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EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

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Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#61

Post by embedding-shape »

Aerroon wrote: post #55
embedding-shape wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "any company", it's exceptionally large platforms who can give insight into large societal questions and have enough influence to sway people's opinions. The data is technically public already, researchers could scrape it, but investigations has to be able to be done to ensure the platforms aren't used to intentionally steer people's opinion in a specific direction, since they're unable to self regulate that…

But governments themselves can steer people's opinions just fine? Can I get access to my politicians' emails "for research purposes"?

No, they cannot. And yes, in some countries you can request that if you have a reason for it.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#62

Post by Frannky »

I left the EU years ago. Today, I feel way happier and freer. Once you're out, you realize how strongly they were influencing your ability to be free via rules, taxes, news, low salaries, and business start-up costs. Try it yourself if you get the chance.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#63

Post by Zigurd »

Aerroon wrote: post #55
embedding-shape wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "any company", it's exceptionally large platforms who can give insight into large societal questions and have enough influence to sway people's opinions. The data is technically public already, researchers could scrape it, but investigations has to be able to be done to ensure the platforms aren't used to intentionally steer people's opinion in a specific direction, since they're unable to self regulate that…

But governments themselves can steer people's opinions just fine? Can I get access to my politicians' emails "for research purposes"?

> Can I get access to my politicians' emails "for research purposes"?

In the US that's called an FOIA. It could include their personal devices if they use them for work communication. It's not limited to research purposes.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#64

Post by Ylpertnodi »

Frannky wrote: post #62

I left the EU years ago. Today, I feel way happier and freer. Once you're out, you realize how strongly they were influencing your ability to be free via rules, taxes, news, low salaries, and business start-up costs. Try it yourself if you get the chance.

Give us a vague breakdown of you finances, might do.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#65

Post by alephnerd »

sofixa wrote: post #49
alephnerd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's also a dozen non-EU countries that have one, and that number has been growing rapidly Not really. Most of them offer significant carve-outs for American BigTech companies, or their implementation has been stayed, or significant capex subsidizes are provided to help reduce their impact for American BigTechs considering FDI in those countries. It has been a DNC supported policy [0] as well to put pressure on…

You're still not explaining how the DSA is supposedly a negotiating tactic from the EU any more than you could say that about GDPR. It's a new legal framewo tackling a relatively new set of problems. If any of them get watered down because of deals with the US, then you could make that sort of claim. > Anyhow, we've unofficially signalled we are leaving the responsibility of Europe's defenses to Europe by 2027 [6] -…

> Or just buying from the existing European providers? Most American gear has a (sometimes better, cf. all the stuff even the US buys from European companies) European based equivalent.

That might happen over the long term (I still have doubts given that whenever a joint EU project is formed between two countries with vendors, they inevitabely end up collapsing due to domestic political considerations such as the European MBT and FCAS - no leader wants to be the leader who shut down a factory with 1200 high paying unionized jobs for the greater good), but cannot happen in the 1 year timeframe given.

The reality is, if we the US make a deal with Russia over the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the next 12 months, the EU will have no choice but to accept it if you do not put boots on the ground and if you do not expropriate Russian government assets in the EU. But your leadership class has rejected [2] both [3].

> European manufacturers need to increase output, and they have been working on it and have done so quite a lot already.

Not enough for the 1 year time frame needed

> how the DSA is supposedly a negotiating tactic from the EU any more than you could say that about GDPR

We view the DSA as a non-tariff barrier to American services companies. This is both a Trump admin view [0] as well as a Biden-era admin view [1].

We held similarly negative views about the GDPR until Ireland, Czechia, Poland, and Luxembourg accommodated us by hiring our lobbyists as their commissioners.

And this is why every single pan-EU project fails - every major country like the US (previously listed) and China [4][5] cultivated economic and political ties with members that act as vetos in decisions that have a unanimity requirements.

