Really abhorrent how the current US government is spinning this into their tried and true "free speech" crusade despite it being mostly irrelevant. The DSA's core goal is transparency, shown clearly in the X ruling.
> The ‘blue checks’ charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. [...] As the Commission put it, the DSA “clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.”
> The ‘ads transparency’ charge stems from the DSA’s requirement that platforms must maintain a public archive showing what ads the platform ran, who paid for them, and other information. X fell drastically short of meeting this requirement
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
It's clear why the tech monopolies want to keep their secrets in the dark. There is a democratic consensus that what they're pulling either is illegal - or should be illegal. E.g. Scam advertisements, overt editorial practices by selective (de)amplification and/or monetization and looking the other way about bots and third-parties leveraging their systems for spreading political propaganda.
Transparency is their enemy. Free speech is their irrelevant but emotion-laden argument. Europeans see straight through it - the questions is, do the Americans?
I find it deeply cynical that representatives of a federalized union call upon another union to disband in favor of national identity. It is a transparent ploy to sow division within another competing union for geopolitical gain.
Small correction: for another adversary's clear geopolitical gain. While dissolving the EU has been Russia's wet dream for decades, there's not much to be gained from it by the US and very much to lose. In fact, the speed with which the US is giving up its influence over Europe of its own accord is bewildering.
Imagine the response to the EU calling for Texas leaving the US via that weird defunct line in their constitution.
Maybe breaking up the US would be a good idea. The blue states are funding the American government which is led by the people mostly popular in the red states. But you won't see EU politicians set up a well-funded plan to actually do it.
America has turned into a ridiculous cartoon of itself in such a short time frame.
You are really on to something. Imagine if the EU ran ads in the US encouraging US states to join the EU. Advertise the benefits of membership: NATO protection, socialized medicine, less gun violence, worker protections, a higher average standard of living...
Red/blue is a cynical and false division. One can live in a blue state and vote red, and vice versa. In fact, some localities are nearly 50/50 or 45/55 when you dig into the data. Breaking up the union over statistical ignorance and false divisions is not a good idea.
Agreed it’s incredibly unrealistic, but something has to give. We’re quickly approaching a country where there are two overarching groups with near zero overlap on their vision for society. That cannot end well.
My guess is as the American empire [slowly] declines that city states will become centers of power, perhaps with rural, conservative areas finding power via wealthy “lords” assuming the parts where the state decays. The groundwork for this new fuedalism is already being put in place.
The EU did not call upon the US to disband because of fines levied against Volkswagen. Nor did the EU say that the Clean Air act was only enacted to attack the European car industry.
Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW and BMW including a €875 million fine in 2021. When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?
You are deliberately missing the point. The EU would have continued to conveniently ignore VW diesel emissions had the US, a competing power, not pointed them out.
> Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW including a €875 million fine in 2021.
Only because the US found them out. The EU was quite happy with VW until then, and liked to act all smugly superior about emissions.
> When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?
For what exactly? What US laws have X, under Musk, broken?
Per capita emissions in the US are what, twice as high as in the EU? And given that the US is ruled for the foreseeable future by outright climate change denialists, that's unlikely to change.
Just look at how the responses in here go to even the slightest criticism of the EU. (Particularly my original reply in this thread, which was even flagged for a long time).
The point here is only geopolitical competition with the US has kept the EU remotely honest. They clearly cannot be trusted to enforce their own laws when it suits powerful entities within, and will lie to their population about doing so until it becomes impossible to hide.
Obviously the same applies to other geopolitical actors too. The EU trend towards bureaucratic rule by diktat is astounding though, and it's rapidly getting all the downsides of the Chinese system and none of the upside.
You are the one who's deliberately missing the point. The EU accepted the findings from the US and took regulatory action.
Whereas the US ignores the findings from the EU, refuses to take regulatory actions against big tech, enacts sanctions against EU officials and calls for the disbandment of the entire union.
A bit of an overreaction at the very least wouldn't you say?
You're still missing the point. Imagine an alternate reality where the EU denied any of the US findings and instead backed up VW in their assertions they've done no wrong. They then levied sanctions against multiple senators that advocated in favor of the Clean Air act and called for the US to disband.
Does that sound reasonable?
> That's the UK, France and Germany lobbying to keep the emissions tests inadequate so VW can continue.
I'm sure there are many states within the U.S. that are currently lobbying for even less regulation of Big Tech.
The US found VW breaking US and EU laws. The EU has found [tech cos] supposedly breaking EU laws only and keep inventing nonsense to try and force their ideals on the rest of the world. It's boring, hence the (minor) sanctions on these individuals to get them to stop wasting everyone's time.
If the EU want to block parts of the Internet off then go for it. Just don't pretend it's everyone else's fault that it's embracing mass censorship and that this is in any way compatible with the values of the enlightenment.
