Google decides it won't comply with EU fact-checking law
Google decides it won't comply with EU fact-checking law
Google has told the EU that it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law. The company says things are fine as they are.
In other words, a company, acting on behalf of its own shareholders, tells a government, which represents 100% of the citizens in a given territory, to shove its legislation where the sun doesn’t shine. And not only is this not inherently absurd, but it also stands a significant chance of succeeding in getting the government to comply.
It felt miraculous for me that, for a while, tech companies appeared to comply to regulation (doing the bare minimum, as slowly as possible, but it kinda worked).
My hypothesis is that they now except political support from Trump administration and to pressure the EU?
Bingo. Trump already started playing with his corporate finger puppets, emboldening some, threatening others.
Same reason Zuckerberg, surely the expert on the matter, had this weird rambling about "masculine energy" very recently. What a Trumpian phrase.
stands a significant chance of succeeding in getting the government to comply.
<EU> Яндекс it is or you can Bing It.
A government ... only in theory does. Like a church represents God, because humans are too dumb to understand him directly.
"Fact-checking" is preserving a certain model of censorship and propaganda. "No fact-checking" is moving to a new model of censorship and propaganda.
Both sides of this fight prefer it being called such, so that one seems against misinformation, and the other seems against censorship, but they are not really different in this dimension. They are different in strategy and structure and interests, but neither is good for the average person.
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.
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.
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.
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.
lemmy.ml with the stupid authoritarian takes again.
The government, running a service that doesn't suck? Call me when it happens
Good, hope they get banned in the EU so people will switch to competitors
I could see the EU backing down a few years ago, but these days they have watered down any actual advantage in search by filling their results with ads and low quality content. Not that I use Reddit any more, but a good Reddit search engine would probably be better for a lot of use cases.
Then you got people like Musk using their websites as foreign influence platforms to restore Nazis into power so I'd imagine there's an appetite for not being so reliant on the increasingly belligerent US media oligarchy, which itself is the victim of Fox News and Murdoch.
Plus everything is already enshittified anyway so easy to create better.
DuckDuckGo: Use us because Google is so evil they were banned in Europe
They use bing tho. I personally like Qwant as they fall under GDPR and are european. Also they are working on building an independent search index.
I would love that. I still use google products, because I was too lazy to switch, a ban would give me the incentive to move to another platform
Damn.
Wish the rest of us could just ignore all laws & not face any consequences.
What a fucking joke this entire system is.
They don't have a problem giving someone 100 years for a quarter bag of weed though. For a first time offense.
Oh that was long ago. it's for not having a baby if you're female now. Megacorps run usa and now the worst (which is best for some reason) ceo in the history of man will again be president and continue the clear path to government dismantling
Given that we are going full authoritarian fascist now, perhaps the EU should ban Google, given the US tik tok precedent.
What a twist. In the 90s, the internet forced countries to wake up to the new modern era. It was a combination of American companies wanting both to expand and provide goodwill.
And now, this new era is going to tell American companies to fuck off.
Google has told the EU that it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law.
Perfect time to implement sky-high fines for non-compliance.
Time for EU to simply ban Google then for non compliance.
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.
Not too big of a fan of banning companies as the hurdles should be decently high... Especially if many people rely on their service but if they won't comply with our jurisdiction long term I see this as the only option as fees can not be order of business to pay
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?
Because our legal system is made in a way where they technically are not a crime
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
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.
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
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
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 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 get the sentiment, who doesn’t want to dunk on Google?
But the headline is needlessly inflammatory. There is no law yet; and google essentially is saying please please don’t implement it, it totally doesn’t make sense.
Don’t get me wrong, the EU should still implement it. And once it is law; Google will also comply.
Didn't a year ago or so, Some European lawmaker made a vague hint in support of something that involved regulations on social media, and Elon replied "go fuck yourself" verbatem?
Play hardball, or surrender and give them what they want. there's no compromise or middle ground with these techbro fascists
Google is basically saying the EU couldn't do its own subpar search and they're not brave enough to try.
Fuck Google
Unbelievable 2025 is turning out to be a stellar year
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.
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.
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 than it needs to be.
We need fact checkers more than community notes. Because disproving a claim takes a lot of time and skill, and notes will be abused for financial and personal gain in the long run. Perhaps it is also better to use the word content moderator instead of fact checker, as finding the ultimate truth isn't possible, unless you just present a mathematical proof.
wish the eu would just actually ban american companies there is really no need for them anyway
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
Sovereign citizens are really getting out of hand. Oh wait it's google.
Google, this is t he EU, not America, they're not going to suck up to you.
And not a single bit of this would matter at all if YOU PEOPLE* would just know a damned thing!
*present company excepted, of course.
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.
So, another “cookie banner” coming then, but this one says: “facts not checked”
I want to live in a world where the EU bans Google, but we all know the EU will just roll over and accept this.
Commence operation “find out”!
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
God I hope this happens, it will be absolutely hilarious when the gcp services on which the EU infraestructure for telecommunications, research and development, industry, transportation, banking, agriculture, logistics and health is built up, crashes burning to the ground.
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 like this. I don't think I need a large company fact-checking anything tbh. They already got too much influence and power, I don't need them to control the narrative even more.
Who decides what the facts are?
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.
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.
Your teachers always gave you back assignments face down didn’t they.
Teachers do that?! Damn, I was bullied by all my teachers.
The fact checkers obviously
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.
The EU is weak, divided, and geostrategically boxed in
lol ok
Have you ever looked at a map? America can just float anywhere
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
It’s hardly about US economic interest so much as the interests of a small in-crowd. See: tariffs.
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.