This is why I gave the comparison to the Qing and Mughal Empire - the English, French, and other European nations broke both empires by leveraging one-sided economic deals with subnational units (eg. the Bengal Subah in the Mughal Empire and the unequal treaties in the Qing Empire), which slowly gnawed away at unity.

We in the US, China, Russia, India, and others are starting to do the same to you - not out of explicit strategy, but due to the return of multipolarity and most European state's failure to recover from the Eurozone crisis.

[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/3f67b6ca-7259-4612-8e51-12b497128...

[1] - https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/-wyden-and-cra...

[2] - https://tvn24.pl/polska/szczyt-w-paryzu-donald-tusk-przed-wy...

[3] - https://www.ft.com/content/616c79ee-34de-425a-865e-e94ba10be...

[4] - http://en.cppcc.gov.cn/2025-11/13/c_1140641.htm

[5] - https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202405/10/content_WS663d3b83...

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#66

Post by sofixa »

alephnerd wrote: post #65
sofixa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still not explaining how the DSA is supposedly a negotiating tactic from the EU any more than you could say that about GDPR. It's a new legal framewo tackling a relatively new set of problems. If any of them get watered down because of deals with the US, then you could make that sort of claim. > Anyhow, we've unofficially signalled we are leaving the responsibility of Europe's defenses to Europe by 2027 [6] -…

> Or just buying from the existing European providers? Most American gear has a (sometimes better, cf. all the stuff even the US buys from European companies) European based equivalent. That might happen over the long term (I still have doubts given that whenever a joint EU project is formed between two countries with vendors, they inevitabely end up collapsing due to domestic political considerations such as the Eur…

> whenever a joint EU project is formed between two countries with vendors, they inevitabely end up collapsing due to domestic political considerations such as the European MBT and FCAS - no leader wants to be the leader who shut down a factory with 1200 high paying unionized jobs for the greater good

Eurofighter Typhoon and before that the Panavia Tornado. That lineage's next up is the GCAP 6th gen plane.

Horizon/Orizonte and after that the FREMM (which is so good even the US are buying it). In general Italian/French naval cooperation is very strong.

The whole of MBDA and hell even Airbus were created for inter-country cooperation.

There are plenty of successful examples on which to build on, as well as failures from which to learn. But again, today very few military things cannot be sourced from a European supplier. BAE, Leonardo, Dassault, Thales, Rheinmetall, KNDS, Saab, Fincantieri, Naval Group, Indra, Airbus, MBDA etc. are world leaders in their respective fields.

> The reality is, if we the US make a deal with Russia over the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the next 12 months, the EU will have no choice but to accept it if you do not put boots on the ground and if you do not expropriate Russian government assets in the EU

No? US can sign whatever bootlicking deal it wants with Russia, but it's up to Ukraine what happens actually. The EU will continue backing Ukraine. Boots on the ground are highly unlikely, but exploration of Russian assets is quite probable (opposition isn't massive, and as time goes on, will only whither).

> We view the DSA as a non-tariff barrier to American services companies. This is both a Trump admin view [0] as well as a Biden-era admin view [1].

Cool, nobody cares. The US has put in sufficient actual tariffs that it cannot scream "unfair". EU leaders will try to negotiate whatever they can to lower short term economic damage, but the long term damage is done. The US is not a reliable trade or anything partner, and there's no going back on that.

Regarding your Mughal and Qing comparisons... Damn, where do I even start? EU isn't a country, so the comparison is off from the start.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#67

Post by aydyn »

defrost wrote: post #47
aydyn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it wrong? The US had nukes, Germany didnt. The US showed a willingness to use them too. Twice in fact.

Let's see; \1 In real actual history, the US didn't developed a working nuclear weapon based on UK provided designs until after the German surrender. So in real history there was no chance to "glass" an active EU war zone during WWII. \2 In the GP's fantasy history in which the US left Europe alone to deal with the Nazi's on their own, the MAUD folk would have never passed on their research to the US and the US would…

This is historical revisionism.

