this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
571 points (97.8% liked)

Buy European

6551 readers
578 users here now

Overview:

The community to discuss buying European goods and services.

Matrix Chat of this community

Rules:

  • Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. No direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments.

  • Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism. This community is for discussing European products/services and news related to that. For other topics the following might be of interest:

  • Include a disclaimer at the bottom of the post if you're affiliated with the recommendation.

  • No russian suggestions.

Feddit.uk's instance rules apply:

  • No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
  • No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
  • No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
  • Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
  • Do not spam or abuse network features.
  • Alt accounts are permitted, but all accounts must list each other in their bios.
  • No generative AI content.

Useful Websites

Benefits of Buying Local:

local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.

European Instances

Lemmy:

Friendica:

Matrix:

Related Communities:

Buy Local:

Continents:

European:

Buying and Selling:

Boycott:

Countries:

Companies:

Stop Publisher Kill Switch in Games Practice:

Banner credits: BYTEAlliance

founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
maam@feddit.uk
alex@jlai.lu
circledot@feddit.org
Argyle13@lemmy.world
Sunshine@lemmy.ca
buyeuropean@lemmy.ca
buyeuropean@feddit.org
lazycog@feddit.uk
571
'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' (www.tilburguniversity.edu)
submitted 2 days ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
118 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

What if the government tells a social media site they have to ban people from criticizing them or they'll lose funding?

Open source sure, that's fine. But someone's gotta pay for running the servers and if the government can cut that funding they have influence over it. That's a level of government control over the media that's a little concerning.

Better to have the the government make regulations requiring companies to make it easy to switch to another company. Like changing to another phone company, you can keep the same number (because of regulations) so people can still call you without even knowing you changed companies even if they have a phone from a different manufacturer using a different phone company.

You can do the same with things like social media, just need to have regulations requiring protocols to allow people to change services easily and connect with other services so there's not a network effect making people stay on shit services because it's what all their friends use. People should own their data, own their contacts and companies should compete by providing better services rather than by making it difficult to leave the services they're currently on.

Handing over your date to the government isn't a better solution than handing it over to a private company. The real solution is to ensure people own their data.

[โ€“] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Germany and UK have a solution for this problem that works quite well for decades. The organisation that distributes the funds for media is not a part of government and does not takes direct orders, but operates on a strict set of rules that are mutually agreed upon, both by the government and by the media holdings. The funds come from the people who are paying small summ every month. Neither the government nor the corporations can just cut the funds if they don't like it.

[โ€“] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

Yeah I know about TV licenses, but aren't they incredibly unpopular? And a government could eliminate them and replace them with subsidies (which gives them influence) and many voters might agree with that given the unpopularity of TV licenses.

[โ€“] Miaou@jlai.lu 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Newspapers predate the internet I've heard, and even European newspapers have online presence now. Why would any of that get worse with a more sovereign EU?

If you're talking social media, then more control is required. This is pretty much the only reason the topic is even brought up at all. I'd much rather have our courts control speech than Nazis.

[โ€“] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

It's not about a sovereign EU, it's about government controlling the media. There is too much temptation for a politician to use that control to make the media say only good things about them and negative things about the opposition. See Russia for an example of how bad that can get.

Are all of the newspapers controlled by the EU? Do you think it would be better if they were.

Anyway, yeah I'm talking about social media. The primary problem of social media is that it's an oligopoly. Create regulation so people can have choice without being cut of from their friends that are on a shitty platform and people will leave to be on better platforms and companies will have to compete to provide a better product.

Very few people actually like Facebook and Twitter, they just can't leave because they wouldn't be able to communicate with their friends and family if they did. And their friends and family can't leave for the same reason. What if you could go to a Friendica site and still be able to chat with your friends that are still on Facebook and they could see your posts you make and vice versa? How many people would stay on Facebook if there was no longer a barrier to leaving? How many people would put up with Elon Musk's antics on twitter if they could leave and still communicate with the people they like that are still on Twitter?

If there was no major barrier to leaving these sites, they'd have to compete to provide quality moderation, make it easy to find the things you like, improve algorithms so they aren't shoving shit you don't care about into your face, etc. Having a single government entity doing this wouldn't provide this and the site would probably just be constant bickering about what the government should and should not allow on social media.