Google is basically saying the EU couldn’t do its own subpar search and they’re not brave enough to try.
This is definitely to avoid the ire of fuhrer trump. It’s also coincidence that meta is abandoning fact checking right before the new administration
He will sic the dogs of regulation on them if they don’t dance to his tune
Fine the heck out of them then. If they don’t pay the fine ban em. Plenty of alternatives out there. More competition in the search engine market would be better anyways.
Start criminal proceedings to imprison the leadership responsible for non-compliance. Seize their assets to pay for any fine.
Why do we accept that all solutions to corporate crimes should be fines and kiddie gloves?
Time for EU to simply ban Google then for non compliance.
France’s tech sector: “Zis is mon’ Chanz to shine!”
France has a tech sector?
Aesthetically I like reading technical texts in French.
(Contrary to the stereotype, romantic texts not so much, that’s where English is better ; and despite trying my best, I still haven’t found a way to like Dutch ; neutral on German.)
But the point is - has anything big lifted off in France in the last 20 years or so?
I’m not talking about quite a few particular people whose names should be in history books. I’m talking about companies and systems.
France has its own independent search engine, Qwant.
I’ve been using Qwant for a while now. Better results than Google, that’s for sure.
In its early days, Qwant heavily relied on Bing’s API to provide search results. […]
Qwant began transitioning to its own indexing system in February 2013, but this process was gradual. The company started using its own engine for indexing social media accounts and the “shopping” part of search results, […]
Today, Qwant’s search results are a mix of its own indexed content and results pulled from Bing.
https://thedroidguy.com/does-qwant-search-use-bing-search-results-ultimate-guide-1265864
I was curious if it relied on Bing, as most 3rd party search engines do. Which seems to be the case.
There is a french tech sector: Doctolib, BlaBlaCar, and a few other original ideas have opened new types of services and taken their hold over Europe. Yet, those services cannot be adapted to individualistic north America.
OK, TIL. As someone in Russia, I wouldn’t know.
I don’t think “individualistic” is a bad thing or prevents those from working there. Maybe you meant “atomized society”, but US is not the worst country in that regard, that would be the one I live in.
A modern and more global take on Minitel would be cool.
Unbelievable 2025 is turning out to be a stellar year
I wonder how it will work and how can be enforced. Weekly I can easily find non fact checked article on “respectable” newspaper.
If its the newspaper themselves that prioritize click baiting over fact checking, I don’t know how can we ask Google or meta to fact check their userbase
Google has behind it an incoming US government that puts US economic interests first, and relishes bullying its allies. The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in. It will bend the knee.
It’s hardly about US economic interest so much as the interests of a small in-crowd. See: tariffs.
The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in
lol ok
Have you ever looked at a map? America can just float anywhere
Yeah… In fourth grade I was taught that there is nothing like an outer foe to create inner peace. I never imagined it to be the US to accomplish that, but here we are.
Hows apple lightning cable doing?
I gotta say that seemed pretty performative considering apple was obviously already moving that way with usb-c on all their devices.
Not often I actually lol at a comment. Well done
:) I’m glad the EU did it. Having usb c for all of my devices is awesome.
But they waited so long to do it. I think everything except the iPhone was already usb c (iirc) and given the supply chain lead times, the timing of the reg vs the release of the new usb c phone, I really think they had the usb-c phones in flight for a couple years.
Maybe the looming threat of the reg made it happen. Maybe it made it happen faster. But it seemed like the direction they were headed.
At the end of the day, I’m glad they regulate vs what the US does. Even if their regs aren’t perfect / late, they do something for their constituents.
The only reason the regulation happened is because Apple ignored the “industry, agree on a standard or we’ll set one for you” memo: By the time the EU passed the act all other manufacturers had already shaped up.
That is: For other companies, the looming threat sufficed. Apple needed to be forced.
The EU is doing great. It can pay for loads of stuff with the endless fines American tech companies rack up
The EU and its allies is bigger than Trump’s rogue oligarchy
Fuck Google
That’s pretty bold for a really fucking useless search engine. The EU could just block it and redirect google.com to a gov run searxng instange and everyone in europe would be better off overniggt
They could even make it look exactly like Google. What’s Google going to do about it? Get wrecked is what.
The eu doesn’t it to block the search engine from the internet. It only needs to block the google cash-flow from inside EU to Ireland and then it’s shareholders.
It would likely be impossible to redirect google.com without either sparking a cyberwar or building something like the great firewall of China, quite possibly both.
Blocking is somewhat possible, but to redirect, they would have to forge google certificates and possibly also fork Chrome and convince users to replace their browser, since last I checked, google hard-coded it’s own public keys into Chrome.
