote for to have an answer on every issue imaginable, and merely shrugging your shoulders and saying "I was elected to legalize copyright infringement, not to decide what our external immigration policy should be" is not an option. If you don't play power broker, you do not get your agenda done.
There is a fine balance between Realpolitik and idealism. Ideally, you do not want to go full tilt in either direction.
Where it doesn't work is to do things that are popular among the electorate but that the politically powerful are opposed to. No catchphrase will help you with that, unfortunately.
Maybe we don't have to lower ourselves to exactly that argument, but surely there are other popular takes.
You don’t need a position of power to discuss stuff and come to conclusions.
Has the benefit of being relatively true as well. Google leadership was all too eager to get in on the Chinese censorship machine (Dragonfly) as I recall:
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/google-dragonfly-china-cen...
1. Make a panel of concerned parents to review abuses by recommendation engines and to stop tracking abuses. Think of the children!
2. Give law enforcement the tools they need to deanonymize the abusers and criminals who are trafficking our kids. We don't want them to go dark-- think of the children!
What do you think? I sure hope you're the type of person who really cares about the children, and not the kind of opportunist who would reflexively argue against #2.
And, scene.
If you've got legitimate concerns about the children with well-documented evidence, let's hear it. Otherwise you're going to be out of your league.
You can't write JavaScript in a C compiler and complain that nothing compiles.
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/197431/PATRICK_BREYER...
The expectation that the Pirate Party, which has quite small public support, will steamroll over the politicians with large public support is appalling. Governance by all knowing computer elites who don't have a significant public support is the actual fascism IMHO.
They simply need to convince the public first in orther to change things.
Freely electing representatives does not mean those representatives will faithfully execute the will of their voters. The people of the US freely elect their representatives, and yet:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. - https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
That is not to say the same is true in the EU, but it shows that free elections alone are no guarantee that voter preferences influence policy.
That's exactly what it means - the caveat is, not being hostile to businesses and work with the businesses is part of the reason why people will choose them. If they fail to deliver enough, they don't get elected again. That's actually the core premise of a representative democracy.
Elite cabal from a completely different species controlling the system in which we are slaves producing stuff that are sent to a galaxy far way is a fantasy. The "elites" are just people who manage the machinery that produces the stuff that the folks want. You can argue over their disproportionate compensation but when a political makes a decision in favour of an interest group, let's say steel production, they also make the decision in favour of the people who earn their living from that business.
It can be argued over the long term impacts but that's part of the process. For example, we are in process convincing people that they need to give up some of their comforts to prevent very bad things happening 50 years from now. Once they get convinced, vote in people who will work for it and they do the thing.
Most times it is a compromise because people have conflicting interests and the people voted in need to come to a solution that works good enough for everyone.
Anyway, if the MP's were simply rubber stamping whatever the commissioners propose, what they were discussing for 16 hours? Obviously, the portrayal of unelected bureaucrats shovelling whatever they want down the throat of the people is false.
> Let's not portray it as if they are clerks of an external organisation.
I'm not sure whether that refers to the commissioners or the MSPs. Regardless, the commissioners are not elected by the people and the MSPs cannot propose legislation. That set up is essentially the same as the Soviets used and no one called that democracy (even though it technically was) so why should the EU get a pass?
> Anyway, if the MP's were simply rubber stamping whatever the commissioners propose, what they were discussing for 16 hours?
I've seen plenty of jobsworths in my time, they don't seem to have anything against appearing to be doing something, or actually doing something that serves no good use. That's not a problem for only the EU parliament, of course, but the point is whether it's a representative democracy and it clearly is not. I'm not even sure whether it could be.
That is exactly what is doesn't mean, the poster you are replying to has provided proof in the form of peer revied research.
You don't get to dismiss that based on how something should hypothetically work in an ideal world.
'That's actually the core premise of a representative democracy.'
Communism also has a core premice, that does not mean it's valid and holds in a given country today
"Elite cabal from a completely different species controlling the system in which we are slaves"
The same argument judtifies Feudalism
"when a political makes a decision in favour of an interest group, let's say steel production"
This is literally the dictionary definition of 'undemocratic'
And it also would justify Feudalism
Not really, due to the nature of the US political system which is strongly based around dynamics which make sure that the parties in power stay in power.
Calling elections for a (in practice) two party system free is a bit of an stretch.
