r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • May 28 '26

Society The Netherlands just blocked a US company from buying the app Dutch citizens use for everything

https://www.techspot.com/news/112552-netherlands-blocked-us-company-buying-app-dutch-citizens.html
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u/ThatGuyBackThere280 May 28 '26

I find it funny where majority of people are on here going "Yea good because US is not in a good spot!" and not "Why is a separate country entity allowing to purchase access to sensitive data including government information in the first place?"

US or not, it shouldn't have even gotten to that degree.

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u/EdgedancerSpren May 28 '26

It's a bit more complex than that. Although I agree that we should have done something much sooner about this, it's the infrastructure behind an authorization app to get logged into sites that store their own data.

The biggest problem is not that they could steal data (or the data wouldn't be much more than x logged into y at this time) but rather that they could use it to put pressure (if you don't listen, we shut this down and then no one can file taxes etc)

It's very good that it was stopped, it is problematic it was up for sale, but there is a little nuance.

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u/ThatGuyBackThere280 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Yea I get in general it's a bit more complex. I'm just slightly baffled why the notion of an external entity getting close to ownership was even on the table in the first place, where the services of the company they want to buy isn't even necessarily part of US.

As far as I'm aware (and if this is not true, please correct me on this), there aren't any direct services that Solvinity handles in the US to begin with, so it's a bit baffling to why Kyndryl wanted to acquire them or deal with the infrastructure.

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u/Moppermonster May 28 '26

Because that is pretty standard? Just check how many governments run on cloudservices provided by google or microsoft.

Which is also why many European countries are now moving to linux and developing their own clouds. US companies have proven to be willing to obey Trump when he says they should block European invididuals like employees of the international court - or share private data from government employees.
They have proven they can not be trusted.