Newstatesman, here.,
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
President Trump is kindly invited to our DMA Conference. Thank you.
Mr President,
Perhaps it is all a misunderstanding. Our EU laws are not meant to punish your most prized tech companies, but to secure contestability and fairness in European digital markets. In your own language, it is about levelling the playing field, making markets great again, and ensuring that everyone gets, as you would put it, a fair deal.
In the spirit of cultivating a more balanced understanding in our transatlantic intercourse, we would be delighted to welcome you to our forthcoming conference on the Digital Markets Act, in person or online. There you will hear from independent researchers—a species now sadly endangered in the United States—that the DMA is not contrived to screw your crown jewels, but to build European digital markets on principles rather different from those across the Atlantic, namely firmly rooted in contestability and fairness.
For years we in Europe played the dutiful vassal, scarcely noticing the role, nodding along while our digital industries were subdued and our consumers cheerfully milked. Only recently, as one of our leading thinkers put it, has our faith in this US promoted version of neoliberalism been broken—and here too, Mr President, your role was not negligible. We now see our dependencies and chains—bound to technologies devised elsewhere, with embedded values ofter far from our own.
Thank you for your kind attention. We look forward to your prompt feedback.
Kindest regards
Monday, August 25, 2025
Draghi's Rimini Speech: Game Over for Europe?
It seems that the antitrust authorities now find themselves caught between hammer and anvil. On the one side, their governments may bow to Trump’s policy line, dismantling digital ex-ante legislation in the process. The clearest cases are South Korea and, quite possibly, India. On the other side comes Draghi, declaring the world order over—with obvious consequences for the international role of independent competition authorities which were established as part of the neoliberal package. Truly, interesting times lie ahead. The EU "adapted" to that age too, as Draghi reminded us (more economic approach, anyone?), but it needs to change again. Quickly.
Friday, August 22, 2025
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Judge says Amazon must disclose its research funding to economists, academics and think tanks as part of a class action lawsuit.
Motion to compel, here.
Order granting motion to compel, here.
More fundamentally: does this type of intellectual capture work like this? Amazon supplies data (and money), friendly IO economists in academia supply theories - models, and the outcomes neatly reinforce the economics that defend entrenched power? Huge ROI possible.
Order granting motion to compel, here.
This is Lina Khan's article BTW, from Wavesblog archives.
[What about an academic who writes an economic paper "recommending caution" from enforcers - exculpating Amazon's self-preferencing - and a few days after publication starts working for Amazon. Does it count as external or internal?
[Possibly, however, the real problem of this type economics is that it's used by Big Tech as a distraction. [Spend precious time debating models - like Romans were doing over entrails? - instead of devoting time and efforts observing and trying to understand the complexities of the technological world and their societal implications. Clearly, we'd need a different type of social science for that]].
Virtual (ASCOLA) Townhouse Meeting With Lina Khan
September 4, 10-11 am Eastern Time, here to sign up.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Monday, August 18, 2025
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Friday, August 15, 2025
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Letter to DOJ: Break Google’s Ad Tech Monopoly and Request Restitution to News Publishers for Lost Revenue
Center for Journalism and Liberty, here.
Statement on Revocation of Biden-Harris Executive Order on Competition
DOJ Antitrust Division, here.
And so ends one of the most interesting experiments of Biden-era antitrust, that had begun delivering tangible results for the very American people whom Trump never misses a chance to screw over.Wednesday, August 13, 2025
An Indian undertaking filed an antitrust case against Google 15 y. ago and the case is still ongoing
From this interesting India ASCOLA webinar, hopefully recording available soon. Why was their DMA "frozen"?
Monday, August 11, 2025
The proposed ex-ante regime downgraded to a market study in India: Big Win for Big Tech
FE, here.
That was soon after South Korea's decision to dump its DMA too. Big Tech in Asia is likely celebrating, with Trump's support. By the way, how effective and influential are independent civil society orgs and academics in those jurisdictions?
More post-mortem (of the Draft Digital Competition Bill) next 13 August, 14.30 CET here.