So you're saying that if the EU had less strict laws then such a reaction would've been appropriate? Then it would've been totally reasonable for the EU to sanction US senators to stop wasting everyone's time with their air quality standards?
I'm using words to say what I mean, not what you are hallucinating, so I will clearly state for the final time:
VW was caught, by US authorities, violating EU laws, and it transpired that EU officials had been lobbying to enable VW and other EU champions to continue to do so.
The equivalent would be the EU catching US companies violating freedom of speech in the US, and clearly pointing this out. This is not what the EU have been doing.
My root reply in this thread was flagged, despite being stunningly milquetoast, in a transparent attempt to hide any inconvenient dissenting view, which is precisely what the EU are trying to do.
> VW was caught, by US authorities, violating EU laws, and it transpired that EU officials had been lobbying to enable VW and other EU champions to continue to do so.
X was caught, by EU authorities, violating EU anti-trust laws, and US officials are lobbying to enable X and other Big Tech companies to continue to do so.
> My root reply in this thread was flagged, despite being stunningly milquetoast, in a transparent attempt to hide any inconvenient dissenting view, which is precisely what the EU are trying to do.
To the contrary, the DSA would've likely protected your comment. It requires that if content was flagged or removed a clear reason has to be stated for its removal with the ability to appeal it. Neither of which is offered by Hacker News because the DSA does not apply to it and so your comment was removed without a stated reason nor the ability to appeal it.
Big Tech companies don't want to protect free speech, they just want to maintain their unchecked moderation power on their platforms.
> X was caught, by EU authorities, violating EU anti-trust laws
But where have X violated US law? It clearly continues to confuse that EU law does not, in fact, have any relevance outside of the EU. If the EU want to start blocking things on the net then just shut up and do it already.
VW were breaking EU and US law, but the EU were actively enabling them continuing to do so until the US pointed it out so that it could no longer be swept under the carpet.
> To the contrary, the DSA would've likely protected your comment. It requires that if content was flagged or removed a clear reason has to be stated for its removal with the ability to appeal it. Neither of which is offered by Hacker News because the DSA does not apply to it and so your comment was removed without a stated reason nor the ability to appeal it
More rule by hopium nonsense.
Plenty of people already have experience of being deplatformed with zero explanation by this same lobby, there is no chance that would not continue, they would simply find their complaints also deplatformed so you would have no idea.
HN probably would be covered by the DSA too, it's just off the radar for now. If ever this became a hotbed of widely taken seriously EU criticism you can bet it would suddenly get the book thrown at it.
> But where have X violated US law? It clearly continues to confuse that EU law does not, in fact, have any relevance outside of the EU.
US law is not relevant in the EU. As long as X makes itself available in our sovereign lands, they have to follow our law our bear the consequence.
As a parallel, fresh raw milk cheese is not allowed to be sold in the US despite being very popular in France (and tasty!). That means French cheesemakers need to limit which cheeses they sell over there, even though their local laws don't restrict them.
> But where have X violated US law? It clearly continues to confuse that EU law does not, in fact, have any relevance outside of the EU.
Then why did the US fine VW if US law does not have any relevance to companies headquartered outside of the US? The US did not, in fact, fine VW based on EU law.
Because the car industry is incredibly powerful and an important of the European economy. Just like Big Tech is incredibly powerful and an important part of the US economy.
I'm certain that if VW was a US company the current administration would've been A-OK with them flaunting regulations and would've defended US economic interests against fines from the EU.
This was my precise point in my original root reply to you which provoked this incredible meltdown from you lot to the point of even getting it flagged! (Someone has now unflagged it).
Only the competing forces with other geopolitical actors keep them remotely honest. The EU, demonstrably, is not an honest organization without this.
> Only the competing forces with other geopolitical actors keep them remotely honest.
If competition between unions is important, then why not allow the EU to set up its own rules? Perhaps the US is wrong this time and the DSA will result in a more fair market and better online discourse as promised.
Or it will turn into a authoritarian censorship machine, then at least the US will know never to adopt something similar. But we won't solve anything by just maintaining the status quo and attacking anyone that tries to enforce their own set of rules within their own jurisdiction.
If X doesn't want to deal with those rules they are free to leave.
Lol what? This site gets off so hard on reminding everyone that the north won and we're no longer a federal union or anything other than a unitary state controlled by the northeast
Is the idea here to normalize what the Trump administration is doing as “what any hegemon would do”? As far as I’m aware, the US largely avoided using its power to directly prosecute one man’s personal vendettas?
The idea here is that all hegemonic power will eventually be abused, unless there's a system of checks on it. The same thing prevents "benevolent dictatorships" from existing.
The US has a system of checks, but 2.5 of the three of them are seriously compromised. A system of checks alone isn’t enough to prevent any abuse of power, and abuse of power isn’t limited to global hegemons. What really makes abuse of power dangerous is normalizing it. The more people expect power to be abused, the more likely it becomes that power will be abused.
