EU-U.S. to seek shared tech rules despite French ire

In the US you can lie through your back teeth without consequence. You can deny the holocaust, you can say the earth is really flat or that the 2020 elections were stolen. All are easily proven false but in the US that counts for nothing,

The US Constitution has as it's 1st Amendment a guarantee of free speech and a free press exactly because dictatorial European regimes and their state religions harshly punished anyone who said or published anything critical of the King, Pope or any of the institutions they created or who publicly contradicted the lies spewed by both. Calling for their removal and replacement by an elected government would get you jailed, tortured and killed. Your "truth" might in fact be a wretched lie, a gross fabrication or a massive distortion of fact. People have to be free to call out lies coming from their government, and from their fellow citizens. Who gets to decide what is the truth and what is a lie? Nobody, that's who. What makes any level of government competent to determine what is or is not the truth? Laughable. Everyone is free to say what they want and it is up to the individual to sort through the noise and figure out what is and what is not true. Too bad if someone says something that hurts your feelings. Grow up and get over it. Anything else is just turning the clock back to the exact same crap the US fought a revolution to get rid of. Insecure dictators like Xi Jinping worry about people saying things that are disparaging. Mature well adjusted adults don't take offense so easily and are able to handle criticism or being challenged on facts without melting down.

I think Europe has a supportable position.

In the US you can lie through your back teeth without consequence. You can deny the holocaust, you can say the earth is really flat or that the 2020 elections were stolen. All are easily proven false but in the US that counts for nothing, in Europe they have a higher standard for the truth. Facts matter in Europe, not so much in the US.

@ Desert Tortoise: Agreed. Thus the rub in applying uniform standards.

The EU wants those players and like-situated corporations, to abide by rules that would prevent the spread of disinformation online - including hate speech - 

Any attempt in the US to censor speech will encounter a buzz saw in the US courts. European laws restricting speech related to the Holocaust, nazism and other subjects that are banned in Europe are illegal infringements on the 1st Amendment in the US. I am not an advocate of some European standards in this matter.

Corrections made to earlier post:

France resisting the project in the wake of a row with Washington over a submarine deal.

It may not all be about subs this time.

President Macron, in particular, has not been shy recently, telling Big Tech players like Google and Microsoft that they need to adhere to European Union (EU) mandates, like the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Data Governance Act (DGA), and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The EU wants those players and like-situated corporations, to abide by rules that would prevent the spread of disinformation online - including hate speech - and to constrain the market power of Big Tech players. Macron himself has previously announced that unfair practices by Big Tech will be seen as an attack on European democracy.

The DMA, in particular, sets out strict rules for large online platforms as "gatekeepers," with a stated goal of guaranteeing free competition, open markets and wider choices for consumers. Google, together with Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, is poised to fall under the gatekeeper category, and to therefore be subject to the new rules under the DMA.

Just today, 27 September, Google and the EU went to the General Court in Luxembourg to start a five day hearing over Google's appeal of the EU's 2018 €4.34 billion fine for anti-competitive behavior. The EU claims the company imposed "illegal restrictions" on devices operated with its own Android system in order to cement its dominant position in the market.

I am compelled to ponder whether these talks are designed to address whether momentum towards strict accountability towards data handling by EU over U.S. based Big Tech corporations should be continued at full speed . . . or be somehow abated.