THIS is one reason the #DMA will continue to be so important, and indeed further interventions might be necessary, like mandating privacy-protective friend-connecting services /1 nytimes.com/2024/10/02/tec… “the drama demonstrates how powerful gatekeepers like Apple have become and how even minor changes to Apple’s products can create dramatic ripple effects in the rest of the tech industry.” /2

Fascinating to hear Hermann Hauser speak just now, but his arguments have become very mainstream economics (see eg #Draghi report) and not I’d argue especially relevant to notions of a European version of the “India stack” []… 🤔 indiastack.org

https://twitter.com/AlexandraGeese/status/1838566091313787074

Important point from @francesca_bria: why are European prime ministers parroting industry talking points on #generativeAI, rather than talking to the best European scientists about it?

Super-Mario (Draghi) report on EU reform arrives! "Europe must profoundly refocus its collective efforts on closing the innovation gap with the US and China, especially in advanced technologies." h/t @lewis_crofts commission.europa.eu/document/97e48…
First of three main themes is on innovation, including reducing regulation 🤨 "The EU’s competitive disadvantage will likely widen in cloud computing...[but] it is important that EU companies maintain a foothold in areas where technological sovereignty is required" (p.20)

Not aware of any yet, but I wonder when we'll see blocking injunctions applied to VPN providers, and then recursively for ISPs to block those which don't follow them... No doubt to (try to) block access to unauthorised media sharing/streaming sites/services 🤔 #MuskVsBrazil

https://twitter.com/PaulbernalUK/status/1829828718858019231

This part of judge Moraes' order has now been withdrawn, but (of course) we'll also see similar attempts to require app stores and other intermediaries to block access to VPN and other software which enables access to injuncted sites

https://x.com/SamPancher/status/1829609887623708789

Great tech explanation of the #globalITchaos/#CrowdStrike debacle, by a retired Microsoft developer. And no, it wasn’t because of EU competition policy 🙄 (which did not compel M$ to let a signed driver load unvalidated code into the Windows kernel) I hear from another source that three lines of code from #CrowdStrike to make use of Microsoft’s Structured Exception Handling [] would have avoided the problem learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/cpp/…

Interesting (critical) study on #DMA #NIICS #interoperability from WIK: "Based on a consumer survey in Germany… consumers are not averse to IOP. Depending on the implementation phase, at least half of NI-ICS users state that they would want to allow IOP..." "...However, IOP tends to reduce the use of alternative NI-ICS for these consumers, while the use of gatekeeper NI-ICS is not expected to change." << I want to read the full translated study but I have innovation-related questions 🧐 (NI-ICS=WhatsApp etc.) wik.org/en/publication…

You have to analyse every Apple announcement through the lens of how it will use it to maintain its market power and attack regulation. So, will #RCS support make #iMessage fully interoperable at least with Google's Messages? What would the most grudging compliance look like? This article hints that Google makes RCS support ubiquitous regardless of carrier support (so via IP) as well as using a specific gateway. Will Apple do the same, or push individual telcos to enable RCS support? androidcentral.com/googles-rcs-ro…

This is how powerful policy stakeholders (like law enforcement and big business) often win arguments. They never, ever give up, repeating the same arguments ad nauseam — over decades if necessary — regardless of any evidence which emerges 🫠 #E2EE

https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/1782166845400686796

Even intelligence insiders have acknowledged that, contrary to scare stories about the spread of encrypted “dark spaces”, the widespread use of connected tech has made this century a ‘Golden Age of Sigint’ (signals intelligence/surveillance) tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Less polite version: 🇬🇧 has demonstrated how a law on the books it dislikes (#GDPR) can be undermined by the appointment of supine or actively hostile regulators @iconews. (Thatcher was against its predecessor #DPD from the start; not much has changed.) linkedin.com/posts/david-er… I hope the @EU_Commission is not going down the same route with #DMA Article 7 (#NIICS #interoperability), which it was hostile to from start (early 2020) to finish (trilogues). I wonder if Meta now feels slightly foolish to have (almost) obeyed that provision in ~good faith 🫠

Blair is STILL so maddeningly naive about technology, declaring it “apolitical” even while telling the growing number of governments his “non-profit” advises tech will “change everything” 🫠
thetimes.co.uk/article/9a5cb7… “Some will roll their eyes at this perma-polished architect of the third way — the man whose embrace of globalisation, deregulation and high immigration arguably contributed to the 2008 financial crisis and even Brexit — returning to evangelise about technology’s power’ 🙄🙄

#GDPR reform incoming: “The single market has long been plagued by national disregard for EU rules, haphazard enforcement, and resistance from capitals to centralising regulatory powers.”