Yeah, but geopolitics is a chaotic system and the US foreign policy has failed at pretty much everything for decades now - these are the people who managed to cement Taliban control of Afghanistan and appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe. If it is coming from the US State Department they are so bad at international politics that there is a pretty good chance that the path to thwarting them is following their plan. The most powerful era of Europe was literally when they had lots of small but technically and socially advanced countries competing with each other. It was literally a world-conquering combination that put them centuries ahead of everyone else. In some sense the reason the EU exists is to try and hold the Germans back; talking about breaking it up is one of those careful-what-you-wish-for requests.
> If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.
The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.
Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!
> appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
Not surprising at all considering that socialism and centrally planned economies are inherently more efficient than liberal free markets - by removing the constant pressure for quarterly profit and removing or severely limiting the bourgeoise who only exist to take the value generated by companies for themselves, you have a system that does a much better job of allocating labour and resources. For example, imagine how much better Windows 11 would be if Satya Nadella wasn't taking home a $100m salary and that money was spent hiring or paying developers.
Frankly, American capitalists got so high on their own supply after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they thought they didn't need to keep the boot on the necks of the communists any longer. As soon as the pressure came off the superiority of the Chinese communist system became evident and is virtually impossible to stop now.
As far as I can tell these people are not on the SDN list (which would defacto deny them a bank account anywhere in the west plus kill their azure ad login) but merely on a travel ban.
For a country that actively bans school books on "gender ideology", fires federal workers that show any support for all things "WOKE", it is absolutely hilarious that they're also seeing themselves as the last bastion of free speech.
They are not serious people. Plain and simple.
The day these clowns are kicked out can't come soon enough.
At the level it existed before the 2nd Trump admin, it had supply chains of intelligence, capability, and the ability to project actual force and support.
Europe is struggling with an energy crisis because of its sanctions against Russia. I'm sure those Iranian and Venezuelan oil fields willook awfully enticing after the Americans break down more and more American-European trade ties. Who knows, maybe a sizable oil investment might convince the Iranians to stop contributing to the Ukrainian invasion.
This just isn't really true any more. The Scandinavian countries have become net green energy exporters including over winter (lots of wind power and biogas in municipal heating networks) and the block as a whole is banning Russian gas imports from next year. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IP...)
The price per kWh has dropped sharply in recent years compared to the invasion peak, though they are about double what they were before COVID (not inflation adjusted) - see https://skilky-skilky.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Househ.... It's the UK that's up the shitter but that's far from uncommon....
Scandinavian electricity won't fire my gas-based boiler, not will it light my stove.
Power in general is doing just fine (though the oil countries are doing another squeeze to drive up the price again), but specific power sources quite a few European countries are currently relying on like natural gas are still hard to come by. Prices did drop after this summer, but are still higher than the standard rate before the Russian invasion.
I'd love to go all-electric, but the chances of being able to afford a place of my own before the end of the Trump presidency are slimmer than the probability that my government gets its electrical network in order (current estimation: 2035).
Funny how time and time again, users of this forum mix obvious fiction and facts about Europe and the EU. I guess it's too difficult to read up on these things before posting an opinion reflecting rightwing US politicians
The day will come when we ban Steve Bannon, Elon Musk and JD Vance from the UK, and I think for the first two at least, the day is getting closer.
(I personally expect Vance to be banned from the UK - along with Denmark and Greenland - as soon as he is no longer VP. But then I suspect his days of international travel will end then more generally.)
But since diplomacy requires proportionality, maybe we start with Bannon, or Nick Fuentes, or Andrew Auernheimer. (They really should be banned from travel here like Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Don Black and Mark Weber already are.)
I don't think Dubya has been in Europe since his presidency, in 2011 he famously cancelled a speech in Switzerland because a human right groups called for his arrest for war crimes..
I don't understand how Trump was ever allowed back into the UK on the basis of his criminality (e.g. a persistent offender who shows particular disregard for the law).
It'd be awkward to ban Vance as he's the Vice President so covered by the Vienna Convention. The others, I'm quite surprised they haven't been banned already, especially after Elon Musk quite literally attempted to incite violence on the streets of the UK.
Bannon is a convicted criminal money-launderer and fraudster; we ban such people all the time (and so do other countries). But he's also agitating against UK interests (and interfered in our politics before).
Musk has literally called for violence on our streets; we ban people who do that too. We should consider banning foreigners who appear to be funding political activity here.
Vance is actively acting against the interests of the UK and EU (actively agitating against political union) in a way that benefits our adversaries, and he lionises neo-nazis.
A general atmosphere that we sometimes ban white nationalists and neo-nazis when they actively provoke violence or hatred or illegally interfere in our politics to destabilise the country?
