I think the negative attitude towards the EU on Hacker News is the product of a couple things:
- The EU has drastically scaled up regulatory requirements for tech businesses, starting with GDPR, running through the DSA, and probably eventually continuing through the AI Act and the proposed cybersecurity law. Because this is a community mostly centered around people who start or work at or invest in tech businesses, there’s a lot of frustration that the new regulations are making life harder.
- In this case, part of what the EU alleges is that Twitter is not doing enough to actively combat disinformation. People are concerned that what the EU wants in terms of combatting disinformation IS a speech-controlling agenda.
I’m not sure either argument is 100% correct, but I can understand why many are arguing that the EU regulations are going too far, both in terms of requiring too much work for too little gain, and in terms of jeopardizing Internet independence.
I think it's also because the people on hacker news in general are not stupid and they can see through the bullshit to the real agendas that are being passed.
Let's have a test:
What's wrong with the following:
In 2020, the Netherlands passed a new law that stated that anyone that works in a job with an obligation to secrecy cannot be prosecuted for perjury for lawing in court under oath.
The example given by the government was, "Consider a lawyer and his client".
Forget for a moment that in this trivial example a lawyer could simply refuse to answer?
Figure it out yet?
Here's a hint, everyone in government has an obligation to secrecy, including prosecutors.
See the problem here? I'm sure that lots of hacker news people would.
He was lying in court again just before he retired. No consequences. Worse, he was never found out officially. The press were never even interested in the story.
However, two years later the law was changed. Now there can never be consequences in such cases. The Netherlands officially only has a kangaroo court now.
You're also missing the part where local politics will always blame EU for unpopular legislation (even one they supported themselves in euparl) and take credit for all positive EU directives (even if they fought against them).
With less informed, this creates a pretty big "EU bogeyman" trend.
- The EU has drastically scaled up regulatory requirements for tech businesses, starting with GDPR, running through the DSA, and probably eventually continuing through the AI Act and the proposed cybersecurity law. Because this is a community mostly centered around people who start or work at or invest in tech businesses, there’s a lot of frustration that the new regulations are making life harder.
- In this case, part of what the EU alleges is that Twitter is not doing enough to actively combat disinformation. People are concerned that what the EU wants in terms of combatting disinformation IS a speech-controlling agenda.
I’m not sure either argument is 100% correct, but I can understand why many are arguing that the EU regulations are going too far, both in terms of requiring too much work for too little gain, and in terms of jeopardizing Internet independence.