And then Musk had his falling out when he left DOGE.
This one in particular is both personally desperate for approval of his petty, narcissistic bullshit, and for trying to consolidate political power by amplifying and supporting authoritarian candidates (that are expected to quid-pro-quo him back).
I leapfrogged this by pulling myself out from Twitter instead a while ago, and I can only recommend. And I don't mean this in the "in favor of Bluesky/Mastadon" sense.
There are some types of content that I did lose access to this way, but in retrospect it was worth it. I found that the cost-benefit for it is just not there, not for me at least.
> Its 2024 adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled Twitter’s best year
Revenue is up 20% in 2025 but profit is lower and revenue in general is still much lower than pre-Musk purchase due to lost advertising but it is still improving slowly. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-saw...
In the UK there was a more serious drop in revenue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/15/x-twitter...
Not sure about EU
Like when they "pulled out" of Brazil? When Musk said they were fighting for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law? Then X got blocked in Brazil, and they silently complied with everything that was against "freedom, democracy, and the rule of law" and stopped talking about it.
Only under the EUs backwards idea that if it makes speech illegal it's not censorship.
>its failure to provide researchers access to public data.
I don't want my X posts being handed over to researchers even if they are technically public. On social media and chat platforms there is an expectation of the posts and chat messages you make to be private due to being in an obscure section of the website. Just look out the outrage over people's privacy that happens every time someone makes a public search engine of everyone's chat messages on a Discord that has an open invitation link. People's idea of privacy does not align with the idea that anything public should be widely spread with others.
I hold back no criticism on free speech issues in eu (ie chat control) when it is correct to do so, but this case doesn't look like it
It's extremely tiring to decipher takes like these and they're everywhere recently. It's supposed to be convincing, yet to read it without finding it jarring, I'd already need to agree with you. Makes no sense!
This is why mentions of "free speech" are inherently red herrings to me. It's an idea, a mirage, and a rather absolute one at that, especially under certain interpretations. It is something to get people ideologically motivated by and then used in my opinion. To me, it bears little difference to run of the mill marketing speak about agile and scrum, for example. Just like with code, the difference between idea and implementation is ever-shifting and never nil, sometimes intentionally so.
It is not helped by how someone can read the same situation very differently, which is the whole premise behind the "speech that you don't like" narrative in the first place, in the face of which loaded assertions fare really quite poorly: https://programmerhumor.io/backend-memes/ourblesseddepartmen...
This is what the article said. [edit, mostly wrong: "You gave the reason that was used for an investigation of TikTok, and I don't know where you got the blue check thing from."]
> I hold back no criticism on free speech issues in eu (ie chat control) when it is correct to do so, but this case doesn't look like it
edit: I got a bad load that cut off the end. What was actually said, however was,
> EU regulators said X's DSA violations included the deceptive design of its blue checkmark for verified accounts, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository and its failure to provide researchers access to public data.
Italics mine. The first line however, is about breaching "online content rules."
Then X shouldn't make their business available in the EU, but because X wants EU users, they're participating in a market where they need to follow the law of the market. If you disagree with X's choice of participating in that market, you should vote with your wallet/attention.
> On social media and chat platforms there is an expectation of the posts and chat messages you make to be private due to being in an obscure section of the website
That might be, but the internet unfortunately doesn't work like that, they are public platforms, so the information there is treated as public information, which it is. If you make it invite-only, I understand the expectation of privacy and private conversation, but for platforms with open signup? Don't participate and share stuff you don't want to be public, it's kind of easy.
Right... and maybe next the US won't let Europe have any IP space. It's the internet. A US business needs to be governed by US law, not whatever law that a user chooses to access their site from..
So if I run a business from a country where cocaine is legal, I should be able to sell to users in the US? Are you sure you thought this through? Seems you're letting your emotions get in the way of your reasoning.
US customs takes the product at the border, and if you transit the border expect to be arrested. Your customer should expect to be arrested as well.
Maybe you get put on a list so US banks can't send you money anymore too.
Makes perfect sense for me in both cases.
X does have presence in the EU, but it's because they have offices/employees, equipment, and accounts housed there.
The EU may say anyone who deals in the data of their citizens is subject to their jurisdiction, but enforcement on those entities without actual presence will be difficult.
Not particularly difficult.
Like Brasil already did, and for similar reasons, the EU can go after everything Musk owns. Even with Tesla sales dropping, they're not zero. Starlink is currently available.