Saturday, August 09, 2025
Friday, August 08, 2025
Should UK private competition enforcement be dismantled as well?
UK Gov, here.
Reminder: a Labour Government.
The Urgent Need For Revolutionizing Economic Statistics
D. Coyle, here.
["...if, in the not-too-distant future, my personal AI agent conducts affairs on my behalf with my bank’s AI bot, is that valuable economic activity? How should it be measured in any case?]
Thursday, August 07, 2025
Wednesday, August 06, 2025
Europe’s tech sovereignty watch
Proton, here.
"When a company chooses an email service, it often uses the entire suite."
Tuesday, August 05, 2025
How Brazil's innovative 'Pix' payment system is angering Trump and Zuckerberg
France24.com, here.
Totally disagree with the myopic economist's comment 😊
Curbing Google’s Dominance: The UK’s First Test of Its New Digital Competition Powers [Promising?]
KGI, here.
Well...Problematic to say the least is "making its next steps contingent on the decisions of a US district court."Japan: Regulator takes aim at app store - as in Europe.
Heise.de, here.
Guidelines here.
The Guidelines are essential reading. Not just from a European vantage point, and not merely as part of a deepening dialogue between the EU and Japan. It matters equally for jurisdictions already exploring DMA-like regimes, and for others now stirred into action.Ecosia, European Eco-Friendly Search Engine: Boosting Competition in Digital Area
"Chez Oles," here.
The conversation with Ecosia’s Wolfgang Oels was recorded at the height of the Trump/EU trade frenzy, when whispers of the DMA’s untimely demise were making the rounds. But rumours (spread by whom, I wonder) they were. If anything, things are only now starting to get serious 🤠. And gatekeepers' competitors like Ecosia have an important role to play as part of the DMA enforcement machinery.
The conversation with Ecosia’s Wolfgang Oels was recorded at the height of the Trump/EU trade frenzy, when whispers of the DMA’s untimely demise were making the rounds. But rumours (spread by whom, I wonder) they were. If anything, things are only now starting to get serious 🤠. And gatekeepers' competitors like Ecosia have an important role to play as part of the DMA enforcement machinery.
Today, the "Commission reiterated that the bloc's flagship digital laws, specifically the DSA and the DMA, will not even be mentioned in an upcoming joint statement on the EU-US trade deal, expected to be published imminently," Euractiv here.
The Modern Economic Approach to Antitrust Law: Analysis and Examples
S. Salop, here.
[I don't know what modern means, here. Very much the same "more economic approach" that has been increasingly repudiated for a number of compelling reasons - not least because of it being used to shamelessly - "it's science, we teach it our Students!" - justify whatever suits who pays the IO economists providing the analysis].
Monday, August 04, 2025
Sustainability agreement in the wine sector in Occitanie: opinion published
EC, here.
[Great for next teaching semester, and for a Master student working on this topic]
Sunday, August 03, 2025
Saturday, August 02, 2025
Friday, August 01, 2025
CLOUD SERVICES MARKET INVESTIGATION: FINAL CUT
CMA, Summary of final decision here.
Full 637-page Report here.
Appendix A-W here.
This is already the new Bible on 'cloud services and competition policy.' This colossal work will feed into worldwide antitrust and DMA-like analyses and enforcement actions, both public and private, for years to come.
But, you know, the "CMA has indicated that no decision will be taken by the CMA Board on future SMS designation investigations in 2025 but that it will keep under review possible options and it anticipates that these will be considered in early 2026"...
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Meta Sudans Redux: AGCM at the Gates
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Fresh off the press release: the Italian antitrust authority has knocked — quite literally — on Meta’s door. A dawn raid hit the company’s Italian offices yesterday. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but there’s been a notable uptick in enforcement on this side of the pond since that so-called 'windmills' trade deal struck on the golf course.
The opening decision spans some fifteen pages, and it's apt to delight both the die-hard antitrust nerds and those somewhat disillusioned by competition law, who now see more promise in a concerted regulatory front combining multiple toolkits at once. As you Wavesblog Reader will have gathered by now, I firmly belong to the latter camp — and it’s from that vantage point that I’ll offer a few brief reflections on this decision.
