The European Union is getting on the Trump administration’s nerves with its threats of legal action for alleged abuse of position by big technology companies. The file opened against X, the social network of the almighty Elon Musk, has become the straw that could break the camel’s back. To this displeasure, now of geopolitical scope, is added the rejection of the practices of monopolies or oligopolies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple or Amazon, all of them American icons potentially violating the European laws on Digital Services (DSA) or the Digital Markets ( DMA).
The lack of transparency, deceptive activities and the dissemination of illegal content These are the issues that these days spur two parties that are judicially at odds. The next thing could be the joyful use of algorithms and massive Artificial Intelligence (AI) training systems, many of them unethical, biased or disrespectful of privacy and intellectual or industrial protection.
For all of the above, the Old Continent increasingly resembles the village of Asterix comics, populated by irreducible Europeans resistant to the invader. With business sanctions as the only shock force, Brussels is angering its historic ally, at the risk of being isolated. Some attack with the global power of social networks and AI, now subject to Trump’s hegemonist causeand others defend themselves with continental market protection regulations. The image resembles that of a cat upside down seconds before an elephant stomps on it. Such an imbalance has transcended the scope of the Nasdaq to become matters of state, as happened this week in the United Kingdom, due to collateral effects in Germany and France. On one side, the American disaffection towards all European values is worrying and, on the other, the Sino-Russian front prevails, a territory foreign to democratic precepts.
As if that were not enough, the Trump-Musk tandem has been joined by tycoons Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, owners of Amazon and Meta, respectively. All of them now pay allegiance to Trump in a battle for global supremacy, manifested in recent months and that promises to be accentuated in the coming months. Musk’s more than 211 million followers on his social network make X an uncontrollable speaker for any state. The founder of Meta – parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp – has also supported Trump financially and through the media in his rise to the White House and has now resigned from fact-checkers, following Musk’s example.
The experts consulted by this newspaper point out that “the arbitrariness in the spread of hoaxes is served in the largest social network in the world.” In addition, Zuckerberg assumes that Europe will hold him accountable for possible non-compliance with the DSA, as will happen with Apple and Alphabet, due to the particular interests in the digital businesses of these companies.
The threats of EU sanctions are like a stone in a giant’s shoe: Annoying, but it does not prevent us from walking, running or kicking whatever comes our way. The misinformation spread through social networks, Now with the multiplier effect of Artificial Intelligence and its millions of online content generating robots, they become the new Western public enemy after Putin. Faced with this digital tsunami, the EU assumes its growing loss of influence on the planet.
Away from the AI battle, without social networks or microchips, and with little weight in the areas of space, energy and quantum computing, Europe becomes the curmudgeonly neighbor that has fallen into disrepair, already surpassed in influence by India, the Emirates, and Israel. or Japan. However, this weakness of Europe challenges Musk with fines close to one billion euros, equivalent to 6% of the income of his business empire. SpaceX’s annual sales are around 8.7 billion and X’s reach 7.17 billion. In total, 16.87 billion euros, since Neuralink, xAI and The Boring Company are companies in development. However, Tesla does not enter into the equation, since it is a company where Musk barely controls 13%.
Apple strategy
Apple stands out from other American technology companies by committing to protecting the privacy of Siri users from the beginning. In this way, the multinational avoids potential litigation by putting special effort into preserving the confidentiality of its users’ communications. According to the California company, “the conversational assistant data has never been used to create marketing profiles and has never been sold to a third party for any purpose.”
In that sense, Apple came ton settlement in this case to avoid additional litigation “, leaving behind concerns about third-party Siri quality assessment processes that we addressed in 2019.”
For all of the above, the company led by Tim Cook simply uses Siri data to improve the tool, “and we are constantly developing technologies to further strengthen Siri’s privacy.” Among other aspects, as this newspaper has learned, the Information that users provide to Siri is never shared with advertisers.
In the same direction, other analysts point out that Siri data has never been used to create marketing profiles, nor has it been sold to a third party for any purpose. Regarding artificial intelligence tools, related to requests for Apple Intelligence using Private Cloud Computethe company is clear that the data of users of iPhones, Macs and iPads and other Apple devices is not stored nor is it accessible to the multinational. At the same time, Apple Intelligence offers additional protections, and no user data is used to train Apple Intelligence’s base models.
Apple’s assistant also distances itself from the rest of the competition’s tools by Do not link request data to profile identity. In that case, if a user asks Siri to read their messages, the software executes the order but without transmitting them to Apple’s servers.
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