When did the US government make a chat app? Signal?
Not only they don't represent anything but there own little interests, but they won't even have the decency to express clearly what they are standing for. Even lip service is not assured anymore.
> Sending to your local police dept... OK
> Sending to intended recipient... Failed
In other words: What pain?
same as that weird official USgov version hosted by israel
It doesn't work like that because the European "Parliament" is a joke. For starters, they can't initiate anything, they can only approve or reject (of course that it's almost always approve) stuff that is being passed to them from higher up, most of the times from the European Commission, if I'm not mistaken. Ah, they can pass/generate "resolutions", which are basically empty words put on a piece of paper.
Second, the people there don't "represent" anyone, at most they represent the political parties that have put them on the lists that got them into the European Parliament, but that's it.
Privacy is a human right.
the "secure" chat app supplied by some rando israeli company to the US government?
have a guess
This means officials only care about what their party leaders tell them to do, not what voters think because voters matter very little to them. That's why American "contact your representatives" does very little here - they are not your representatives, they are representatives of party leaders.
I think that's largely down to people not taking EU elections as seriously as national elections.
The ones elected by my country are always largely the most doldrum people from the main parties that aren't charismatic enough to win in national elections (The b-squad basically)
... and a handful of the kind of people that think windfarms generate wind and that we need to leave NATO.. even though we haven't joined NATO. The kind of people you vote to send to the EU so that you don't have to see them.
There was an election in 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_European_Parliament_elect...
For people unfamiliar with it https://elections.europa.eu/en/
The parliament is elected by people in each country, those elected them elect the commission. So a form of indirect elections.
I think of calling my representative as being like proof of work. It takes a modicum of effort to look up their phone number, compose some spiel, and make the call, compared to delivering spam by the truckload.
Why? EU can just tell an LLM to build an alternative app, they can just tell it to make it user friendly and make no mistakes. That's the primary use case of Trillions of dollars of investment in GPUs and electricity to power them.
JK(or am I?), a protest will be a boon for EU, which is growing Anti-American each and every day. The EU alternatives don't exist not because Europeans can't code but because EU market is open to US companies and there's no reason for duplicate effort as winner takes it all thanks to network effects. EU capital just invests in USA based companies that operate in EU. It's much easier, lower taxes lower worker protection standards etc. Also, US has much more capital to burn to corner the markets, they also just go ahead and buy anything European i.e. Skype. and not risk competition.
If the AI tech is real then Europeans get their apps no need for American companies anymore. If the tech isn't real then the chat app makers(in Europe that's all Meta, WhatsApp + Messenger. Apple is a no go due to low market share) lose half of their revenue to teach Europeans a lesson. Europeans them switch to Signal, Telegram(Popular all over the place) or Viber(this one popular in Eastern Europe).
If they all decide to boycott, there you have opportunity to hit a 400M market. Let's say Europeans can make AAA games but can't code a chat app, give visa to US developers that were laid off for the last many years to come over. Maybe it's politically unpopular? Maybe they are not the best? That's fine, EU is an open market - anyone who is interested in making billions can just make a chat app and take over the EU market. Indians, Chinese, Turks, Africans, Americans that earn less than billions of dollars. It's a huge opportunity. Instantly.
Meta made $38.4 billion USD revenue in EU last year. It's very unlikely that no one will be interested in taking that. US companies aren't doing charity to EU, it's always their second largest revenue stream after USA.
This is effectively what we see in China. They only use WeChat, I was unable to register because it says I need someone to verify my account when I try to do it (this has been happening since 2018)
The only connection I see is "I don't like UK Internet policy"
Nor even was it when Skype and IRC were made (by Europeans). SMS (also European) was slightly harder to invent because that's not on the internet.
No, they don't represent anyone because we, the European people, are voting based on lists, we do not select our own "representatives" by name and surname. This "contact your representative" trope is an American thingie, which, like many American thingies, has no place outside of its original context.
This is a response to a hypothetical where every single existing (or possibly just US) chat provider leaves the EU, and I'm saying the claim that this will cause any degree of pain whatsoever to the EU population is ridiculous because the replacements are far too trivial to not immediately replace the US apps.
We'll make our own Chat App! With blackjack! And...
If the EU or companies within did make a chat app and it got widespread appeal, it would just be exactly the same as WhatsApp. WhatsApp isn't special in any way whatsoever, besides having a critical mass of users.
Sometimes I think it would be good for Meta, X, Google etc. to lose market share in the EU and UK. It's ridiculous that we're beholden to one country for so much software, and they're all being actively enshitified anyway.
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-parliament-meps-sus... https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20250331IP...