I mean sure it's better then a (in practice) one party system, but still there is (in practice) no real choice to vote for, nor can "you" create a new choice (in practice, theoretical you could but due to the dynamics of the system it doesn't work in practice EDIT: As long as not one of both of the parties fully collapse and even then it might not work).
Politicians really are executing the will of the people! They're not simply passing legislation that justifies unacceptable invasion of privacy and sanctions the mining of the individual's information.
phew!
OK, I agreee that fascism is bad but is that fascism? I don't like to see words with a precise meaning [1] being used as a catch all for everything we dislike. What you describe is a democracy of corporations, not one of the people which vote but have far less effect on decisions than corporations have. It's on a divergent axis from fascism which is dictatorship, suppression of opposition and control of economy and society.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Demos - means people. Corporations are dead entities - corpses. They have a sort of life, even though they are not alive.
Still, perhaps this is closer to the truth. The people who run corporations, get to decide what those corporations do. The corporations are just a buffer to actual individuals.
Also, its worth noting that we do not have (and never have had) democracy.
Democracy is where people make the decisions. All the decisions.
What we have is a system where we vote in people who represent us - or so it is claimed. They politicians we vote in, re-present us (read 'serve us up') and make decisions on your behalf.
PS Wikipedia is hardly a bastion of truth. But you can see a section called 'Corporatist economic system' which indicates (lightly) that corporations were a part of the control system. I would say that these apparent distinctions are a show - especially nowadays. The corporations, governance system and the media (that is apparently holding someone to account, but are really about mis-directing the conversation) are all part of the overall governance structure.
PPS In the City of London, things work as you say - corporations are able to vote.
How does this work?
The (direct) democracy where the people make all the decisions was the original Greek one. However only a few people could vote, adult male citizens. It worked because of the relatively small size (a few tenths of thousands) and physical proximity of the people that could vote. What we have now is representative democracy.
About the Corporatist economic system I quote the whole section
> The Fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidoni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association Confindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-Fascist trade unions. The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes. In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime, and the employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.
This is what one expects any dictatorship would do: have a say on what corporations do and prevent unions from becoming kind of political parties in contrast with the government.
By the way, Confindustria still exists with that name in Italy. It's sometimes simplistically defined as the union of corporations and unsurprisingly the interests of big corporations usually prevail on the interests of small ones.
Do you really think this is about the Pirate Party? If we had a referendum on this issue tomorrow, do you really think that the position held by mainsteam politians wouldn't loose by a landslide?
If the referendum are not held on hackernews or reddit and the mainstream politicians are given a time to defend their positions, I think the results won't be much different than what people voted so far.
The pirate party(~parties all over the EU) are bunch of idealists who so far failed to gain any significant traction.
People love the idea that the pure and freedom loving societies are held hostage by fascist elites but that's probably the case only if a very few countries, definitely not EU, US or even Russia or Turkey. People love whatever their position is, ban this mandate that is all they want(it's just that different people want different things to banned or mandated). Notice how people tirelessly are wedging cultural wars over who should f*ck who, be called what, get dressed what, eat what.
We have whatever we have because that's whatever the people want. It slowly changes over time as new people are born and the older ones die off.
So you never heard of terms like Democratic Deficit, you have never read any serious research on the subject, you have not heard that USA was declared a flawed democracy. You personal opinion trumps whatever Phds and proffesors have come up with and published as peer reviewed research?
> I think the results won't be much different than what people voted so far.
The pirate party(~parties all over the EU) are bunch of idealists who so far failed to gain any significant traction.
This is a total Non-Sequitour - the facts/arguments you are providing do not support the assertions/opinions you are putting forward.
The Green Party in United Kingdom has almost no representation. However polling has shown that if you take any green party policy, it has like 70% support across the electorate. Why do people not vote for green party? That's up for debate, maybe people are stuck in the old Labour/Tory mindset, maybe it's the First past the Post System, maybe they debate poorly, there could be a million reasons.
That's not what fascism means.
>Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism[1] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy
It's sad that "fascist" became one of those words that are thrown around for anything (ie. politicians/parties/system of governance) that one doesn't like.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
It is bad, but what's worse is that this is not even all that consequential. Remember the case with Leica advert featuring the famous Tiananmen shot taken with one of their cameras? After CCP's outrage, Leica took it down at its own initiative (and nearly apologized to boot).
I'm kind of hoping for a similar thing happening globally. The actions of states like Saudi Arabia are well tolerated only because their actions don't have any real impact in EU or USA.