Oh no, I'm sorry if this is upsetting or surprising to anyone!
Seriously: Vance will be persona non grata when this is over. The list of countries that should ban him is longer than the one I made (Germany should, for example). The list of countries he won't risk visiting is probably longer still. But then I think he won't risk leaving the USA at all after this is all over. And nor should he.
And as others have observed, Musk has actively attempted to foment violence in the UK; people get banned from other countries (including the USA) for that all the time.
Your country is being 'destabilized' by your own government refusing to address popular concerns. No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
Instead of addressing the underlying issues causing societal destabilization, just as countless failed governments have before, your government is focused on doubling down and making people shut up about it.
Yes, a lot of these people are bigots or cranks. But people living in well-run countries don't listen to bigots and cranks. They aren't a problem. People start listening to bigots and cranks when nobody else will listen to them. Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms. Silencing people to maintain public order and harmony is the siren song of every failing authoritarian government there's ever been.
> Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms.
Banning criminals and neonazis who act against our nation's interests is a simple matter of sovereignty and I hope we continue to do it despite your and JD Vance's opinions; it's a right the nation reserves.
> No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
This is pie-in-the-sky fantasy. It's just not true at all.
The tiniest, most meaningless, most temporary grievance can be exploited by demagogues and everyone knows it. Including the American president.
> No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
This is pretty much how extremism and cult recruitment work. Wording this as a disprovable statement was of utility.
People in well run companies listen to bigots and cranks. People listen to entertaining bigots and cranks all the time.
I mean, you are talking about the country which listened to the Brexit crowd.
Their current situation is also another massive self own, which happened because they listened to cranks!
Most of the west has been unprepared for how the information economy they grew up with from the 1940s onwards, has been taken over.
——-
I get the argument you are trying to make, that seeds only sprout when the conditions are right.
The supporting argument is adulterated since the advent of cable television and mass media. Rupert Murdoch has single handedly been able to decide what agendas survive for decades.
> This is pretty much how extremism and cult recruitment work. Wording this as a disprovable statement was of utility.
"On it's own" is the key hinge in that statement. They impact people the social system has already failed. The type of extremism is really irrelevant; the fact of extremism is a signal that something is going wrong. Suppressing the signal doesn't actually help anything. You or I could watch 200 hours of Nazi programming without feeling the slightest bit of inclination to start harming Jewish people. You have to be already screwed up to be seriously threatened by extremist content.
> I mean, you are talking about the country which listened to the Brexit crowd.
This is a great example. Remain had nearly unanimous elite support. Despite a massive state propaganda campaign, the Brexit campaign won the referendum. This should have been a huge flashing red light with air raid sirens to the UK elite class that something had gone horribly wrong with their management of the country. Instead, all that's happened is sneering contempt toward the stupid proles who voted at the behest of shadowy puppet masters against their own interests. Even the Brexiteer politicians themselves were obviously none too concerned about popular opinion, as Brexit was obviously in part driven by immigration fears, which they did less than nothing about - vote what you will, the UK politicians of either side know better than you. Indeed instead of addressing this at all, UK politicians have cracked down with increasing harshness on criminal opinions and speech, culminating in kafkaesque absurdities like Greta Thurberg being arrested for expressing support for the wrong side in a foreign conflict that should have nothing to do with the UK, or the laughable pretense that the UK government is utterly helpless to do anything about small boat landings other than put them up in hotels.
> Most of the west has been unprepared for how the information economy they grew up with from the 1940s onwards, has been taken over.
"Since the 1940s" is an important caveat. Broadcast media, in particular state control of broadcast media, really change the way the elite classes perceived the world. By installing their own people to control the media apparatus, they began to only see the world through their own lens and to believe that popular opinion could be largely controlled via the media, because that's all they saw. (In the US, for example, FDR used the FCC as a weapon to suppress dissent in radio.) Even print media was subject to enormous consolidation and unprecedented state control. What we're seeing now is something much more closely resembling the pre-war media environment, where the "wrong people" often got very large audiences, and false rumors and misinformation ran rampant. But all these sentiments and problems still existed postwar, they just stopped being visible to the political and intellectual elites.
> Even the Brexiteer politicians themselves were obviously none too concerned about popular opinion, as Brexit was obviously in part driven by immigration fears, which they did less than nothing about
Eh? People in the official Vote Leave campaign stoked those fears over literally THIRTY YEARS and were happy to leave the unofficial Leave.EU campaign to explicitly stoke them with racist campaigning.
I don't know where you get the idea that the Leave campaigns were complacent about racisms and bigotry and xenophobia; they excused it or amplified it at every turn (while lying about everything else)
The seriousness of immigration problems remains a black-hearted fucking fabrication drummed up by every single right wing newspaper in this country over the entirety of my life.
I don't think you really know what you are talking about because, for example:
> Remain had nearly unanimous elite support.
