Would Elon Pull ExTwitter Out Of The EU To Avoid The DSA Overreach?
from the perhaps-he-should,-but-he-won’t dept
This course of events was all too predictable. In May of 2022, while Elon was still in the “trying to buy Twitter” stage, we pointed out the absolute ridiculousness of him meeting with the EU’s Thierry Breton and saying that he fully endorsed the EU’s DSA approach. As we noted at the time, the whole framework of the DSA was set up to enable the EU to force websites like Twitter to suppress speech, and Elon’s endorsement of it (while claiming to be a “free speech absolutist”) suggested that it would be ridiculously easy for politicians around the globe to play Musk for a fool on speech suppression (something that has since been proven true on multiple occasions).
In fact, if you go back and watch the original video of Breton and Musk, you can almost see Breton snickering at knowing how much he had played Musk.
Of course, last week, Breton started shaking his censor stick at a bunch of social media companies sending many of them letters effectively demanding they remove disinformation or face massive fines under the DSA. As we noted, this was a dangerous and stupid thing for Breton to do, even if we agree that Elon’s been terrible for exTwitter and is wholly unprepared for dealing with the kind of disinfo flowing during a modern crisis. That’s no excuse for the government to demand censorship, however.
A day after sending his threat letter to Musk (not, by the way, Linda Yaccarino), Breton took things up a notch, initiating an official investigation into exTwitter under the DSA.
Today the European Commission services formally sent X a request for information under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This request follows indications received by the Commission services of the alleged spreading of illegal content and disinformation, in particular the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech. The request addresses compliance with other provisions of the DSA as well.
Following its designation as Very Large Online Platform, X is required to comply with the full set of provisions introduced by the DSA since late August 2023, including the assessment and mitigation of risks related to the dissemination of illegal content, disinformation, gender-based violence, and any negative effects on the exercise of fundamental rights, rights of the child, public security and mental well-being.
In this particular case, the Commission services are investigating X’s compliance with the DSA, including with regard to its policies and actions regarding notices on illegal content, complaint handling, risk assessment and measures to mitigate the risks identified. The Commission services are empowered to request further information to X in order to verify the correct implementation of the law.
Now, according to Insider, Musk is considering just closing off the EU from exTwitter rather than deal with this.
I actually think this is the right move. Breton is throwing around his censorial weight, and it would be great if Musk actually did push back a little bit. At the very least, this could establish some boundaries on what the DSA actually enables an unelected bureaucrat like Breton to do regarding internet speech.
In recent weeks Elon Musk has suggested Twitter could stop being accessible in Europe in order to avoid new regulation enacted by the European Commission.
Musk is increasingly frustrated with having to comply with the Digital Services Act, according to a person familiar with the company. The Tesla billionaire, who acquired Twitter, now called X, a year ago for $44 billion, has discussed simply removing the app’s availability in the region, or blocking users in the European Union from accessing it, the person said.
That said, I find it difficult to believe he’d actually do it. As we’ve highlighted, traffic is down. Ad revenue is way, way down. No one’s signing up for “Premium,” and his new $1/year plan is likely to go down in flames as well.
Is he really going to cut off over 400 million EU residents? It… seems unlikely.
Filed Under: content moderation, disinformation, dsa, elon musk, eu, thierry breton
Companies: twitter, x
Comments on “Would Elon Pull ExTwitter Out Of The EU To Avoid The DSA Overreach?”
Oh…
My bad…
I didn’t realize we thought Elon was smart…
Elon, apparently, has been floating around this particular idea for a while.
It is highly unlikely he’ll actually try, though. I mean, this man legit let Modi do whatever the fuck he wanted and wrote puff pieces for Xi (which, hilariously, makes him the most famous wumao).
He WILL let Breton do whatever he wants.
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The difference with Breton is that Musk has a financial incentive to say no, and Twitter/X/Blaze Your Glory/The Everything App is badly hurting for cash. It’s a no brainer to just tell the EU to fuck off so naturally that’s the opposite of what he’ll do.
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Except it isn’t. Musk would be cutting off millions of users if he pulled Twitter out of the EU. Given the service’s cash flow problems, voluntarily giving up millions of users would not help solve those problems. I mean, sure, in the short term, losing that kind of burden would help decrease costs. But in the long term, it’s going to see a lot of people abandoning Twitter for other services to stay in touch with friends they made on Twtter—and it won’t just be EU citizens jumping ship.
