A yank without a yank

  • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Ok I’ve wanted to ask this question but can’t figure out who to ask it to:

    Can America cut off our digital subscriptions? Examples that I care about: Steam… That’s all I can think about but I guess streaming services? Maybe Spotify?

    Can Trump announce a digital embargo and shut Canadians out of their paid for libraries, since it’s all just “renting” and never owning anyways?

    • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
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      12 hours ago

      That would be economical suicide. Every European company would see this as a threat and move away from American cloud services which is all the infrastructure and servers.

    • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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      15 hours ago

      Unequivocally yes, they can do that.

      It would be an extreme measure, but I have been warning people and emailling my MP/MPP about this issue.

      All it would take for our phones to stop working is Apple and Google invalidating one security certificate. They could release backdroored versions of our phone operating systems (I’m sure somebody would be checking the OS checksums somewhere).

      US cloud companies being forced to stop allowing canadian credit cards alone would kill most canadian tech.

      • femtech@midwest.social
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        14 hours ago

        Google runs their own cloud hosting so I think they would fight that as it would really hurt their business, so I hope trump does try and piss off more people in power.

        • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
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          15 hours ago

          And when has Trump cared about these things?

          As long as the US congress and senate let him rule as king, he’s king, and he’ll just claim any bad press is Google’s unfair retribution.

          • Devanismyname@lemmy.ca
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            13 hours ago

            Well he has backed down and some stuff recently because I’m assuming he knows he needs the tech bros to stay in power. They let him control the narrative. If he alienated them, that would be alienating his main ally in his re election campaign.

      • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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        13 hours ago

        Frankly I would love it if something would hurt the credit card industry. The fact that a transactional service charges a % of the transaction itself is insane.

    • Arbiter@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Nothing is stopping digital services from doing this right now, much less with a presidential order.

    • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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      16 hours ago

      Spotify sucks ass but it’s Swedish. Their servers probably run on AWS but almost everything runs on AWS. And they are listed on an American stock exchange (through Luxembourg, probably for tax evasion reasons).

      • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        Yeah I didn’t mean to single out Spotify or slander or by implying it was American. I just use so few of those sorts of services and was searching for a second example.

    • Cows Look Like Maps@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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      16 hours ago

      Regardless of whether it’s possible, that would be untenable. The USA tech bros would lose a ton of money on a giant customer and the rest of the world would boycott even harder, maybe even block american services. Canada’s Shopify alone would be enough of a deterrent.

      • Chip_Rat@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        You think? Canada is less than 1/10th the us population right? Keeping orange man happy and securing more tax breaks and free tax payer money for some “investment” or whatever would probably smooth that out…

        Other countries backing us up would be nice though and certainly up those numbers…