For many of us in the latter camp, this 2014 Venn diagram from the European Data Protection Supervisor remains, to this day, a quietly persistent source of inspiration. The attentive Reader will have noticed that this diagram makes no mention of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — unsurprisingly, as it entered into force a full decade after the diagram first appeared. Nor does it include more recent hybrid instruments, such as Section 19a of the German Competition Act. I would place the DMA precisely at the intersection of those three circles — where data protection, competition, and consumer protection converge. Technically speaking, the DMA operationalises elements from each of these domains. From competition law, it borrows e.g. the focus on market power, albeit reinterpreted, and barriers to entry; from data protection, it incorporates core concepts such as consent, data minimization and the 'by design' principle; from consumer protection, it reflects concerns such as user manipulation. But this is far from a flattening or plain subsuming of these established legal domains. Something original has emerged, a distinct regulatory logic.
Back to the AGCM's decision. If you’re anything like me, you did everything you could to avoid clicking on the shimmering little button that popped up on your WhatsApp screen — but you couldn’t exactly miss it either. As the Italian authority put it, the "Meta AI service was made autonomously available to users without them having taken any action to that effect. In other words, Meta chose to pre-install Meta AI and place it in a prominent position on the screen, making the service immediately available to all its WhatsApp users.” While neither the icon nor the search bar can be removed by the user, the Italian authority explained that users could, if they wished, initiate an independent chat with other AI services—such as ChatGPT—by manually adding them as a contact. I tried it out immediately (ah, the things we do in the name of research: now I've ChatGPT sending me unrequested messages). And yet, the Meta AI icon stays firmly in place, as does the search bar, helpfully prompting: “Ask Meta AI or search."
The Italian authority then embarks on what can only be described as a Kafkaesque journey through Meta’s “policies.” At first, Meta appears to say they don’t use your interactions with Meta AI to train the model — and then, a few brave clicks later, they say they do. That is, except for private messages, unless you or someone in the chat chooses to share those private messages "with our AIs" too. And in any case, as the AGCM immediately notes, it was Meta itself that stated WhatsApp user interactions would be used to train and improve their models. But it doesn’t stop there. As the Italian antitrust authority points out, Meta’s Privacy Policy suggests that WhatsApp users may gradually receive a personalised version of the service — based on the information they themselves have provided to Meta. In other words, each interaction with Meta AI feeds the system with information, some of which is then used to deliver increasingly personalised outputs. The aim? As Meta puts it, to make the responses from Meta AI more “useful and relevant.”
Already at this point, there would be plenty to say from a data protection, consumer protection, and DMA perspective. But for now, let’s stick to plain antitrust logic — though, as we know, it’s never that plain, and at times not that logical. This is an investigation under Article 102 TFEU, aimed at determining whether there has been an abuse of dominant position. The focus is, in essence, on a potential case of leveraging market power from one market — where the company holds dominance — into another, adjacent but distinct, market where it does not. All of this is well covered by EU competition law precedents [I still remember a panel at ASCOLA 2018 NYU, chaired by Tim Wu, where the question was put to us panellists about what more antitrust law should be doing to tackle Big Tech. My answer then? Pay closer attention to these very forms of market leveraging]. And this, indeed, appears to be the core of the authority’s allegation: a classic case of tying by a dominant firm. Meta, it is argued, offers its main service - WhatsApp - together with a bundled, secondary service - Meta AI. WhatsApp is an app designed for communication through advanced messaging technologies, while Meta AI is a separate service altogether — a generative AI tool meant to answer users’ general-purpose queries. Two distinct services. No question about it. But these aren’t just core platform services, as one might frame them under a DMA lens. From an antitrust perspective, they also correspond to distinct and separate markets. When it comes to Meta’s dominance in the consumer communications market via app — whether at national or EU level — there is little room for reasonable doubt. The market definition and Meta’s entrenched position therein as sketched in the decision offer few revelations. More intriguing — and potentially more consequential — is the discussion around the market for AI chatbot or AI assistance services. The authority ventures into some possible delineations and goes on to consider potential competitors and their relative positions, but ultimately finds that, at this stage, the definition of the relevant markets for AI services can be left blissfully open (more on this later). With the question of market definition set aside, we reach what ought to be the real crux of the case: the identification of the alleged abuse. As previously indicated, the alleged abuse, according to the authority, lies in Meta tying two distinct services — WhatsApp and Meta AI — by pre-installing Meta AI within the WhatsApp app. Following the pre-installation, the AGCM argues, Meta — already in a dominant position with WhatsApp — would secure a competitive advantage in the market for AI chatbot or assistant services. The reason is straightforward: with minimal friction, WhatsApp’s more than 120 million users across Europe are instantly turned into potential users of Meta AI.