This just isn't true. I know some people who move in pretty elite circles, City circles, Oxbridge, and I can tell you that Brexit had at least lukewarm support and in some circles (those who don't know or don't care that Boris is a habitual liar) rabid support.
> I don't know where you get the idea that the Leave campaigns were complacent about racisms and bigotry and xenophobia; they excused it or amplified it at every turn (while lying about everything else)
I'm saying that despite knowing the populace had problems with immigration, and that this was a big driver of the Brexit vote, they had the Boriswave.
Secondly, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about: you're dismissing at least half the population, who has repeatedly voted for meaningful immigration restrictions in the UK and never gotten them, as racist xenophobic black-hearted bigots. Even if this was 100% true, you have to address this, rather than just leveraging institutional power to silence them. You have to actually convince people they're wrong in democratic societies, and if you can't, you have to steer the ship of state in the direction they want, or you are building up explosive and dangerous forces. You don't get to say 52% of people are wrong, screw them, we're not doing what they want because they're bigots.
There are deeper questions involved here too: whether it is a "good thing" or not, it is true that migration in the UK in many other places has resulted in rapid and massive demographic and cultural change. In no case did this take place with democratic input; instead, it was treated at some sort of natural, unavoidable force of nature, and now anyone who has any problem with it is a racist bigot. Perhaps all this could have been avoided with periodical referenda on desired immigration levels, which would have legitimized the whole ordeal. It's likely there never would have been a Brexit vote, although the UK's increasingly miserable economic path may have pushed something like it to happen eventually anyway - even before Brexit, the UK was simply in an awful, awful position economically, particularly stunning for what was a short time ago one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Perhaps UK politicians should consider some sort of dramatic change rather than re-arranging the deck chairs and arresting people for holding crimethink signs if they don't want social unrest.
(To be fair, I don't think there's much that can be done other than managed decline. The UK economy has been almost entirely hollowed out except for the finance and service sectors, the former of which survives only due to inertia from their glory days. Thatcher and Churchill really did a number on the UK. And regardless of your thoughts on immigration, at no time in history has it promoted social cohesion and harmony.)
> This just isn't true. I know some people who move in pretty elite circles, City circles, Oxbridge, and I can tell you that Brexit had at least lukewarm support and in some circles (those who don't know or don't care that Boris is a habitual liar) rabid support.
Regardless of personal anecdata, the data shows Brexit support was highly stratified by social class, income, and education.
> Regardless of personal anecdata, the data shows Brexit support was highly stratified by social class, income, and education.
This is just not really true at all. The push for Brexit itself clearly came from the super-wealthy; it could not have happened without them. It is as if you haven't paid attention at all to who was behind it and why.
This is apparently representative of what that means at this moment in time.
I think it's pretty extreme too, but on searching, none of the participants' positions seem to have been disowned by their own side. One of them actually fundraised $30000 afterwards.
So, you want to be weaker by your own intention and demand that someone should take care of you? Caveman mentality is far more advanced than your mentality.
In the last electoral cycle I've seen firsthand censorship applied to remote acquaintances because of the newly added EU DSA (this in and of itself would not be a huge disaster [by EU standards] if it wasn't accompanied by arrests), which was used as justification over some posts on TikTok and X; therefore I don't really care who hurts the pro-censorship faction within the EU. People have been arrested in WE for speech online for more than a decade now, but now it also happens in EE, where I live, bringing back communist-era "vibes". You would excuse me if the anti-Trump or anti-US (because of the current administration) rhetoric doesn't move me regarding this.
Or let me guess, "Trump bad and therefore we should accept DSA/Chat control 2.0/3.0/etc."? Sorry, I don't care. And people who think this is only about the recent X fine are also wrong (this started last year when Thierry Breton started influencing european elections while also boasting about how he can annul such elections without repercussions; you can deduce what I'm talking about by asking an LLM). This is in part US gov. protecting private companies (and thus itself) from fines, sure, but the broader point about censorship within the west applies. Everything that hurts the people making legislation regarding the Internet (or software in general) within the EU should be welcomed with open arms.
EU apologists would rather change the subject and talk about Trump and the polarizing social environment in the US rather than acknowledge that within the EU, there's not even a chance for discourse to be had about any policy(especially the nonexistent free speech) due to the aforementioned laws. The same people will act surprised when extreme positions regarding the EU are adopted by an ever-increasing number of people "until morale improves".
The EU does far too little to prevent election influencing. From Cambridge Analytica, proof of foreign bribery, algorithmic promotion of bot content by X and Meta specifically intended to undermine democracies, there's plenty of election fixing happening, and the EU should be much more aggressive about preventing it.
Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Everybody knows about Cambridge Analytica being used in the US/UK, but, for example, little to no one knows that Cambridge Analytica was also used by political parties within the EU (I won't give specific names [for now], but parties [from Italy, Malta, CZ, and Romania], members of the euro-parliamentary groups EPP/RE/SD, in the 2014-2016 period). Why did nothing happen back then? Those mentioned parties were usually pro-EU, so it's not really surprising no such "scandal" was being discovered until later on, when Cambridge Analytica was being used by the UK/US.
And the Cambridge Analytica "phenomenon" is not really something you can realistically prevent. I'm sure it happens now with some other better firm (Palantir probably), but this is really beside the point. The point is that normal citizens, like you and me, are effectively censored upon suspicion before any burden of proof is provided. Nothing says "protecting democracy" like deleting posts from social media and then finding out the context.
> Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Sure, nobody likes bots/paid shills. But of course, in a normal society, you have to prove those posts are made by actual bots/content farms before taking any action. Otherwise it's just censorship. Election interference always happens, without exceptions, but degrees vary. This is not to say we shouldn't point out when it happens, but to not do censorship against our own citizens because "the models indicate a pattern akin to foreign entities." Patterns are not burdens of proof, and thus employing a "crowdfunded" fact-checking system like Community Notes or the one from YouTube is at least partly the actual solution instead of directly removing content. Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.
> Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.
Unlike any other legislation, globally, the DSA actually has tools to contest this.
Take a look at out of court dispute settlement bodies.
Hell - you have more power to gain accountability under the DSA than you do under the US system.
"Interference" in elections, even foreign interference, is not a new problem. It has been a problem for at least 2500 years. The nice thing about a democracy, though, is you still have to convince masses of people to vote a certain way, rather than simply influencing a few bureaucrats/aristocrats. And well, if masses of people can be convinced to vote for something you don't like, in a democracy it's your responsibility to show them why they're wrong, rather than treating them like dummies without the intellectual capacity to make their own responsible decisions. If you think people are too stupid to make decisions in the face of the wrong propaganda, you are conceding that you don't believe in democracy at all - at best you believe in stage-managed popular support to make your non-democratic government appear legitimate.
The EU doesn't want to accept that millions of people don't share the EU elite consensus on several issues - usually still a minority of people, but a substantial minority. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to steer the ship of state with the winds of the times, they are simply declaring all bad political opinions to be the result of the Russians, the Americans, or the corporations, or some combination of the three. Countries in which serious conversations are had about banning one of the most popular political parties for wrongthink can only ironically be considered democratic.
The only arrest (including jail time) I've heard of over internet shit was someone named Tate, and I'm pretty sure it was over suspicion of online pimping/hustling (not sure how it ended up), so I would love to know who was arrested because of the DSA, to see if it match.
I disagree in principle, but let's say the people decide to do so. Not only in US (under section 230) those are not media companies, but in EU too, social networks like Facebook/Instagram/etc. are treated legally as "public squares" and not media companies like BBC/etc. When you defame somebody on Instagram, you're the one being held legally responsible, not Meta. Why would social networks be responsible for DSA violations made by the users? This is beyond the fact that implementing an "instant-takedowns" censorship mechanism is draconian. DSA's Articles 16-17 do not require the person (who can also be anonymous, which is ironic) who is reporting the content to provide >legally sufficient< evidence for the takedown. Which goes directly against what I would consider "normal" in a society where you're innocent until proven guilty. The "trusted flaggers" (article 22) do need to submit more evidence, but this just becomes a problem of "partisanship" and bias. This basically means you can report someone for illegal activity, provide unnecessary evidence(in the legal sense), and the content is taken down, with the "battle" starting afterwards.
YouTube's system of DMCA takedown(the copyright issue being way more serious legally than what DSA is supposed to protect against) is not perfect and cannot be perfect (proven by the fact that content is unjustly taken down all the time). DSA is just the same, except more vague, more complicated and (imo) ultimately worse.
DSA has an appeal mechanism, with an option for out-of-court settlements, which means you can employ independent fact-checkers (certified by Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs)); the list of certified bodies is, of course, maintained by the European Commission. The problem is that these DSCs are appointed by each country's gov., which means there's potential room for conflict of interests not only at a national level(I find hard to believe appointed DSCs are completely impartial to the gov. that appointed them) but also at an EU-wide level(certified fact-checking bodies who are supposedly not influenced by EC when judging cases pertaining to EU in international cases).
It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically. Brusselocrats are career politicians caring more about their CV than the spirit of their actions. They do populist flashy things, it's not like they'd lose an election or anything. Ban them all you want, you re just buttering their bread , it's another bullet in their CV, a badge of honor.
Then again, Trump has to win the election, and the Bell curve is symmetrical. Sanctioning EU politicians is less like sanctioning elected national politicians, and more like sanctioning artists. No nation was offended
See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system. But tbh, Europeans deserve it, for they use and abuse of sanctions themselves, as some of Swiss citizens can attest.
> Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?
