If you're talking to EU politicians about tech sovereignty, there are a couple of things I hope you'll ask them to consider:

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@david_chisnall So much agreed. I would star and boost this multiple times if possible.

Unfortunately we live in a system where building sustainably like this is disinsentivised, but still, here's to hoping.

@ananas

Here is the one-sentence summary for politicians:

Do you want to create an environment where corporations are more powerful than parliaments?

Hopefully that's enough to get their self interest on side.

@david_chisnall I am unfortunately not at all certain that our current government in Finland would answer that with a "no".

@the_decryptor @david_chisnall

Unfortunately, that job might also be both more profitable and more secure than waiting for the next elections.

@david_chisnall multiple great threads happening on this very topic, just sad it's taken so long for people to start thinking critically about it.

Christine Lemmer-Webber (@cwebber@social.coop)

This blogpost makes an astoundingly good case about LLMs I hadn't considered before. The collapse of public forums (like Stack Overflow) for programming answers coincides directly with the rise of programmers asking for answers from chatbots *directly*. Those debugging sessions become part of a training set that now *only private LLM corporations have access to*. This is something that "open models" seemingly can't easily fight. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop

social.coop (social.coop)

@david_chisnall I would also like to add that besides less pressure, the smaller companies will also often have conflicting interests, making the political pressure balance out more as well.

@david_chisnall Well, an important factor behind this is the Reagan-era deregulation of conglomerates. EU has a more functional competition regulation system, so the forces here likely do not automatically favour the development of such huge black tech-holes.

But it's an important concern to keep one's mind on when one's dabbling in regulatory affairs.

@david_chisnall there is another part to it, that current laws ban attempts at enforcing regulation or even common sense by individuals. Take Article 6 of Copyright Directive in EU or DMCA 1201 in USSA, that demands government to send you in prison for sensible things like refilling ink cartridge or playing with your friends a game, that publisher(remember, publishers are not developers) decided to be unplayable.

@ananas @david_chisnall Swedish Moderaterna would be throwing money at you before you even finished the question

@david_chisnall These US tech companies are regulated by the weakest of the weak Irish regulators in Ireland. The pressure needs to be put on Ireland and not screamed into the void

@david_chisnall I agree. The important thing that authorities should promote is not company size but common standards, so that many different services offered by many companies remain interoperable

In essence it goes back to #OpenStandards and #Interoperability.

@david_chisnall

@david_chisnall ... but not for there owner class and we all only exist so the owner class can burn the planet and hoard everything...

@david_chisnall this is just the old conflict between efficiency and robustness played out in a new arena (not that new, TBH). The usual pattern is everyone goes for the efficiency until the failure mode hits them, then they overcorrect on robustness.

@cmthiede @david_chisnall Well, for *certain* people to start thinking critically about it while ignoring other people's warnings for years.

@aerique @david_chisnall IKR, been talking to the walls since 2004, just never "vibed" right with people. It's not exactly something one would WANT to ever "trend" in the 1st place, but here we are, atop the precipice.

@the_decryptor @david_chisnall @ananas That's what we (UK) got from Thatcher back when. It has failed to provide other than dividends for shareholders.

@david_chisnall and the presence of these projects that need massive teams to support is a huge red flag that there's deeper problems in the software ecosystem... If we can fight the unnecessary complexity underlying those, it'll help, but that's a longer gamr