This is a good example, because the US government routinely passes laws that prevent people from transacting using the dollar system (which is basically the world financial system) and this is OK, but the EU requiring companies that operate in their market to obey different laws is not OK?
I don't really get the logic here, but perhaps I'm missing something.
Why is that? I think you can reasonably argue that a user should enjoy the protections offered by law in the place they live.
The current administration has openly stated their intent to bully selected countries they don't like in various ways, but especially when it relates to their ability to push US propaganda to foreign places via companies like X.
* except possibly Hungary.
Any attempts by the US government to assert control of a foreign non-profit entity such as RIPE is only going to end in tears. I suspect would also empower those pushing to balkanise the internet should the independence of RIPE or ARIN be violated.
I'm not sure region specific intranets is a future anyone should want.
The irony of how blind you are. EU trying to enforce censorship laws on American companies will end in tears.
This has always been true. E.g. Google and others complying with Chinese laws, or not operating at all in places like Iran. X can simply cease operations in EU if they don't like it.
It doesn't though, it applies those laws if the entity in question happen to also be slurping up a bunch of user data and selling/using it for various purpose, something which requires intent and active work to do.
If they instead didn't do those things, these laws wouldn't apply to them in the first place. Random American HN users just having a website public on the internet without perverse tracking has nothing to worry about, and does not have to care about GDPR, EU rules or much else.
I think a more mundane explanation, which I personally subscribe to, is that Europeans have different priorities than Americans. They don’t want the same trade-offs, and they’re willing to make certain business models economically unviable if they believe those models are harmful or in bad taste. US companies are disproportionately affected because they don't share those values. First amendment, etc.
From the outside, this can create the impression of "hidden motives": the stated reasons sound unconvincing, the effects fall heavily on US companies, and so people infer that the EU is targeting Americans. But really, I think we're just different. If US laws disproportionately burdened EU citizens, I’d expect Europeans to be equally upset. It's only natural. I'm sure few people in Europe would be thrilled to find out that GDPR doesn't apply to ChatGPT because they got involved in some copyright lawsuit in New York.
That said, there's always a mix of motivations. I'm personally not a fan of other EU initiatives, like the one on encryption, but I think GDPR and DSA mostly mirror what the average João wants. I'm not sure most people care that much about the geopolitics.
That's information war. We should probably ban on sight but as we are free countries, we put in place a regulatory framework and let the courts do their work.
You don't want balkanization of the internet? Tell your government to stop using it as a weapon.
The DSA does not create new categories of illegal speech.
I further disagree that the legal system should be turned into a swiss cheese of enforced and unenforced laws, although I will admit, that is entirely a principled preference on my part. I strongly believe that bad laws should (ideally) be repelled, not worked around.
I wouldn't have a problem with that, except for the hypocrisy here.
The EU is requiring transparency for *advertisers*.
The EU makes a lot more sense when you think of it as the neo-Vatican super state power. A core aspect of this is asserting things makes them true.
Too bad, don't make them public then. I'm not sure where this idea came from that "free speech" also means "free of consequences", but it sure is pervasive. It's always been the case in every society for all time that you need to be careful what you say publicly. The modern notion of "free speech" is related to retaliation from the government, it doesn't grant you immunity from people reacting to your public speech, nor does it grant you some sort of ill-defined "public speech anonymity."
In the past, news would travel—but slowly—and minor news about local citizens was not normally considered newsworthy in non-local markets unless it was extremely unusual and entertaining.
You thought this was some kind of “gotcha” because you pegged me as a right winger opposing cancel culture. I support free speech, period.
Why lie so blatantly? This is what was in the article:
> EU regulators said X's DSA violations included the deceptive design of its blue checkmark for verified accounts, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository and its failure to provide researchers access to public data.
Can you count? I count three distinct claims, not one.
What of this is censorship?
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...
Not a single word about removing anything in this.
I want to make no mistake - I personally think that Kiwifarms is absolutely gross with their harassment campaigns. But it does appear legal, and first amendment speech issue.
SaSu advocates for people who wish to commit suicide, a how-to. Its the final "my body, my choice" that every government wants to take away. So silencing is a thing. But again, 1fa issue.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyra...
I think X is in the wrong here, the blue checkmark usually means the identity has been verified, in other social media, but also historic twitter.
Nowadays on X it only means that a fee has been paid, it's used for scams, some even claim to be Elon Musk or official twitter announcements, which is very ironic.
rich_sasha•2mo ago