The EU would be better off without American tech companies

James Heppell, representing Open Web Advocacy, published an article detailing his experience attending DMA compliance workshop in Brussels, in which members of the public can ask questions of companies who have products designated as gatekeepers under the DMA. After attending the Apple one, he concludes:

As a final thought, I called this article “Apple Vs The Law” primarily in reference to the rule of law, about how it should be applied equally and fairly against all, no matter the size and influence of your company. I think some of these gatekeepers – above all Apple, do a lot to undermine this process, in some places genuinely damaging trust in democracy. Going out of their way to paint the DMA law and the EU as overstepping and extreme hurts its reputation, as does the invented rhetoric about it being the “great risk to privacy ever imposed to government” (China?), or that they’re “acting without experts in the field”. Similarly for the number of covertly funded and supported lobbying groups that they bring to regulators all around the world. And the constant pressure from the US administration to not enforce the DMA – helped in no small part by these gatekeepers. These money-driven practices – which in many ways mirror the propaganda typically produced by authoritarian regimes like Russia, seriously hurt all democracies that they come in to touch with, and is a kind of behaviour that should make Apple, and any other group involved, ashamed of themselves.
↫ James Heppell

Sometimes I wonder if us Europeans wouldn’t simply be better off without these lying, scheming, law-breaking American technology companies. Yes, there’s be a bit of a shock and a chaotic scrambling as newcomers fill the void, but I think I’d prefer that over the illegal behaviours that are clearly endemic in US technology companies. As a EU citizen, I’m not even afforded 0.01% of the kind of silk glove, patient, and cooing treatment these corporations get when they break the law, and it highlights once more just how tiered justice really is.

I think the EU would, in the long term, be better off without the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook routinely and repeatedly breaking our laws. Rip that festering, rotting band-aid off and endure the chaos for a few years while European newcomers fill the void in a beautiful explosion of competition and innovation.

Do we really want to be tied to these corporations that clearly despise us?