EU charges Elon Musk’s X for letting disinfo run wild

And promoting disinfo. The blue checkmarks are basically just a way to pay for prioritized disinformation-spreading.

Please tell me that, as someone outside the EU, I also reap the benefits of this spicy awesomeness.

Also, he just says he's autistic. As far as is known, he's never actually gotten an evaluation.

So he's not just using autism as an excuse, he might not even have autism. And he wouldn't, sadly, be the first to pretend he did to excuse his behavior.

The Autistic Community doesn't deserve to mentioned in the same sentence as his.

Win win?

I think his main motivation for continuing to run the company is to spread his agenda. If it only costs him a small percent of revenue to keep pushing Nazi taking points, thenbi think he'll just pay the fines.

As someone who works in the field, DSA-like regulation is coming to many countries over the next couple years. We also have regulations on political ads that are similar to DSA already in many countries already. Mega platforms like X have little choice but to get compliant

We can only hope he does. More people move over to mastodon with large companies running their own instances in the ecosystem.

This would allow for a federated broadcast system similar to how Twitter is now used, but if mastodon gets critical mass and governments start using it like they do Vichy Twitter it would be great news.

If that leads to some extra government grants for the further development of mastodon and the fediverse... Possibly even under the guise of standing up to big american tech.. we all win.

But if he does, he signed the Death warrant of his own platform. A lot of governments and mega corps are there because of users. Governments will all need to replace it immediately if they find out their main broadcasting platform could be turned off tomorrow.

A lot of companies that loudly "pulled out of Russia" are still working in Russia.

He always complies with everything e.g. Turkey and many authoritarian governments want without a peep. The EU (and an even more shocking example: Brazil) are the only chumps who let him troll with impunity. Time to change that.

At this point is there even a single country that Russia isn't undermining? They are actively paying German far right politicians.

It's 6% of revenue, not profit. So it cuts even more into profits as it doesn't allow a company in breach of regulations to reduce the impact of the fine by adding expenses that will temporarily lower their profit.

Even more spicy, they can also impose periodic penalties up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover for each day of delay in complying. That shit can bankrupt you.

That could realistically be around 1/3 yearly profit in a reasonable company (18% operating margin is common). No idea whether Twitter is currently profitable (it wasn't when he bought it).

Still, it's revenue (not just profit)

They already post on Mastodon https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission

Am guessing it's the case of trying to be on all social media platforms where people are.

That would work against data harvesting (which Twitter obviously also does), but not against the spreading of disinformation.

oh no, what are they gonna do?? what are WE gonna do?? ;```````````(

Going after platforms for the speech of their users,

The EU is going after X for selling blue check marks while marketing them as a sign of trustworthiness. They claim this is misleading. They're not going after X for anything the users said.

The issues with the US bulling their way in here is that while they set themselves up as the arbiters of free speech... these are not your counties. These are democratic institutions who have made independently made these decisions based on their concepts of what constitutes safeguarding the welfare of their citizens. They have determined that repeat targetted provably untrue propaganda based out of intellectual dishonesty that is designed to leave people angry at minorities creates conditions where people logically come to the conclusion that the killing, oppressing and subjugation of people to the point they see death as preferable to life is not okay.

The version of "free speech" that constantly gets toted as a universal good is essentially an experiment. When you see how something is functionally shaping your society and you see that while aspects of it are very healthy and cause additional stability and protection to people but a misuse is causing some people to be treated as subhuman then it's time to amend the rules. A government should be held accountable for the welfare of all it's citizens and those non-citizens whom it has temporary sovereignty over. Each country has the right to determine how best to initiate that directive. You are very welcome to defend your version of free speech as defined by American sensibilities on American ground, but American meddling in the ethics of countries whose value systems deal in more nuance would be very unwelcome. Quite frankly since the application of "free speech" under American terms has caused so much political stratification in their own homeland to the point where civil war or a breakdown of other democratic norms are snowballing they need to see to their own house before they can critique other nations.

US companies can fuck off withdraw from the EU.