When it stops being a disagreement over policy and becomes a paid job for a foreign government to spread as much malicious FUD as possible.
The former commander of Russian ground forces recently gave a long interview in which he said that the Russian army was on the verge of total collapse in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were pushing them back during the highly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. Mearsheimer, Sachs, et al played a vital role in spreading FUD and unfounded fears that led to less military support for Ukraine than was needed. As a result, hundreds of thousands more people are dead than might have been had Ukraine been supported properly.
Mearsheimer alone has done more to deny modern weapons to Ukraine than the entire Russian air force could. In terms of ROI, he has been a spectacularly cost-effective propaganda asset. He has the blood of countless people on his hands and deserves to be hanged. But instead, he will kick the bucket due to natural causes in old age, a luxury not afforded to the children who died in their bedrooms under Russian missile attacks that Mearsheimer twisted himself into a pretzel to enable and justify.
This just sounds like scapegoating to disguise lack of political will in the west. Did Mearsheimer have that kind of influence among Western governments?
I guess we're going to see more of such scapegoating as western politicians fail to deliver on their promises on Ukraine. Where's the multinational force that was going to defend Ukraine?
If I recall correctly, Vladimir Chirkin (commander-in-chief of Russian ground forces 2012-2013) said that in the 27 November 2025 interview with Yuri Tamantsev on RBC. I went back to verify it, but the entire interview is now missing from both RBC's website and Tamantsev's YouTube channel as well. Only a reupload of the first segment can be found on another YouTube channel.
> When it stops being a disagreement over policy and becomes a paid job for a foreign government to spread as much malicious FUD as possible.
Where is the evidence for your claim that Mearsheimer and Sachs are being paid to spread malicious FUD?
Are you implying that the officials in charge of providing support for the Ukrainian war effort believed that Mearsheimer and Sachs had access to superior intelligence on Russian's war disposition?
Blaming a YouTube analyst for the slow pace of weapons transfers and not the EU and NATO officials who were actually responsible for said transfers is a spectacular cope. If NATO is getting marching orders from random 3rd parties on YouTube and TV networks then there are a million problems more urgent to address than Mearscheimer's analysis here.
No, the reason for the slow trickle of weapons was because the West got high on their own supply after the successful 2022 offensives and actually thought they could break the Russian line without advanced weaponry. In that way Mearscheimer's message of caution was bang on - Ukraine should have negotiated peace when they had the upper hand, hundreds of thousands of good Ukranian and Russian men would be alive today.
What kind of "peace" would that be? Russia is not interested in peace, or do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?
The peace of Ukraine being neutral? Ukraine was officially neutral in 2014 (law from 2010, pushed by Russia), and see how that went.
So again, what kind of peace are you talking about?
Edit: Let me make the problem very clear:
- Ukraine wants a peace deal where Russia can't invaded again. After their experience with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the want hard security guarantees, not just Russian words on a piece of paper.
- Russia wants a peace deal where Ukraine's army is limited, and that doesn't allow foreign troops in Ukraine. Something else is unacceptable for them. In other words, a peace deal that is the perfect setup to invade again.
So again, what kind of peace deal are you talking about?
I’ve seen his interviews on YouTube and I’m not sure if he is a Russian asset or just says things contrary to the western narrative. There is a propaganda war.
So what hard evidence that he is working for the Russians?
If the people who attacked Ukraine without provocation - just as they attacked other neighbours in other regions - are attempting to bring down a democratically elected regimes across the region, so they can replace them with weak compliant puppets, the "thought crime" becomes straightforward self defence.
It was though. If Russia wanted to annex Ukrainian separatist states, it could have done so before they invaded.
Since it didn't, Ukraine never attacked Russian territory.
Then Ukraine the elected a Jewish person whose mother tongue is Russian and speaks Ukrainian with a slight russian accent. Which threw their 'Nazis who want to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainians' narrative in the trash, and maybe it was lived as a provocation since it made Russian propagandists looks like fools.
(1) It seems unlikely that the Russians would care about Ukraine having a Jewish president. Wikipedia suggests the Nazis killed around 3 Russians for every 2 Jews who died in the Holocaust and the Nazis never got to fully implement the plan [0] where they seriously tried to wipe out Slavic populations. "Nazi" to the Russians presumably means something different than Jew-hater. They don't need ideological tropes like the Americans do to justify why the Nazis were a unique evil - they were in the direct ad explicit Nazi firing line.
> If Russia wanted to annex Ukrainian separatist states, it could have done so before they invaded.
(2) You're not being very clear about your meaning when you say this. The obvious reading to me is that Russia had alternative routes to gain control of Ukrainian separatist states, which seems too weird to be what you mean - if that is the case then that would suggest they are invading because something political provoked them.
? Néo-nazis still hate on all Jews, this didn't change with the Gaza war.
