A follow up of sorts to this article
A one-word answer to why EU lost control of Big Tech: Ireland
My favourite bit of interviewing Dr. Johnny Ryan was when he yelled “just off a plane, so if you know the answer, I will lose my mind if you ask me to repeat myself for the recording again” at me.
It didn’t make it to the final interview, which was published on EUobserver.
Ryan is, among the much needed group of people who speak up against Big Tech, one of the more eloquent and direct. He’s also very friendly.
His work at the Irish Council of Civil Liberties’ Enforce includes major investigations into the many, many, many ills of online advertising/surveillance capitalism, a radical belief in the underutilised potential of GDPR (the EU’s main data rights law) and now, a plea to have Ireland recuse itself from all digital files in its upcoming EU council presidency.
For those who don’t know (I didn’t), the answer to why the EU has not been able to crack down on Big Tech more is simple. One word, in fact: Ireland.
Ireland’s job, by way of how the GDPR was drafted, is to defend the rest of Europe when it comes to the tech companies headquartered there. Meta, Google, TikTok, Microsoft, LinkedIn, X, Apple all picked Ireland. So did most of their AI activity. Which means, in Ryan’s words: “Ireland is responsible for defending the rest of Europe when those companies abuse Europeans’ data.”
And surprise surprise, they’re not doing so adequately.