And here comes the discussion I personally find most compelling — not least for its broader implications. In paragraph 44, the authority goes a step further and notes that "it is also possible that Meta trains its AI model on the data and/or interactions with the user base of the service in which it holds a dominant position.” The authority thus argues that users are not only effectively *drawn* into using Meta AI through its pre-installation in the WhatsApp app — they also have their data and interactions used to train Meta’s AI model. These two intertwined dynamics may well produce exclusionary effects for rival providers of AI chatbot or assistant services, especially in light of the increased risk of user lock-in and functional dependency. In fact, argues the AGCM, Meta AI appears to store user-provided data over time — meaning its outputs become progressively more tailored and “relevant” as interaction increases, thereby reinforcing user reliance and raising the barriers for competitors.
This, dear Wavesblog Reader, is merely the opening decision. How it unfolds remains to be seen. But the heart of the matter seems clear enough: AI services offered by Big Tech — the very same platforms we use to chat with relatives, search online, or draft blog posts like this one, are being quietly shoved down our throats because they have already invested so much in AI. Not only are we given no meaningful choice as to whether we want to use these services — they come bundled, pre-installed, ready or not — but once we do, we effectively feed them. Our interactions are harvested to train their models as well as, in Meta AI's case, apparently, personalise and refine the AI’s responses, making them feel ever more “useful,” while subtly reinforcing our reliance. The endgame from a purely antitrust perspective? A state of lock-in and functional dependency that all but shuts the door to alternative providers.
That said, one can’t help but notice once again how narrow this type of antitrust lens is. The current logic of Article 102 TFEU, with its insistence on delineating separate relevant markets, ends up artificially carving WhatsApp and Meta AI out of their broader context. And yet, we know we are dealing with Meta — a particularly intricate ecosystem, where the relationships between services and their intersections are structurally orchestrated through malleable code and the seamless flow of data across the platform’s various environments, and their combination with third-party 'tracking' data, all to fuel its gargantuan advertising machine. That this market-delineation logic is utterly inadequate and insufficient in dealing with Big Tech in particular is evidenced by the very existence of the DMA and Germany’s Section 19a competition law provision — both of which, rightly, go beyond it.
And so we circle back to where we began: the 2014 EDPS Venn diagram - as 'updated' to include the DMA. It’s clear the Italian antitrust authority knows it’s not operating in a vacuum. It is, rather, doing what it can with the tools at its disposal, under no optimistic assumption that the practices Meta engages in, and the services it rolls out, are otherwise fully compliant with the complementarily applicable legal regimes (those on the updated diagram and, additionally and eventually - as of tomorrow - the AI Act). Already the brief encounter with Meta’s privacy policy, as recounted in the decision, must have been enough to dispel any such illusion.
