EU is not picking on FB and Google specifically. This mindset is toxic. They are picking on all monopolies for European customers and have been for a long time. Basically we believe the market is not healthy if there isn’t any competition.
This is a bit rose tinted outlook. GDPR does not increase competition, the amount of regulation in EU and worker protections in place raise barriers for new competitors. France has laws that prohibit new movies from being put on Netflix in order to support local distributors etc.
Not saying what the EU does is goos or bad, but painting it as pro free market competition seems unfounded.
GDPR isn’t about addressing monopolies. It’s about addressing privacy and data ownership.
Every tech related legislation doesn’t and shouldn’t need to so,be every tech related problem. The EU has other, non GDPR related, mechanisms to handle monopoly issues.
My point is EU will adopt regulation that actively harms competition (such as GDPR), because they have different priorities (e.g. privacy, data ownership as you mentioned).
So to me it seems unfounded to say EU cares about market health and is not, in fact, just picking on FB and Google.
I am honestly curious what you think are examples of EU mechanisms fostering healthy markets. Maybe the MS case but that is the same “EU picks on US tech giant” genre.
