The ever-so chauvinistic eurolibs that cried “Buy European” tech are in shambles rn. Or, perhaps they’re busy at working coming up with a riveting explanation as to how this is a “good thing, actually” or “a minor setback” or “the work of Great Man X”.

GDPR and other “privacy” initiatives and legislation in the EU were, are and will always be a scam sold to the working class and everyone knows it.

“Buy/use European!”

Result of blindly consuming European:

Exactly. China took the leap of the century by investing in renewables, and it paid off big time. Other Global South countries are slowly following suit. Energy, digital and cultural sovereignty should be actively sought out for lest of being beholden to Western imperialism and hegemony.

Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation.

China remains way ahead in clean energy growth […]

India experienced slower electricity demand growth and also added significant new solar and wind capacity, meaning it too cut back on coal and gas.

In contrast, developed nations like the US, and also the EU, saw the opposite trend.

I’ve not read a single BBC rag article for a while now, are they usually this sloppy nowadays with how they portray the West in the best light LOL… Looks like they gave up trying mid-way. Very poetic.

Landback is part of the fine variety of solutions that can be effectuated. Also, is there any doubt that the US, Australia and New Zealand are settler-colonies that it prompts enclosing with quotation marks? Could you expand on that?

And sure, yeah human rights violations happening in one place or the other is “all bad”, then pray tell, why is it that the manufactured outrage is reserved specifically for WANA countries, but not for the imperial West that don’t exactly have a great track record on human rights, even worse than WANA combined?

Oh yep, I mixed up rev. ans profit. Still though, that doesn’t change anything I’ve said so far. It is still effectively chump change that can be recuperated in a short amount of time. Also, which one specific company got fined 3bln?

European software is still better for the european consumer on privacy because of europe’s better privacy laws

This literally just boils down to “European is better for the European because it’s European”, if you’ve read any of these you’d get why:

• EU funds are flowing into spyware companies, and politicians are demanding answers
• The EU Funds Surveillance Around the World: Here’s What Must be Done About it
• AI mass surveillance at Paris Olympics – a legal scholar on the security boon and privacy nightmare
• Investigation of the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware
• 20 biggest GDPR fines so far [2024] (the fines in question are negligible, and only serve to line the pockets of the rich)
• Female health apps aren’t doing enough to protect sensitive data, study says

The EU does not shy away from being terrible in terms of privacy, in fact it is far from being any semblance of “good” privacy, they just do a good job of keeping it hush-hush.

GAFAM have been basically allowed to operate carefree within EU jurisdiction because GDPR only serves to benefit capital and those with capital already. It’s been 10 years since it’s been introduced and not a single GAFAM company has been stopped by the EU. Every single OEM Android phone ships with Google Play Services, an Android OEM flavor that is not open-source and auditable and sometimes comes with GAFAM preinstalled.

Laptops and computers ship to the EU with Windows, a privacy nightmare, that’s been allowed to exist and fester the consumer market for decades, even well into the introduction of GDPR.

Schools, offices, etc… throughout Europe still largely depend on closed-source software like G Suite and/or Microsoft Office, Figma, Notion, etc… The European alternatives, save for LibreOffice which doesn’t see widespread adoption outside of maybe a few cities in Germany, are all closed-source bs.

The “efforts” that have been made so far like Fairphone, Sailfish, etc… have all been small-scale and underfunded compared to the amount spent on everything else, e.g. military.

Point is, so long as the Euros are at the US’ behest, EuroKKKrakers are not serious about privacy and security, and never will be, so they resort to random ass nationalist appeals that only quiets down when a Democrat takes office. So long as their own software are closed-source BS even if it has the word “privacy” plastered all over the landing page, it should not ever be called “private” or “secure”.

Various european public institutions are moving to open source solutions meaning just Germany, the Netherlands and Germany. Even if this were true, they are incredibly underfunded compared to what they spend on military and “state security”.

the fines for GAFAM are increasing more and more, and starting to actually hurt

The “fines” that are “getting higher” are imposed on GAFAM, it’s still chump change even if they add $20 more million to the fines. The highest fine was around a billion euros for Facebook. That fine also was never settled yet either, it’s still being fought in court like basically most other settlements. Do you also know how much time it would take for Facebook to recoup that value, if they do get fined that much?

I mean, it is though. Even if it wasn’t it’s still worth doing to support local industry.

It really isn’t. Consult every single source I posted in my previous reply to see why. There’s obviously nothing wrong with supporting local industry, in fact I advocate for this. What I’m saying here is that there’s something wrong with blindly advocating for a Eurocentric initiative that is ideologically bankrupt, one that reinforces a European superiority complex and is only backed by appeals to European nationalism.

I find it funny when Westerners suddenly pretend to care about human rights when bougies visit a Western client state but crickets will chirp when they visit literal settler-colonies like the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or when they visit countries that continue to have colonies today like Denmark, France, the U.K., or when they visit countries that gave birth or provided/continue to provide human capital to the Euroanglo-Zionazi Entity like… basically the entirety of the Global North.

No problem :)

The Euroanglo-zionazi Entity wouldn’t stop at Palestine, you understand this, yes? “Greater Israel”, does that ring a bell at all? This idea of “just move Arabs to Arab country X, Y and Z” is a Zionazi rhetoric intended to drive Palestinians who rightfully own their land out, no matter how you cut it.