Technical details
I say blocking in somewhat possible, because governments can usually just ask DNS providers to not resolve a domain or internet providers to block IPs.
The issue is, google runs one of the largest DNS services in the world, so what happens if google says no? The block would at best be partial, at worst it could cause instability in the DNS system itself.
What about blocking IPs? Well, google data centers run a good portion of the internet, likely including critical services. Companies use google services for important systems. Block google data centers and you will have outages that will make crowd-strike look like a tiny glitch and last for months.
Could we redirect the google DNS IPs to a different, EU controlled server? Yes, but such attempts has cause issues beyond the borders of the country attempting it in the past. It would at least require careful preparations.
As for forging certificates, EU does control multiple Certificate authorities. But forging a certificate breaks the cardinal rule for being a trusted CA. Such CA would likely be immediately distrusted by all browsers. And foreig governments couldn’t ignore this either. After all, googles domains are not just used for search. Countless google services that need to remain secure could potentially be compromised by the forged certificate. In addition, as I mentioned, google added hard-coded checks into Chrome to prevent a forged certificate from working for it’s domains.
There’s probably a way to redirect without validation. Only respond to port 80 if needed, then redirecr. Sure the browser might complain a little but it’s not as bad as invalid cert.
Maybe for some rando site, Google and any half competent site has HSTS enabled, meaning a browser won’t even try to connect with insecure HTTP, nor allow user to dismiss the security warning, as long as the HSTS header is remembered by the browser (the site was visited recently, set to 1 year for google).
In addition, google will also be on HSTS preload lists, so it won’t work even if you never visited the site.
That makes me realize, what kind of country doesn’t cobtrol it’s dns space’s encryption certificates. That’s a major oversight.
What? What do you mean “DNS space”? Classic DNS does not have any security, no encryption and no signatures.
DNSSEC, which adds signatures, is based on TLDs, not any geography or country. And it is not yet enabled for most domains, though I guess it would be for google. But obviously EU does not control .com.
And if you mean TLS certificates, those are a bit complicated and I already explained why forging those would be problematic and not work on Chrome, though it could be done.
Yes I mean tls certs as those control what dns records are considered valid. The Eu should control which tls are considered valid within its territory and that should be considetedpart of their security apparatus. It’s crazy irresponsible to have left that up to unaccountable private foreign entities. This is what would make it difficult to control their own independant version of the dns namespace.
No. At the end of the day, I control which certificates I consider valid. Browsers just choose the defaults. There is no way I quietly let some government usurp that power, considering how easy to abuse it is.
Yes I mean tls certs as those control what dns records are considered valid.
No they don’t. That is not what TLS really does. But I guess close enough.
Nah. Demanding the ISPs to block traffic to Google domains would be quite effective.
This isn’t like the great firewall of chine where you want to prevent absolutely all traffic. If you make it inconvenient to use, because CSS breaks or a js library doesn’t load or images breaslk, its already a huge step into pushing it out of the market.
Enterprise market would be much harder, a loooot of EU companies rely on Google’s services, platforms and apps, and migrating away would take a lot of time and money.
Demanding the ISPs to block traffic to Google domains would be quite effective.
Filter it based on what? Between ESNI and DNS over HTTPS, it shouldn’t be possible to know, which domain the traffic belongs to. Am I missing something?
Edit: Ah, I guess DNS over HTTPS isn’t enabled by default yet.
Just filter out googles ASN and ip’s. And stop peering with them on BGP. Simples
Im not supporting this by the way. I think the internet should be free and open, without governments blocking what I can access.
The onpy free internet will be tor. The normie internet has been too naughty and spawned shitty giants who think they can treat us like cattle. Break the critical mass and network effects, kill the blitzscale cheaters trying to enslave us. We do not need them, they need us.
IP block it. Boom there goes eSNI and DNS.
Sure, it’s crude, but again: it doesn’t have to perfect, it just needs to create havoc with Google services to push away a regular user, who has no idea what DNS even is.
A better approach though is to fine Google, with a % of revenue increasing until compliance. They’ll very quickly be incentivised to comply or shutdown.
The whole argument was about blocking search only, considering the damages suddenly completely blocking google would do. Yes, you can block google data centers completely, but dude, would that cause chaos.
A better approach though is to fine Google,
I said that multiple times already.
Worthwhile chaos. It’s exactly that fear of consequences that enables their power
Unnecessary chaos
China blocks ESNI and DoH. You have to find a DoH server that is not well known and have to fake the host name.