Set against our diagram, the potential concern the AGCM has chosen to investigate, albeit subject to the still inadequate pace of traditional antitrust proceedings [but what about interim measures - do we really need to go to the Autorité for them?], is clearly narrow - as noted above - but also hardly open to serious dispute. With a mere system update, millions of WhatsApp users — without having asked for it — suddenly found themselves turned into potential Meta AI users, with a rollout laced with unmistakable nudges towards engagement. All this in a context where no one had prevented Meta’s prior appropriation of Facebook and Instagram users’ data to train its AI models (but, rest reassured, data protection authorities are still discussing whether this was ok or not). Also from the point of view of the DMA, that move was at least questionable. Now, let’s assume for a moment that there truly is an exclusionary effect — that rival “Hers” can’t quite compete on the merits with 'Meta AI the friendly assistant,' simply because they have access to far less data, not only generally to train AI models, also about individually about us as users and consumers. Is that something we should worry about? On one level, certainly yes. That attempts are being made to prevent this through the all-too-familiar tactic of leveraging power from one market into another, something we’ve seen Big Tech pull off more times than we care/dare to count without ever feeling the slightest constraint from antitrust law, is not only legitimate, it’s more than welcome. At the same time, we’re no longer in 2018 — when, responding to a thoughtful question from Tim Wu at NYU, I timidly suggested we'd need much more of exactly this kind of antitrust enforcement. Seven years later, I would now respond to the question of how one might rein in the power of Big Tech in a more articulated manner (I had also replied to Tim Wu that we ought to adopt a more technological approach — which, fortunately, has partly been done; as for the third point I raised at the time, I can’t honestly recall it now). In my view, even in newish markets such as that of AI assistants, we cannot afford to rely solely on the antitrust toolbox — we must instead firmly integrate it into an ex ante approach. This is also about avoiding being once again dazzled by what is marketed as the latest marvellous innovation, handed down and imposed without ever having been meaningfully checked, selected and chosen over a range of alternatives — including business models not grounded in surveillance and manipulation.
The ongoing DMA offers a valuable opportunity to quickly respond to this and other challenges posed by Big Tech, in a context in which much attention is increasingly being devoted to the urgency of increased digital sovereignty for the EU (and everyone else outside of the US - and China): what can be activated immediately, perhaps with additional resources given to the Commission as the sole DMA enforcer, and where do genuine regulatory gaps remain that require prompt and determined action? For instance, could the risk of lock-in and functional dependency identified by the Italian
antitrust authority be significantly mitigated if users enjoyed a
right to data portability across AI assistants? Would a designation of Meta AI as incipient gatekeeper be immediately helpful? Among the other ex ante rules that must be respected by design for AI-fuelled digital services rolled out to EU users are, of course, the GDPR and the AI Act. All of these require a sensible interpretation, and cooperation among regulators, within the DMA High Level Group but also beyond — will be key to ensuring effective enforcement. National courts, too, are called upon to play a key role in this, as is beginning to emerge in certain jurisdictions.
Seven years on, however, I would also respond to Tim Wu that the failure to act decisively — in the EU, and even less so in the US — to rein in the power of Big Tech has now erupted into an outsized problem, including in terms of harm to our democratic values. This makes it all the more urgent to advance concrete, additional solutions to protect EU citizens — whatever it takes.
[More on Meta Sudans here].
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Die [europäischen] Industrie-Goliaths müssen besser erkennen, welche Davids wirklich gute Steinschleudern entwickelt haben
R. Laguna de la Vera, hier und hier.
Nötig ist eine neue Wettbewerbsordnung: Wer externe Innovation übernimmt, muss auch klare Schranken akzeptieren, damit keine unüberwindbaren „Moats“ entstehen. Gefragt ist mehr „Market Engineering“ in der Wettbewerbspolitik – eine Aufgabe, die Kartellbehörden übernehmen sollten, wie es die CMA bei Generative AI bereits versucht hatte, bevor man ihr einen Maulkorb verpasste. Und man muss auch sagen: Es geht nicht nur darum, ob Innovation stattfindet – sondern welche Art von Innovation. In einem Rechtssystem ohne klare Grenzen zum Schutz von Rechten, sozialem Welfare, Menschenwürde ist es natürlich einfacher, etwas als „innovativ“ zu feiern, scale-up und viel Geld daran verdienen.
Artificial Intelligence and Civil Liability
A. Bartolini, here (study requested by the EP JURI Committee).
Monday, July 28, 2025
China: Action Plan on Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence
Here.
