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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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I was going to reply with OP on similar lines but you nailed it.

Europe, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are a bigger threat to me than China or Russia, and have been for a long time. The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies. It’s still a threat and I hope/suspect that Trump will apply maximum leverage on this issue. If not for Trump winning, we would be screwed. By our “allies”.

The list of offenses is too long even for an effort post. Good riddance.

The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies.

Yeah... that was definitely one of those 'really bad ideas that no one will directly address because it would be acknowledging how bad an idea it was' that will probably be looked back upon unkindly. It was a case where the European desires to be the regulatory superpower create mutually incompatible interests with those who don't care to be regulated. There were non-trivial parts of the Democratic party who were okay with it for the same reason they were okay with setting up Newsguard-esque media policing via indirect regulation, but that's absolutely the sort of thing many of the American right would happily raze the internet for and let the world wide web be partitioned for, let alone other governments.

It's not run its course yet, so I fully expect it to matter more in the future, but since it was passed I've viewed that as the start of the European internet partition- it's just a matter of when others break from it.