But if you actually do that, lol
You block the DNS ups as well I think. Browsers should have more than one DNS address anyway in case one go down
The backup is usually a different server from the same DNS provider. E.g. google has 8.8.8.8 as primary and 8.8.4.4 as secondary. Plus the backup doesn’t even always work on Windows.
Also note, it is not browsers but operating systems that do primary DNS. Browsers may use DNS over HTTPS for security and privacy instead of the one in the OS, but that usually requires the OS DNS to resolve the address of the DNS over HTTPS server, since it is considered a security feature built on top of classic DNS instead of replacement.
I think that if EU was to retaliate against any of the big tech players (which isn’t going to happen imho since eu institutions don’t really display the affinity for swift and decisive justice it would require) it would make more sense to start blocking the advertising and/or data collection. Like a continent-wide pi hole. Still getting the message across while not impacting the users as much. At least not immediately. That said, the gatekeeper platforms should be prohibited from providing services like DNS resolving which are critical for the operation of other services than just theirs.
They probably also could just prevent EU companies and branches from buying google ads directly. Vast majority of ads is geo-located, so there would be almost no ads to show in the EU.
Just block payments from advertisers by revoking their business licence.
Yes, I mentioned that in a comment deeper down. And even before that, just fine them. Chances are they will pay and if not, you can probably seize some bank accounts.
I am not trying to say Google can afford to completely defy the EU, just found it interesting how hard it is to block just google search specifically.
PS: Also mentioned in a burried comment, there actually is a way for ISPs to block google, since DNS over HTTPS is not enabled by default yet in browsers I think. I forgot this since I enabled encrypted DNS like 8+ years ago for myself and just assumed people also have it by now.
The government, running a service that doesn’t suck? Call me when it happens
Post your phone number
I recommend traveling.
I think it’s time you woke up and smelled the roses.
What’s your phone number?
You have become normalized to a country that allows a convicted felon to be president
Ok boomer
OK zoomer
lol oops I replied to the wrong post and look like a dumbass now
As well as a political party that actively tries to make public services shitty so people won’t miss it when it’s dismantled.
I live in the nordics, would you like a list?
What is the search engine your government hosts? Or maybe they do email? Do tell
Those are some pretty specific additional qualifiers. Did I hit a nerve?
I’m responsing to someone claiming governments inherently cannot be good providers of essential services, which is patently untrue.
The nordics are home to numerous government institutions, providing a variety of services that are perfectly satisfactory, and often excellent.
Are you claiming that email or search engines not being among them today, means the rest mean nothing, or that they never will be?
If the current services are anything to go by, those things getting added to the list, will be fucking great.
Who said anything about essential services? It’s the nonessential services that I have a problem with
You classify email and internet search as non-essential?
And what does how they are classified have to do with the ability/inability of government to provide them in a sufficient manner?
You claimed something that HAS HAPPENED, could not. There’s no comeback here for you to find.
You think email is a human right? It’s a box to send password resets. If websites all used one time paaswords, I wouldn’t need my email. You don’t actually send messages to people over email, do you?
We have things like Signal and Matrix to facilitate actually communicating with people.
Last time I sent an email to someone it bounced. Imagine spending time writing a letter and the mailman returns it to you
List a country with a decent population of like at least 50 mio people that competes with companies successfully and fairly. Countries with a smaller population don’t have as much of a bureaucratic overhead. But even there… where do they offer a better service in a fair competition with companies
You are posting on a social media platform solely funded by the EU.
But I’ve heard the USPS is not shit either. Publicly funded and run universities in the EU also provide the same or better service as those in the US for pennies on the dollar. Also, a lot of European railways are state run, like a lot of other public transit companies.
Also, the only space agencies that ever got to the moon were public. So were the ones that put the first man in space, and the first man on the moon, and the one that sent the first satellite into orbit and the farthest man-made object from Earth.
Look, the goverment is good at providing a good starter set of things you need for life. Infrastructure has no real competition so the infrastructure needs to be state owned since we can’t have it fail. I would look favorably if the government funded an open initiative to build a FOSS search index… but I think a search engine isn’t something like core infrastructure that can only reasonably exist once.
Besides… SearxNG is just a relay engine and if every european used it and relayed the search request to other search engines without them getting a dime I don’t think that would be fair.
Lemmy also isn’t developed by the state. It might get funding from the goverment but thats a very different thing - Core research that doesn’t have a straight up ROI is also one of the things where everyone benefits of it long term falls under something the government should do. I just don’t think the government is good at running an economical business and I can’t imagine living in a country where every company was like state-run with a top-down system. Competition is good, what we have is a lack of competition
I would argue that “bureaucratic overhead” is missing in companies at least as much as it is excess in governments. These double checks and regulations help guard against things like companies externalizing environmental and health impacts. They also act as a check on tendencies towards consolidation (or rather should). Consequently, companies appear to operate more efficiently, but we will have to pay to clean up and handle their externalities eventually.