Understanding that the Euroanglo-zionazi Entity is a settler-colony and outpost granted by the British, occupied by various Europeans and now spearheaded by another settler-colony, the US, will help reveal the “solution”.

The US can make a single fucking phone call to the Zionazi “government” to at the very least stop the current genocide. European states can recall their citizens colonizing Indigenous land. With that in mind, the only way forward is through continued mounting of pressure on these states that are colonizing Palestine via organization, which we are seeing a glimpse of with the Global Sumud Flotilla, BDS and other important initiatives.

“Buy European” / “Use European” is a deeply unserious and reactionary mantra that assumes software and hardware manufactured and designed in Europe is inherently the “safest” and “most secure”. Or if not, then “safer” than their AmeriKKKan or their Chinese counterpart. Or if it is not “safe” at all then it is assumed it is “less unsafe”.

It’s reactionary, because it reinforces ideals for European nationalism and only ever came up so far when Trump got elected. It also necessarily espouses the Great Man Theory because of that, which you seem to entertain there.

If Europe or European companies were serious about security and privacy, they would do well to decouple from GAFAM. The reality is that European institutions all use Microsoft or Amazon to host their websites, use Google or Microsoft for their office suite software (save for a few and far between insignificant instances of LibreOffice use), use Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/etc… for public communication, as well as promotional and marketing purposes, and so on.

If the EU had any skin or teeth, they would actually enforce their GDPR regulations and not allow any GAFAM in Europe. Instead, they are essentially allowed to continue to operate, the “fees” GAFAM pay for violations of GDPR rules are basically only chump change and can be made back within hours.

And finally, the EU routinely invests in spyware to be used within and outside their borders. It’s no surprise it deservedly doesn’t get the traction Europeans want.

The real solution, which correctly transcends any and all borders, involves advocating for Free/Libre Open Source Software and Hardware. It shouldn’t be hard to understand why.

Sources:

• EU funds are flowing into spyware companies, and politicians are demanding answers
• The EU Funds Surveillance Around the World: Here’s What Must be Done About it
• AI mass surveillance at Paris Olympics – a legal scholar on the security boon and privacy nightmare
• Investigation of the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware
• 20 biggest GDPR fines so far [2024] (the fines in question are negligible, and only serve to line the pockets of the rich)
• Female health apps aren’t doing enough to protect sensitive data, study says

Solve the genocide, ethnic cleansing and illegal European settlements by driving out Indigenous Palestinians and erasing Palestine, once and for all? Are you sure yourself of what you’re saying?

Great vid, but did the reviewer really have to rub the “European” aspect of it throughout? smh…

Anyways, she mentions that there’s the option of using Aurora Store + F-Droid, I wonder if govt. apps that are basically required for day-to-day services (e.g. Absher, Sehaty) would work with or without microG… I might try and find out for science, once I have the means to do so :).

Otherwise, compartmentalizing by having two phones, one Android for the govt apps and one Linux, would basically be meta until something changes.

It’s fine, no sweat, there are solutions for viewers/lurkers:

Browser:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/

Android:

https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular

Sadly Invidious instances always have problems because Google keeps making breaking changes to how videos are fetched, intentionally or unintentionally.

🤲

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Exactly this. Liberalism having a stranglehold on academia is a major part of the reason why people end up with the conclusions from the top panel.

Disgusting settler porky behavior. Death to AmeriKKKa.

Joplin enjoyer here, I love being able to use it across all my devices synced to a NextCloud instance, I was a bit hesitant with the syncing feature at first because I thought I’d have to constantly deal with silly sync conflicts, but I have not had one syncing issue for the past 4 years or so using this app.

Organizing notes could not get any easier. I personally don’t need much out of a note-taking app that already has everything I need, but it’s worth mentioning that it’s extensible with plugins (not to the same degree as Obsidian of course). Would definitely recommend.

Personally, I would’ve preferred you responded with xenophobic slurs targeted at Arabs like me than with whatever LLM answer this is supposed to be, but you do you I guess. I would’ve almost taken you seriously… almost.

So here, let me throw a random ass quote at you:

And so, indeed, is the Orientalist attitude in general [referring to a quote by shitlib Isaiah Berlin]. It shares with magic and with mythology the self-containing, self-reinforcing character of a closed system, in which objects are what they are because they are what they are, for once, for all time, for ontological reasons that no empirical material can either dislodge or alter. The European encounter with the Orient, and specifically with Islam, strengthened this system of representing the Orient and, as has been suggested by Henri Pirenne, turned Islam into the very epitome of an outsider against which the whole of European civilization from the Middle Ages on was founded. The decline of the Roman Empire as a result of the barbarian invasions had the paradoxical effect of incorporating barbarian ways into Roman and Mediterranean culture, Romania; whereas, Pirenne argues, the consequence of the Islamic invasions beginning in the seventh century was to move the center of European culture away from the Mediterranean, which was then an Arab province, and towards the North.

• Edward W. Said, Orientalism (1978)

Huh, and wdym by that? What was the idea you tried to share that got you censored?