I still think it is hard to call an entire nation neo-nazi, and then have that nation vote for a Jew (especially when that nation have a huge Christian majority.).
Like I said, it made propagandists look like fools.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, they were officially neutral (law from 2010, pushed by Russia). At the time of the invasion, there was neither political nor public will to join NATO.
Another fact: Maidan was not about joining NATO, but having equal economic ties to both Russia and EU.
So can you acknowledge that Russia didn't invade Ukraine because of NATO expansion?
Does it sound weird to you that after Russia's invasion in 2014, Ukraine cancelled their neutral status and wanted to join NATO?
Jaques Baud is not a "mouthpiece". He has never appeared on Russian state TV and has taken great pains to avoid citing Russian sources in his analysis. The problem is that what he has been saying about the Ukraine war (that the war is not winnable and peace should be negotiated as soon as possible) is dangerous as to European leadership.
It's not remotely dangerous to the European leadership.
It is dangerous to EU citizens who are on the receiving end of a campaign to radicalise national governments with far-right Russian-funded puppet regimes which will - clearly, as we can see in the US - be absolutely hostile to existing freedoms.
Honestly I feel like people won't care and the sanctioning helps less and less if it doesn't do the opposite.
They feel like repeatedly the baby was thrown out with the bathwater wrt migration and the like despite popular opinion being very much against those.
Often getting no genuine choice of opposition that wasn't fringe right.
Now I know so many people who will in turn throw out the bathwater containing their national or supranational interests, rule of law (that limited their options), etc.
People who one will struggle to reach across the isle... and it was utterly predictable.
If they don't want far-right Russian puppets to win then they should actually respond to the wants and needs of their voters instead of scolding anyone who goes against their neoliberal warmonger groupthink as "pro-Russian", whatever that means. They're only digging their own graves if they think denying reality will save them.
Or maybe we should stop the propaganda arm of the US fascists distorting the reality around here and inventing needs that our population doesn't actually need so that they are pushed towards far right parties?
Or how about making sure the corrupted US society do something about them messing up the world economy because rich people want to be richer and so they bought their governments through once again their propaganda arms of all the social media and news corporations they bought?
What about the parts where the US would bomb constantly the ME thus making the people living there want to move out. But of course they won't go to the place that bombed them, especially since there's a whole ocean between them so instead they come to us in the Europe. Oh and if it's not bombs, it's global warming anyway, another thing the current US government pushes hard for.
If you insinuate the current Russian govt is related in spirit with the hitlerian regime, please read a history book that wasn't written by cold war obsessed westerners.
> See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.
You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.
That is not how SWIFT works at all. SWIFT is basically a peer to peer financial network between banks. Any bank can send any amount of money to any other bank, without any kind of approval from the US, provided they have an appropriate common facility. Which could be anything from both banks having accounts at a different common bank, or both banks holding accounts at a common national bank, which allows them to transact directly.
Pretty sure I saw an article describing some approval process. While trying to find it I found references to FATCA, TFTP, and some reporting by the NYT
The US can and does sanction entities that facilitate transactions it doesn't like, by cutting them off from the dollar system. That may be the source of your confusion.
You can't just hold a referendum to decide the relations between Switzerland and the EU -- the EU also gets to have a say. We have been incredibly patient with Switzerland in this regard but it can't continue. You must respect the agreements we already have with you and you cannot dictate the terms of new agreements with us.
(Background: some of the agreements with Switzerland have run out and we need new ones to replace them. Both sides continue as if the old agreements are still valid, Switzerland because it would hurt the country enormously if we didn't, the EU because it avoids antagonizing Switzerland and because it would slightly annoying if we didn't. We can literally take our marbles and go home without breaking any treaties with Switzerland. Many Swiss don't seem to understand that.)
Gun ownership is legal in France, why would EU care about it in Switzerland? Are you sure this information is from a trustworthy source? The rest I see where you're coming from, but this particular bit sounds like propaganda to me.
>If we don't comply, they will impose sanctions. They are even trying to make gun ownership illegal in Switzerland...
UK is the proof that nobody is forced to be part of EU or have good relations with EU. EU also forces food not contain excrements, where is your freedom to buy food with exfements?
As you can see I can also say ridiculous things.
Which "leftists" have monopolized the EU? What positions do they have to exert that kind of power, and what parties are they affiliated with?
Or is the EPP with the likes of Weber and von der Leyen "leftist" now? You have move quite far towards the extreme right for traditional conservative politicians to appear "leftist" to you.
Nationalism is on the rise in most EU countries and they get away with saying all kinds of things you apparently dream about, but feel censored to say. The tale of lacking free speech is a lie.
Free speech in the EU is different from the US. Insulting people is not considered free speech in the EU. Calling "fire" in a packed cinema wrongly is not covered by free speech in the EU.
You can say a lot of things, but you might feel social pressure, which is a feature, not a bug.
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