"#SiliconValley isn’t building apps anymore. It’s building empires." "Under the banner of "patriotic tech", this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, #AI, #finance, #drones, #satellites—an integrated system we call the #AuthoritarianStack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules."
The Authoritarian Stack
How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next
 #Democracy #HumanRights #DigitalSovereignty #DigitalSelfdetermination
Gotta love The Guardian for those quotes from Europeans on #Mamdani's win in NYC: "Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo cafe, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal." “Normal. That’s the word,” Verbeek wrote in his newsletter, The Planet. “Here, taking care of one another through public programs isn’t radical socialism. It’s Tuesday.”
the Guardian
Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’
Critics of New York City’s mayor-elect have said his pledges of free bus service and universal childcare are unrealistic, but in Europe it’s a ...
#China has installed more #solar panels in the past 6 months than #Germany did in the past 25 years. (via @npub1m2j8...yzxt)
(S+) China schafft in sechs Monaten doppelt so viel Solarkraft wie Deutschland in 25 Jahren
Die Volksrepublik bricht beim Ausbau der erneuerbaren Energien diverse Rekorde. Eine gute Nachricht für das Weltklima. Und eine schlechte Nachrich...
 #renewables #energytransition #greentransition
#FollowTheMoney requested access to an unredacted version of #X’s first #DigitalServicesAct risk report from the @npub1m96e...ag4y – a request that the EU executive denied. After the request, the Commission updated its internal rules to generally presume such reports to be confidential. The European #Ombudsman found this to be “unreasonable” and that it amounted to maladministration.
Follow the Money - Platform for investigative journalism
Watchdog slams EU executive for hiding user risks on Elon Musk’s X
Follow the Money - Platform for investigative journalism
I just heard another renown professor argue #Mastodon is too hard, even they failed. Choosing a server is simply too difficult. And I'm wondering: how the heck does everybody have an email address? #decentralisation #federation
When people say "#Mastodon is like early Twitter," they often refer to the absence of algorithmic amplification & ads or the functionality set. But what makes it like early #Twitter in my opinion, isn't that. It's that the #Fediverse enables you to easily connect with real, awesome humans from anywhere: makers, celebrities, community leaders, top experts in their fields. Just tag them with an honest post and you'll have wonderful interactions such as this one. 🤩
Mastodon
Magical Cat (@koteisaev@mastodon.online)
I thinking about one thing that #fediverse self-hosting landscape lacks. Well it is not only about Fediverse per se. I dream to have something like...
Tech firms are spending more than ever on #lobbying the #EU amid mounting opposition to the bloc’s digital rules, according to @npub19gkv...xllu. The 733 digital #industry groups registered in #Brussels now spend €151 million a year pushing their interests, up from €113 million 2 years ago. Meta is the overall largest lobby spender in the EU (€10 million). There are now an estimated 890 lobbyists working to shape the tech agenda, up from 699 in 2023.
Corporate Europe Observatory
Big Tech lobby budgets hit record levels | Corporate Europe Observatory
New figures show that the digital industry as a whole is now spending €151 million a year on lobbying the EU, a major increase to what was alread...
“We are not a fining machine,” said a @npub1m96e...ag4y official, when asked about the timeline for making decisions on ongoing #DSA cases. Well, then maybe you should not have put yourselves forward as lead enforcement authority under the #DigitalServicesAct. With great power comes great responsibility.
What a timing: while I'm sitting at a #CloudAbolition workshop, #AWS takes down major centralised services like #Signal, #WhatsApp and #Teams. People continue happily texting me on @npub1m9z3...whzq though 💚 :fedi:
Since it has gotten some beating recently (in particular from #Apple fanboys), I've written something about the #DigitalMarketsAct for @npub1w4rd...8cxz and how things are going at this front:
European Digital Rights (EDRi)
The DMA is a success, it should be strengthened and expanded - European Digital Rights (EDRi)
Despite its somewhat disappointing enforcement so far, the EU’s Digital Market Act has become a global role model for modern antitrust policy.
 #DMA #competition #antitrust #bigtech #marketpower