https://twitter.com/ftbrussels/status/1779721800735170706

Forthcoming reports by Mario Draghi [] and Enrico Letta [] are likely to be very influential on the next European Commission and Parliament. Here are some other tech-related comments they've made so far 🧵geopolitique.eu/en/2024/04/16/…
ft.com/content/ad287f…

Both @CMAgovUK [] and @EU_Competition [] are looking for very senior “digital” experts for senior management roles. Unfortunately I think it’s a mistake to combine the two, as very few people have experience of bothcivilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi?…
commission.europa.eu/jobs-european-… (The EU position is less of an issue as it involves managing a small-ish team of subject specialists, and NB has now closed for applications, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s reopened a second time. But the CMA role has "an expected team size of up to 200 colleagues” 🫣)

Sigh. I (ashamed to say) tried for the first time to update @Wikivoyage, which is still pretty lacking on less-visited places (like Bandar Seri Begawan). Airport IP address is blocked. Can’t login with my Wikipedia account. Can’t create a new “local” account. I give up! 🤷🏻‍♂️ It’s never going to become a globally-useful resource with so much friction for casual contributors 😢

🤩🍿 (then we REALLY need the #DMA Art. 7 interoperability mandate expanded to social networking services, and aggressive enforcement of those existing provisions which would partly enable this)

https://twitter.com/SamuelStolton/status/1763996534830432711

Curious to know why X has done this, given its current market cap (according to Fidelity) is $12.3bn, about one-seventh the size to be automatically designated a #DMA gatekeeper 🤔

Disappointing. Yes, 102 enforcement is evolving. But a “narrow focus on price” is a straw man. It was the “side dish” comment by her chief official that sparked the controversy at the conference where this started, where the US side was focused much more on the big picture… /1

https://twitter.com/lewis_crofts/status/1764196570180837383

…making antitrust a holistic part of an approach including trade and industrial policy. @Vestager is no doubt hemmed in by the distribution of competences with her fellow commissioners — but she is after all Executive Vice President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age! /2

On the persistance of exTwitter: Musk seems to be singlehandedly illustrating the exciting antitrust concept of Significant Non-transitory Decreases in Quality while having limited impact on X usage (thanks to network effects) /1 Mastodon still seems to be struggling to achieve liftoff, despite significant migration of specific communities (especially academics). While they interact with each other this hasn't generated large enough cross-network effects for wider growth /2

I’m sure there are some interesting specifics in here, but (like other recent DMA pieces I’ve seen) it has major problems from the start. Para 1: iPhone success is simply down to market choices by consumers and developers 🙄 Para 3: EU companies excluded [] prnewswire.com/news-releases/…

https://twitter.com/lewis_crofts/status/1751898517650489384

Much of it is a long, citation-free rant about the EU vs US approach to regulation and innovation, attacking the “precautionary principle” (and those stereotypical EU bureaucrats in their "amazing government building[s]”. (I know which approach I personally prefer.)

“The decision is likely to hinge on how Apple and the EU define the market in which iMessage operates.” But the DMA is written to not be susceptible to these endless competition economics games 🧐 and I certainly can’t see how iMessage won’t be designated as a #DMA #NIICS

https://twitter.com/Andreas_Schwab/status/1698792040669028706

Sounds like Apple is making a #DMA Art. 3(5) argument. I cannot see how it could be persuasive. Commission should have the courage of its convictions, designate, and let Apple try to persuade the General Court otherwise eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/…

TikTok is joining Meta in adding a Twitter-like service (no #ActivityPub support though👎🏻). These services are so similar they would be a very easy first target for a #DMA social networking service interoperability requirement 😁 theguardian.com/technology/202… That said, I think TikTok is closer to a “video-sharing platform service” than a SNS. It isn’t based around users’ social graphs. Can a single service be both in #DMA terms? Does an #interoperability requirement need to be extended to both types of core platform service? 🤔

Spectacularly good panel on antitrust and #genAI. First: @DAcemogluMIT says problem of foundation model duopoly is it will shape the direction of innovation in harmful ways, both in large-scale elimination of good jobs, and erosion of democratic capacity “The direction of technology is malleable but it’s also a societal choice” 👏🏻 “If we want alternatives, it is highly unlikely to come from a monopolistic or duopolistic market” 👏🏻👏🏻 Use antitrust, including breakups, to achieve a more pro-human and democratic outcome 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

This article is helpful for containing so many of the questionable assumptions behind calls to strictly limit open source AI tools… 🧵 theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 1. Meta’s leaked LLaMA (and similar LLMs) are “terrif[ying]”, “incredibly potent artificial intelligence software”. Could we please keep a sense of proportion about advanced autocomplete?