Also the US is not pro free speech. The first amendment only prevents the government from censoring not private entities such as twitter and other social media. They can in fact and do censor their users so them crying wolf about being censored themselves is ironic. After all they are not even human unlike (well some of) their users.

In many European countries, there's no American style free speech, there are laws that forbid some contents, such as racism, sexism and lgbtq-hate. People get fined and associations are dissolved because of it frequently.
I understand the argument for not letting a government control speech, because it seems against democratic. But when you see what's happening to the USA where about half the voters are voting for someone who wants to undermine its democracy, attack women, the poor and the minorities, maybe you would think that the impact of free hate speech on democracy can be destructive.

Free speech protects journalists from being imprisoned for reporting on events in the world, with the angle to the story they see fit.

Free speech is not about preventing any old fart spewing actual falsifiable lies/misinformation from being silenced on a privately owned platform.

Free speech also isn't about choosing to disregard anti-misinformation laws in other parts of the world, in the name of said old farts' rights to say anything, but still insisting on serving customers in those same parts of the world.

That's what EU is fighting against. Misinformation spread on a platform serving EU customers is finable. If Twitter/X wants to stick to free speech principles without being fined, they have two options.

1. combat misinformation/lies (this isn't anti free speech)
2. geoblock the EU. Don't do business here

Oh you mean the same government that was revealed to have worked with Twitter to ban political opposition under the same reasoning of misinformation and hate speech?

When the vast majority spreads on several platforms, you can very much beat it by blocking it. We're not doing it not because we can't but because letting it spread is profitable. Prior to the invention of modern social media the problem of misinformation was much smaller. Yes of course it will never disappear but we don't need it to disappear.

You're also not going to beat it by not trying to deal with it. The transition from twitter being an unreliable source to becoming an unbridled dumpster fire of disinformation and hate campaigns has a direct correlation with Musk taking specific steps to cater to those audiences while ripping out any facilities to filter it.

It's not all or nothing, like basically everything else in life, it requires balance. Just like you don't have to "beat" drugs to help drug users find a better path, you don't have to "beat" disinformation in order to help stop it from spreading. You can take steps when/where they make sense to limit the damage and give people a chance to pull their head out of the cesspool to get enough air that society can function in a manner in tune with reality to some degree.

No, but he is finding out why twitter had all of its policies on combatting misinformation before he took over and gutted the staff… to prevent getting sued. You can say anything you want in America and the government can’t tell you that you aren’t allowed to say it, but you are still accountable for the damages caused by what you say… just ask Alex Jones.

But operating in other countries doesn’t afford the same protections from government scrutiny.

Disinformation campaigns are part of the reason social media is causing as much social strife in the world. It is not outside a logical line of thought that governments are going to attempt to minimize the damages from platforms like Twitter when they can. You may not beat misinformation, but you can minimize the financial incentive to promote it if you fine the fuck out of it when you find it.

The article states that the EU is objecting to a couple of particular things:

The EU said X's blue checks policy was deceiving and had been abused by malicious actors. The checks were initially created as as way to verify users like government officials, public figures and journalists, in efforts to limit misinformation, but Musk changed that policy, allowing users to buy blue check accounts. The new policy has been abused by fraudsters to impersonate U.S. politician Hillary Clinton and author J.K. Rowling, among many other celebrities.

The platform also didn't respect an obligation to provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository and limited access to its public data to researchers, the Commission said.

This is not some amorphous campaign against disinformation, it's a challenge to two specific policies of X.

Milo Yiannoppolous agrees with you, which is why he's such a huge celebrity today.

You see, Twitter does that AND deliberately elevates far right conspiracies and other extremist content AND deliberately censors or at least delays opposing views.

I'm not saying that the EU shouldn't also go after the other platforms you mention (they ABSOLUTELY should and probably will), but Twitter is tied with Facebook if not alone in first place when it comes to spreading disinformation.

If you cared to read the article, you will find that they also are investigating AliExpress, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok.

Hey, did Nick Fuentes tell you to write that?