Our EU seriously seems to try to regulate competition out of existence :/
Whilst they are focused upon the larger outlets and targeting that, the lesser, future platforms will be burdened with an entry cost far higher than before; Pushing that opertunity of inivation further from the reaches of those on the otherside of wealth.
Just ironic that the intentions of the EU upon this only fuel anticomepative divides via that entry cost barrier to compete.
Yet again, HN doesn't even bother to read before commenting.
The law applies to platforms with more than 45 million users. By the time you have that many, you're not a "lesser platform that's hurting".
There are only some parts on regulation that affects those with more than 45 million active users. https://ec.europa.eu/info/digital-services-act-ensuring-safe...
[edit] Reading the actual regulation text a bit closer, it looks like there are additional categories than those presented in EC's overview page. Some of the elements do not apply certain small companies defined "a small enterprise is defined as an enterprise which employs fewer than 50 persons and whose annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total does not exceed EUR 10 million" (+some additional restrictions on things like ownership. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...)
Oh....here we go, then: Germano Italeave sPain Portugallivant The Neverlands
Cont. on p94.
I'm going through the DSA now and it looks like they exempted most of the hard to implement requirements for micro/small businesses.
You can find the full regulation here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?qid=16081171...
So long as you don't have millions of users, you are exempt from "Section 3" requirements. If you got millions of users, I'm sure such companies can afford implementing the mentioned regulations.
Honestly, it currently doesn't look extremely bad for small/micro businesses but we will see.
Patrick Breyer is a member of the Pirate party which holds a minority position and isn't quite happy with the results. While their views are, of course, a valuable part of the discussion, they portray the DSA in a deliberately bad light.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/22/google-facebook-apple-eu-l...
However, whenever a law gets passed at least one side is less than enthusiastic and, at least for me, it's helpful to get a first impression from a (more) neutral source which didn't take part in the drafting process.
After that I take a look at what the involved parties are saying about the new legislation and how it came to be.
Unsurprisingly, the article simply repeats EU marketing speak and the facts in it are in the vein of bathing in nuclear waste will kill cancer cells.
Yes, the article is a bit sterile. Maybe politico.eu will have a better writeup for people interested in the politics more than the law. But to not see that the guy you’re agreeing with is drowning in opinion is almost comically lacking in self-reflection.
FWIW, on the merits, this is 100 % good for the consumer/citizen. There is nothing in it for companies, except that it maybe could have ended worse. It isn’t a compromise where each side got a bit of what they wanted. It started out with ideas of completely fucking over tech companies, now it graciously settled on just mildly tying them down and setting a bit of their clothes on fire.
But I’m sure that will be entirely lost on the „yet-again-these-corrupt-sellout-manufactured-consent-soros-etc-etc-crowd“
While I find Breyer's text infinitely more valuable than that of the suggested supposedly impartial Fact Reciter, I'm not in lockstep with his position, and most importantly, I have no trouble separating his opinions from facts. On lack of self-reflection, I don't feel like I'm particularly guilty of it but then again I guess I wouldn't. I did read the EURACTIV About page and it wouldn't surprise me if something rubbed off of there. Whether it did or not, as far as lack of self-reflection goes it's a prime exhibition.
An impartial publication is a work of fiction. Claim you are one? You cosplay one.
> FWIW, on the merits, this is 100 % good for the consumer/citizen. There is nothing in it for companies, except that it maybe could have ended worse. It isn’t a compromise where each side got a bit of what they wanted. It started out with ideas of completely fucking over tech companies, now it graciously settled on just mildly tying them down and setting a bit of their clothes on fire.
It's the EU once again fiddling with the Internet. It doesn't really matter what the marginal benefits are in the short term if you don't trust them with that power to begin with and believe their unending need to make use of it will eventually ruin the Internet. Drop the citizen and I'm with you.
These topics, as with most politically discussed topics just aren't important. At least to most constituents. If I look around and talk to people they don't care about digital privacy. On the contrary. They don't want these cookie banners. They blame the GDPR for those. They are pissed because online and offline they need to click banners or fill out paper forms to get even basic services.
If I think about the GDPR related things I had to fill out at doctors, veterinarians and such when I (or my animals) needed help I can relate. You just want help not read page after page of legalese.
People were trained to correlate data privacy with stuff that annoys them.
So no. It doesn't matter. Not to the majority of people I believe. Especially not when it is at the EU level.