I’m all for legislation that properly makes companies price in external effects. What I do not support is the state taking an active role in the market. Legislation is created for a reason but needs to be reformed and slimmed down once in a while. The government does not adjust fast enough imo and I think it should focus on core tasks instead of creating search engines.
Hydroquebec, alternative power practically doesn’t exist in quebev because hydroquebec kicks ass
Google neither competes fairly nor provides a good service. We have to endure them because they have made investment in a competitor uneconomical.
I have switched away from google mostly. Most people can do so too. Yes they do have a monopoly on search and I think the government should take steps to ensure fair competition but I don’t think the ban hammer should be wielded this lightly. If they pay the fine. Searxng is just a relay search engine and I doubt it is legal for such a big instance to use search engines as back end, have them run it for free and then have the people use Searx instead.
lemmy.ml with the stupid authoritarian takes again.
believing instance url means anything is beyond stupid
People from hexbear or lemmygrad are atrocious tho. ML is a bit better but still
Lemmy provincialism wow
You think I even know a single thing about this lemmy. Ml thing? I wouldn’t even remember what the url is if you hadn’t told me. It’s irrelevant. I just picked a server at random, likely the first one in the list.
What a hopeless nerd you have to be to care about the dns instance name.
So much for having a reasonably discussion. Calling me a hopeless nerd. You sure must be fun to be around.
Its not just an server name since the moderators there remove stuff that doesn’t fit their narrative and people with according ideology often are on these servers. It makes a real difference. You can check it out because users that find an instance that fits their personal beliefs create their account there and its a Marxist Leninist community. But you don’t actually seem to care.
Nah, if you voluntarily join a tankie instance, you are the one who’s stupid.
Listen bucko nobody cates about that nerd shit.
It would have to be an EU run search engine, otherwise which government?
Nah I don’t think the government should run a search engine
Agreed.
Who do you trust more, Google or the EU?
I trust neither
That’s fine, but then who does the search engine?
You can do things decentralized, and if you look into it, the EU is happy to fund projects to create decentralized internet services. Case in point, Lemmy’s primary funder is the EU.
I use brave, but only the search
Funding an existing project like Lemmy is different than hiring people to create a lemmy
They are not just funding existing projects like Lemmy, they are actively encouraging new projects by providing funding for “open internet” style stuff.
Though yes you are right, it is different from directly hiring people, since if they did that, it would be very hard to relinquish direct control of the project. Corps can’t act solely for the common good, governments have that as their stated mission.
Gigachad move on googles part. Who wins, the EU or google?
oligarchs win and you die. fin
The lemming oligarch 🫡🫡🫡
I am an oligarch so
I hate community notes, it’s a cost free way of fact checking with no accountability.
I also hate these big international tech companies. Forget too big to fail, these are too big to change. We are all techno peasants and they are our tech lords
Ironically, for authoritarian communist countries that recorded high rate of newly minted billionaires in the past five years, China and Vietnam are doing something right cracking down on billionaires.
Very fair, the persecution of Jack Ma was very interesting. Haven’t heard of what happened in Vietnam though?
You shouldn’t need to be authoritarian to crack down on these systems though. I really liked what I saw Lena Khan doing in the US, what Brazil did to twitter or what Julie Inman Grant did here in Australia
There is a Vietnamese billionaire who is found guilty of scamming her victims. The court ordered her to pay what she stole within a deadline or else she will face execution. I don’t remember if she is ordered to pay either only a portion or all of what she scammed.
It’s possible to to the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Who holds fact-checking companies accountable?
Lawsuits. As it stands the US supreme court is had said that social media companies can not be held liable for the things their users publish. Fact checking companies can be sued, news companies can be sued (see fox news and the voting machines lawsuit), Facebook can’t be held responsible in the same way
I hate community notes, it’s a cost free way of fact checking with no accountability.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, but it can be harmful if done on a platform that has a significant skew in its political leanings, because it can then lead to the assumption that posts must be true because they were “fact checked” even if the fact check was actually just one of the 9:1 ratio of users that already believes that one thing.
However, on platforms that have more general, less biased overall userbases, such as YouTube, a community notes system can be helpful, because it directly changes the platform incentives and design.
