Google, Facebook & co: wrong approach?

You always find yourself, when you go around the internet, reading about GAFAM, and everyone is there to praise Verstager and say that she is enemy number one. Personally, I disagree and I don't have the Verstager cult that others have. For one main reason.

That is, the Verstager continues to wave in front of the GAFAM a weapon that does nothing to the GAFAM.

First you need to understand this: GAFAMs sit on a mountain of money. Even a fine of 4/5 billion euros does not worry google. First of all, because by dint of appeals the payment will be late. So, this happens: the shareholder doesn't care, because he knows that the economic blow will come, if all goes well, in four / five years. For this year the dividend takes it.

In four five years, yes, the fine to be paid will arrive, but in recent years they will have set aside the amount, and the shareholder of the moment will be satisfied, because he still has his nice dividend and in the newspapers does not end the payment of a fine of 4/5 years before.

Making fines, however high, is useless.

What worries the GAFAM is not the fine, but the disruption of the service. If the fines were measured in block days, everything would change.

• No company or private person chooses a service that can be interrupted at any time.
• Nobody pays for advertising campaigns that may not start at the right time.
• Nobody pays for data that could have holes in relevant moments (Valentine's Day or other).
• selling on Amazon when it could be closed just in the week where you have offers is unthinkable.

A fine of the type "the service must be rendered unusable for a week in 2022", without specifying how much, is enough to screw these companies the ENTIRE 2022.

So now you will say that this is censorship and lalalalaa. But I never said you have to pull the whole serve down. I talked about publicity and the destruction of the service.

In the case of Amazon, for example, you could simply shut down 2/3 distribution and logistics centers in a country for a while. In the case of ISPs, you could simply apply the equivalent of a µBlock (the software against ads, against advertising) directly at the BNG level: in this way you could still use your android phone and your apps, only not would receive publicity.

It is very possible to do it, I do it at the DNS level using this but if you want you can use PiHole . This would destroy their business without blocking free speech. And it wouldn't require such huge investments from ISPs.

Ms Verstager, in this way, followed an approach that does not scare GAFAM at all; it's just a comedy, like those girls paid to pretend to spank while the payer pretends to cry. If it makes you happy, go ahead, I certainly don't judge you: but don't tell me it's also true.

At this point, thinking that the GAFAM will stop because the European authorities can fine them "even 4% of the revenue" is ridiculous: if the appeal lasts for 4 years, it is a 1% tax. , for those who are taken. If we then talk about the fact that the investigation of an incorrect practice lasts another 4/5, we are talking about a 4% that is spread over almost ten years. Who are we kidding?

On the contrary, if the sanctions were measured in terms of the destruction of the service, if only by blocking the flow of advertisements, it would make the web giants much more fearful: it means that no one could plan anything anymore (deliveries, advertising campaigns, trend collection) and this would scare them.

The various guarantors, including the famous Verstager, behave like those escorts who spank you if you pay them to do it: to see her from the outside it seems that it does a lot of harm, in reality it is a hoot.

Why do I say "they'll spank you if you pay them"?

If you look at the register of lobbies registered in EUropa, ( https://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/displaylobbyist.do?id=03181945560-59 ), you will see that only one Google representative has to spend about six million euros every year.

If we add up the expenses of the entire Big Tech lobby, we arrive at 1.6 billion euros: https://transparency.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Deep_pockets_open_doors_report.pdf

Now, we can also try to take the piss out of ourselves, saying that 1.6 billion are spent on lobbyists' apartments and their dinners and meetings with parliamentarians, or understand that that money ends up in the pockets of parliamentarians and politicians . I understand that a dinner can be expensive in Brussels, and that apartments can be too, but man, we're talking about 1.6 billion euros.

To paraphrase Benigni, "how much does a Banana cost in Brussels?"

So, as I see it, my metaphor is correct: it is a pantomime, in which the greats of High Tech do not want the destruction of the service, the EU must pretend to hurt them to satisfy the voters, and then the 1.6 billion euro Spanking session comes out. The client pretends to be afraid of spanking, the dominatrix pretends to be mean and cruel, and paf: youporn's rating goes up.

In practice, all the various "guarantors" are none other than this: the highest paid S&M prostitutes in the world. When they really want to scare GAFAMs, they should just block advertising (or deliveries in the case of Amazon), and do service disruption.

But I don't expect that to happen.