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| Scenario 1 |
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| Scenario 2 |
How will it unfold? Too early to call. But where does the EU fit in? One suspects the Global South would rather place its trust in Brussels’ regulatory safeguards than in Beijing’s overtures. Will Europe seize the moment, or squander it amid Trump-fuelled distractions and further dependencies?
Digital platforms and competition in Australia
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Evidence that the EuroStack debate |
Mandala Partners, here.
[Paid by Apple - and actually instructive]
Commission preliminarily finds Temu in breach of the Digital Services Act in relation to illegal products on its platform
PR, here.
Will we see more DSA and DMA action before the summer break?
R. BenjonThe best response to US tariffs would be for the EU to eliminate its own internal barriers to trade
S. Nixon, here.
[Serious question, need to find out: why can't I get a loan to buy a flat in Rome from, let's say, a Dutch bank?]
AI Should Help Fund Creative Labor
M. Mazzucato, F. Gernone, here.
"Plagiarize
Plagiarize
Let no one else's work evade your eyes ✅
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes
So don't shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize”
- just to a whole new scale?
Another, complex conversation
Fueling US digital exports growth into the EU, you say?
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One gone, for now, two blissfully absent |
Peacock Tariff Consulting, here.
Saturday, July 26, 2025
Friday, July 25, 2025
Boiled by Design: Can Europe Still Save Its Digital Frog (and almost everything else)?
First of all, I strongly recommend watching this discussion — one of the most engaging I’ve followed in recent weeks. Precisely because it brought real tensions to the surface, and there was no neat consensus, it proved especially useful. The participants themselves were almost mythic in stature, truly impressive figures. Among them, an economist of my own generation whom I’ve admired for decades (Mariana Mazzucato); a younger economist, equally stimulating, insightful and 'unorthodox' in her approach (Cecilia Rikap); and a third, also an economist (Francesca Bria), who has done remarkable work also from a legal perspective, I'm thinking especially of her time with the Municipality of Barcelona. The only technologist, and male, on the panel (Mike Bracken) chose his words carefully, and sensibly.
Now, I’d like to offer a few thoughts to set out where, in my view, the key points lie, and how we might frame them in a way that keeps this essential conversation moving in the right direction for the EU and beyond. I won’t begin with the problems, those are already well worn ground for any Wavesblog Reader who isn’t merely passing through. But if you do fall into that latter category, I’d suggest starting with the EuroStack Report itself, if you don't know it already, which came up several times during the panel discussion.
To stack or not to stack - and how?
Instead, I’ll begin with the blog post that accompanied the release of the panel video, as it already eloquently homes in on one of the underlying frictions. The post frames 'the core disagreement' as one of Ownership vs. Operational Sovereignty, one position being that pushing for digital regulation, something the EU is all too well known for, becomes little more than wishful thinking when the entities being regulated don’t just use infrastructure, but are the infrastructure. And those infrastructures "are controlled somewhere else, built according to laws we didn’t write, and underpinned by values we do not agree with." The opposing view says there’s no need for ownership, no need for democratic sovereignty over the layers of the stack, let alone the stack as a whole, As long as the right regulation is in place. That means building in the right regulatory safeguards: mandated interoperability, switching, portability, all the things we know sit also at the heart of the EU Digital Markets Act. The more radical version of the first position, as I see it, came from Bria. She was clear: yes, she’s spent at least part of her life pushing for the need of more, better digital regulation, but that’s no longer enough. We’re in a different phase now. It’s time to move beyond and, among other things, build. The second position was put forward by Bracken, drawing on his previous experience working for the UK government and his current work advising many more. His was a vision that includes leveraging on the (very) few digital public infrastructures we already have, with a nod to Brazil’s Pix system, which has recently attracted attention also from the Trump administration.