I like to come at this from the understanding that the way a platform is designed influences how it is used and perceived by users. When you add a like button but not a dislike button, you only incentivize positive fleeting interactions with posts, while relegating stronger negative opinions to the comments, for instance. (see: Twitter)
If a platform integrates community notes, that not only elevates content that had any effort at all made to fact check it (as opposed to none at all) but it also means that, to get a community note, somebody must at least attempt to verify the truth. And if someone does that, then statistically speaking, there’s at least a slightly higher likelihood that the truth is made apparent in that community note than if none existed to incentivize someone to fact check in the first place.
Again, this doesn’t work in all scenarios, nor is it always a good decision to add depending on a platform’s current design and general demographic political leanings, but I do think it can be valuable in some cases. (This also heavily depends on who is allowed access to create the community notes, of course)
I get what you’re trying to say, they can incentivise accuracy and they do at least prompt people to be more accurate lest the community holds them to account. But what i don’t like is that there is no standard that the notes are held to and there is no accountability if either the original post or the community note are wrong.
I also don’t like that the social media publishers are pushing the fact checkers onto the community to be done for free, but at the end of the day they own the community note and can delete it if they don’t like it. We are doing their work for them and taking accountability away from them
These companies are built on extracting content out of people anyway. They get paid because users get sold shit they don’t need while users are the ones providing the content.
i think you wanted to write: fuck america. fuck off americans.
thats much shorter and in the realm of language the imbeciles might be able to understand.
“death to america” should also work.
I hate community notes, it’s a cost free way of fact checking with no accountability
And it lets certain communities brigade the notes with misinformation/disinformation to try and control the narrative.
Fascism is good for business.
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
If the links in the article are accurate, this doesn’t seem to be a “law”, but this thing: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/code-practice-disinformation
Anyone know more about it than I could quickly find? Is this in any way legally enforceable?
Obviously, I believe that governments have no legitimate business whatsoever telling us on the Internet what we can talk about, say to each other, etc.; but I would still like to know more about this particular attempt by the EU to do so anyway, so would appreciate more information.
The DSA contains provisions for combatting disinformation and as a very large online platform google is required to implement suitable practices. The DSA is a regulation, that is, immediately applicable law in all of the EU. As is usual for laws it’s written pretty generically and abstract, though, so the commission is also publishing more detailed documents that companies can use as check-lists.
In essence, the difference between the tax code and the finance ministry publishing a paper on accounting best practices. You’re free to ignore the latter but that will likely make your life harder that in needs to be.
It’s set to become mandatory, i.e. law. According to the article.
And this isn’t a free speech issue. It’s about disinformation. Folks can say what they want, but a political ad needs to clearly be a political ad. And disinformation can’t be profit motivated.
It’s all in the article you just linked. You can say what ever you want, but if it’s bullshit, Google will need to flag it or face fines.
It isn’t law yet though, and it is the current iteration that Google won’t follow. We have yet to see how they will react if it actually becomes law. My guess is that they will, begrudgingly, bend the knee.
I said it isn’t law yet. And the article states that the law is forthcoming, and that Google does not intend to follow the forthcoming law.
Who decides what the facts are?
Your teachers always gave you back assignments face down didn’t they.
The fact checkers obviously
Reality
Who decides what reality is?
Physics
Evidence and records mostly ?
At times like early covid there wasn’t much facts and evidence available. Back then masks didn’t stop the spread of the virus but vaccines were supposed to. Who decides what the facts are in times like that?
You rely on what you know and check if the assumptions are still correct when you have more information at hand. That’s what government agencies are supposed to be for.
I’m OK with this risk. The incredible rise of stupid arguments that we attempt to treat as equal for consideration is unreasonable. If we want to continue having meaningful discourse, we have to remove disinformation.
Yeah, but the question was; who decides what is disinformation? If it was some truly competent and unbiased AI system then I perhaps wouldn’t be as concerned about it, though I can see issues with that too, but humans are flawed and I see this as a potenttial slippery slope towards tyranny and censorship.
Imperfect need not be the enemy of good. Failure to combat disinformation is absolutely a path to tyranny, and a lie going halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on is effectively censorship if the truth comes out only by the time the public has lost interest.
Yes, there are problems combating it, but we have to show up to the fight somehow. I’ll take a fallible fact checking system over none at all, because the court of public opinion makes a poor fact checker.
Assuming you’re asking in good faith, the code is here.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/code-practice-disinformation
Paid fact-checkers spread across all member states.
“The new Code will extend fact-checking coverage across all EU Member States and languages and ensure that platforms will make a more consistent use of fact-checking on their services. Moreover, the Code works towards ensuring fair financial contributions for fact-checkers’ work and better access to fact-checkers to information facilitating their daily work.”
Essentially, everything will have Snopes attached to it. Including political ads and other forms of advertising. As well as more blatant propaganda.