The US saw the MAUD report before entering the war. American scientists received copies as early as October (chemist James Conant received it october 3). But the US didnt commit to entering the war until after Pearl Harbor, December 8.

You are mixing the order of events.

Second you are overstating its importance. The primary contribution of the report is scientific feasibility.

Every part of the engineering and design of the bombs was done in secret in the US without any other country collaboration. They didnt need "UK provided designs" because there was no such thing.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#68

Post by briandw »

tene80i wrote: post #26
briandw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter created that definition and now the EU has the divine right to not let them change it? Verified can and does mean many things.

They have the legal right, similar to the federal government in the USA. You can disagree with their judgement, but they clearly have the right to enforce it.

If every government in the world has a say on everything, nothing is permitted.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#69

Post by rsynnott »

qcnguy wrote: post #57
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's bizarre about it? There's lots of legislation that requires companies to report on various data or to provide access to auditors. It's legally valid. I think there's a compelling case to be made for requiring large social media platforms to provide data access to researchers, considering the platform's incredible ability to influence elections and society at-large.

Auditors != researchers. Auditors are hired by the company being audited, have a very narrow and fixed mission justified by previous financial blowups that caused a lot of concrete damage to specific people, and there are strict standards defining what they are looking for and how. Audits don't tend to suck up personal data of customers. "Researchers" here means self-selecting academics going on arbitrary fishing exp…

> Auditors are hired by the company being audited

Not necessarily; regulatory bodies, particularly tax authorities, can and do impose auditors upon companies.

Re: EU hits X with €120M fine for breaching the Digital Services Act

#70

Post by alephnerd »

sofixa wrote: post #66
alephnerd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or just buying from the existing European providers? Most American gear has a (sometimes better, cf. all the stuff even the US buys from European companies) European based equivalent. That might happen over the long term (I still have doubts given that whenever a joint EU project is formed between two countries with vendors, they inevitabely end up collapsing due to domestic political considerations such as the Eur…

> whenever a joint EU project is formed between two countries with vendors, they inevitabely end up collapsing due to domestic political considerations such as the European MBT and FCAS - no leader wants to be the leader who shut down a factory with 1200 high paying unionized jobs for the greater good Eurofighter Typhoon and before that the Panavia Tornado. That lineage's next up is the GCAP 6th gen plane. Horizon/Or…

> The EU will continue backing Ukraine

How? Ukraine uses American intel for targeting, a significant amount of American munitions either bought directly from the US or indirectly by member states, and more critically, we in the US can force Ukraine to the table by preventing access to these systems.

> but exploration of Russian assets is quite probable (opposition isn't massive...

How? Belgium has vetoed expropriating Russian assets [0] because the ECB rejected providing a backstop. And Hungary has vetoed the utilization of Eurobonds [1]

If EU member states cannot expropriate Russian assets nor provide boots on the ground in Ukraine nor provide munitions and intel to replace American offerings in the next 1 year, what else is there that the EU can do?

On top of that, we've given the 2027 deadline for NATO, so now what should the EU prioritize?

> That lineage's next up is the GCAP 6th gen plane

Which isn't really an EU project - it's a Leonardo SA - Mitsubishi project as Leonardo is dual British-Italian. And that's my point. No EU joint defense project succeeds because inevitably individual states in the EU protect their champions

> The US is not a reliable trade or anything partner, and there's no going back on that.

Yep. And who else is there? The Chinese gave the exact same ultimatum as the US to European leadership, and so are the Indians as part of the FTA negotiation.

And we can always put the squeeze on Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and LVMH and make both Germany and France squeal [2] and blunt any regulations coming out of the EU as a result - just like the China [3] and India [4].

> are world leaders in their respective fields

They absolutely are in R&D and IP, but their production will not scale out until 2029-35, at which point it would be too late.

[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-03/belgium-r...

[1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-shoots-down-eurobond...

[2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-03/eu-fight-...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/china-eu-trade-spats-n...

[4] - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volksw...

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