Then things got a little tense, and a touch tangled, when, at one point, the technologist referred to one of the women economists on the panel (it wasn’t quite clear which) as a Marxist. Judging by the subdued tone, I wouldn’t say it was meant as a compliment — more of an observation, perhaps. And, to further clarify his position, he added that he absolutely doesn’t buy into the idea of ownership over the stack. In his experience, the only place he’s ever seen it done is, you guessed it, China. Turning to the one tool that, in Biden’s words (remember?), keeps capitalism from becoming theft, namely, competition, Bracken argued that platforms should indeed be broken up. But his main point was this: industries work because there are standards (protocols!) — and when standards (technological and beyond) are in place, everything more or less falls into line. I didn’t quite share Bria's reaction, but yes, it did strike me as rather simplistic. From a legal and economic perspective, we know perfectly well that standards help things run, but they’re far from enough. Good functioning markets, where consumers, business users, and firms can confidently act and thrive, need a great deal more. So much more, in fact, that at times you can’t help but wonder whether the effort is really worth the candle. But the truth is, there aren’t many alternatives. So far, we haven’t managed to come up with anything better. So, do we stick with them, bolstered, for now, by a healthy dose of market engineering?
Rikap offered a perspective I wouldn’t place between the two, that would only flatten it. What she brought in terms of analysis was unmistakably ecosystemic. Her question cut through: which layers of the digital stack are chokepoints, offer a panopticon view of the economy and our lives (i.e., everything happens on the cloud)s, and set the rules of distribution and production? Bingo: cloud services. Is it then a good idea to build an entire nation’s ID system on top of the cloud infrastructure controlled by Big Tech? Hardly. What struck me most, though, was when she spoke of complicity, naming names, such as Mistral and SAP. If we’re really in a phase where digital sovereignty is on everyone’s mind, where we’re all on edge about who holds the power, then the real question is: do we just carry on with capitalism-as-usual-only-worse? Or is it finally time to right the ship — and not just with a gentle nudge, but with a meaningful course correction?
Right after that, Rikap brings us back to a fascinating thread running through her research work. It’s not just about who produces knowledge, innovation — but about who ends up appropriating it. In a cascade from bad to worse, knowledge appropriated by those few isn’t being used to solve fundamental problems, take climate change, for instance. Quite the opposite: it often ends up making climate emergencies worse (think data centres). Nor we as a society might end up in great shape when it comes to producing new knowledge, regardless of who ends up capturing it. From Rikap’s perspective, we’re in epistemic trouble if we start tackling every problem, science included, with AI-based solutions alone, without even asking ourselves whether that kind of AI is the one we want. So where does that leave us? Until now, we heard of two paths: the EuroStack vision (Bria), or the technologically enlightened toolkit of interoperability, open standards, switching tools, regulatory safeguards, etc (Bracken). And Rikap? Bold. A "public-led, democratic, international, people centered, and ecological stack or value chain" is the way to go. One positive aspect is that the question of demand is addressed from the outset. Yes, the whole system is not only public-led: demand is also shaped by the state. And unsurprisingly, much of it should come from areas like healthcare and education, at least at the beginning. And here she turns to encouraging examples that stretch beyond Europe’s borders. Curiously, she brings up the Meta case in Nigeria, which I’ve briefly written about myself. She presents it as a situation in which Nigeria appeared willing to bear Meta’s market exit in order to enforce its digital regulation, if I understood correctly. I’ll need to think more about it myself.
Are these three visions irreconcilable? Certainly not. What's the most promising vantage point from which to start turning any of this into reality and saving the frog? What do we already have that can be used/repurposed/reused? And where, instead, will we need to overcome inertia/opposition and do something fundamentally different? On the latter, today we had one of those precious exchanges on BlueSky that still make you believe in net humanity and serendipity. Or way I just chatting with bots?
(/END? Not really, see here).
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C. Rikap, here.
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Mr President, Perhaps it is all a misunderstanding. Our EU laws are not meant to punish your most prized tech companies, but to secure conte...
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The Korea Times, here.
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Here. Video here. It seems that the antitrust authorities now find themselves caught between hammer and anvil. On the one side, their go...
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Bundesregierung, hier.
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DigWatch, here .
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Fresh off the press release: the Italian antitrust authority has knocked — quite literally — on Meta’s door. A dawn raid hit the company’s ...