'The European Union’s decision Friday to impose a fine on Elon Musk’s social-media platform X.com raises a question: What the heck is wrong with these people? Even in Brussels, it’s unusual for a single policy move to create so much economic self-sabotage and diplomatic harm at one go.
The €120 million ($140 million) fine is for breaches of Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the first time Brussels has enforced that law in this way since it came into force in 2022. Europe’s online commissars cite several supposed infractions. The silliest complaint is that X’s system for selling “verification” blue checkmarks “negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with.”
More serious, Brussels insists X must make data about advertising on the platform readily available to outsiders, and shouldn’t use its terms of service to prohibit data scraping by “eligible researchers.” The EU claims this open access to X’s commercial data is vital to allow researchers and “civil society” to spot scams and information warfare.
That reference to “civil society” is a tell. Brussels wants to force X (and inevitably other platforms) to share data that hostile activists can wield against the platforms in future regulatory actions or litigation. All based on a theory that European citizens are too dumb to take the things they read on X or elsewhere online with a grain of salt.
Mr. Musk and Trump Administration officials describe this regulatory case as a form of censorship, and it’s hard to disagree. Mr. Musk wrote on X last year that the European Commission, the EU bureaucratic arm levying the fine, offered X a “secret deal” to drop the case in exchange for the platform censoring unspecified forms of speech.'
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DivingForGold•2mo ago
The EU loves our American weapons that comprise >90% of the weapons furnished to Ukraine. The EU thinks they can have it both ways: Let's "tax" and fine the Americans, all the while we "hustle" them for their weapons to fight the Ukraine-Russia war. If that's going to be their tact - - - heck, let them fight Russia all by themselves till them back to the US come screaming for help.
How soon they forgot WW II and how they would all be living under Hitler if it had not been for the mighty US getting involved. How soon they forget the cold war where the Russians invaded and took many European nations into so called communism.
taylodl•2mo ago
You seem to know very little about WWII and how it was won. You also seem to know very little about US foreign policy after WWII - which, frankly, puts you in the same boat as the current administration. They have no clue how the US leveraged WWII to establish global dominance, and because they don’t understand that history, they have no idea how to maintain it. Here's a hint: it's not with armaments.
DivingForGold•1mo ago
Since most of the EU "bleeding hearts" let all the Syrian and middle Eastern immigrants in, and discovered many of them failed to integrate into their societies, and too many then resorted to crime to support themselves . . . now the EU has to recover somehow the on-going damages done, heck, let's start by "taxing" US Big Tech for their successful and innovative products . . .
Bostonian•2mo ago
The €120 million ($140 million) fine is for breaches of Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the first time Brussels has enforced that law in this way since it came into force in 2022. Europe’s online commissars cite several supposed infractions. The silliest complaint is that X’s system for selling “verification” blue checkmarks “negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with.”
More serious, Brussels insists X must make data about advertising on the platform readily available to outsiders, and shouldn’t use its terms of service to prohibit data scraping by “eligible researchers.” The EU claims this open access to X’s commercial data is vital to allow researchers and “civil society” to spot scams and information warfare.
That reference to “civil society” is a tell. Brussels wants to force X (and inevitably other platforms) to share data that hostile activists can wield against the platforms in future regulatory actions or litigation. All based on a theory that European citizens are too dumb to take the things they read on X or elsewhere online with a grain of salt.
Mr. Musk and Trump Administration officials describe this regulatory case as a form of censorship, and it’s hard to disagree. Mr. Musk wrote on X last year that the European Commission, the EU bureaucratic arm levying the fine, offered X a “secret deal” to drop the case in exchange for the platform censoring unspecified forms of speech.'
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DivingForGold•2mo ago
taylodl•2mo ago
DivingForGold•1mo ago