“The EU needed to either loosen up too or accept this entire sector of information tech being foreign-controlled, which would have its own major privacy and security problems.”

This is the original commenter justifying why the EU is attempting to loosen their privacy laws. This is not factual, this is not an objective truth, this is one person’s perspective about why the EU is doing what they’re doing and in a way that defends their position.

If they had said, “Maybe the EU felt the need to… In fear of this entire sector…” That would have revealed that statement to be a less objective, more theoretical opinion - which is what it is. But they didn’t. They wrote it as a fact, defending their decision as if A) that was true B) that was the reason instead of a handful of reasons C) it was the only path forward.

I think if you’re reading that statement by the original commenter in any other way, we’re at least misaligned on what they’re saying. I would argue that statement plainly reads as defending their actions by guessing (even if reasonable or intelligently) as to their motives.

I think you’re throwing around tribal like a buzzword you recently became aware of. I like people having opinions on random comment based forums online. I don’t like when people don’t add to the conversation and yet comment anyway, allowing for wasteful conversations like this to take place. The original commenter explained a thing no one asked to be explained at best and defended a perspective that I think is objectively short sighted at worst. I have no problem with the first and I don’t like the second but also am happy to talk to people who hold those opinions if they’re looking for a safe place to discuss and debate them.

Now that’s a couple ways of interpretting what the original commenter said, both of which I think are justifiable although I lean obviously to one way. Does that read like I’m simplifying the problem reductively? Does that read like I’m asking people to throw stones at the commenter? Has anything I’ve written even read like I’m forming a group of like minded people, virtue signaling, and running the other person out of town?

I would say no, obviously not. You seem frustrated at online discourse, or maybe you’re just pro-these-actions and can’t separate them from this conversation. You wanna talk about the actions of the EU, that’s cool. You wanna talk about one random person’s perspective as to why the original commenter got downvotes, that’s cool. You want to acuse me of being simple, when I’m clearly responding to what the person wrote and only what the person wrote (both the first commenter and the person I responded to), that seems like a waste of time. It’s surely not adding anything to the conversation for me at least.

But here we are.