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Genuine question; if all the servers are still hosted in the US, wouldn’t EU users be able to connect anyways? I assume the issue is that the EU would block Europeans from being able to access twitter.com, which is stupid and Orwellian but is apparently the reality they live in now.
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If Elon were to yank Twitter access from the EU, that sort of block would happen at Twitter rather than EU-based ISPs. Whether the EU would block access to Twitter in turn would be up to them, but if Elon does it for them, I doubt they’d raise too much of a fuss.
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Twitter is a US company, and therefore operating under US law. So, like Google et al., they are absolutely free to tell the EU to fuck off and carry on operating the way they always have as long as they have no servers within the EU. They could maybe site them in the UK to get them near the EU without actually being in an EU country.
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No, the law doesn’t work like that and they can’t tell the EU to fuck off for the simple reason the companies still do a lot of business in the EU. All this is regulated by different international regulations and treaties which makes sure companies can’t operate in other countries in a lawless manner and with no oversight.
The only time they can tell the EU to fuck off is when they also stop doing business there.
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And well…
He has been known to suck up to authoritarians.
If you apparently lost the ability to read.
No. Elon is a big fan of loud, public gestures with zero follow through, Twitter are not in a position to withdraw from major markets. He’ll complain loudly and try to fight the battle in the court of public opinion because that’s his go-to, not realising that the people he’s mad at are not americans and nobody trying to make him adhere to this law is afraid of losing voters because he’s mad at them.
What exactly did Elon and his funders pay billions for if it wasn’t a userbase and their social graph?
It would be business suicide to cut off the EU.
He may do it.
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It would be a great incentive for Thread to be full RGPD compliant, and be a replacement for the whole EU. Then, if some countries (China or India…) want the same power over companies as EU want, simply follow the same rules.
Now, the EU won’t let this be lost in time (like most of US regulators) and will fine if Twitter is not compliant to DSA (that not gonna happen soon).
So, it’s the very big fine (even new Twitter don’t make that much money… cough… I mean, that much nothing) or a quart or a third of its userbase gone over night. Any choice would be a loose-loose situation for Twitter.
Maybe the bird wasn’t mean to be free, it’s already starving a year later.
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Another day, another anti – Musk post by MM …
“I actually think this is the right move.”
oh. wait a sec
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Another day, another piece in which MM criticizes Elon Musk and depicts him as a lesser man. (“That said, I find it difficult to believe he’d actually do it.”)
MM is obsessed with Elon Musk, writing feverishly about him as if no other CEO or owner of a technology company exists!
Re: Musk is too funny to ignore
The ongoing clusterfr*k that is Elon Musk provides such great comedy that of course MM takes advantage of that gold mine, why wouldn’t he?
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As it is all Elon, it much more of a public display of masturbation.
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Maybe someone should report Musk for indecent exposure.
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You would know all about obsession, wouldn’t you? First hand knowledge, it would seem.
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Show me another CEO who is, on a near-daily basis, making an ass of themselves due to a level of Divorced Energy that radiates through everything they do. Show me another CEO who is actively trying to make themselves the person everyone talks about when they talk about their company. Show me another CEO who is running their company into the ground based on mercurial whims and a lack of experience in the field in which that company sits.
The thing about Elon Musk is that he’s doing all these things, and in doing so, he is actively wearing down Twitter’s usefulness as a social media service. People are already abandoning the site; plenty more people are at least slowing down their usage of the site in favor of other outlets. And all of this sits on the shoulders of the man who paid $44bn to own something he didn’t understand—ostensibly to “make it better”, but possibly to destroy it.
No other CEO is getting the attention that Musk is getting because no other CEO is acting like Musk (on a near-daily basis, at least). If you can think of a CEO who deserves that attention, go right ahead and name them. But unless they’re acting like Musk while running a massively known brand or service (into the ground), no one here will probably care.
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Lies!! X/(former Twitter) is better than it’s ever been!
The vast majority of news outlets, world leaders, brands and influencers still post there, and many new and diverse viewpoints are added to the mix. You’re all just mad that the chief censor was fired and people can now criticize the regime narratives that kept you warm.
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Hey, maybe if Elon stops being a fucking manchild then Mike would stop covering Elon, Jhon.
How’s your damn lawsuit coming along, btw?
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Who’s a lesser man than pedo guy Musk (besides yourself, obviously)?
Re: Muskbot 1000
Please do not pay any attention to the above post. One of our early Musk-1000 attack-bots got loose. Our apologies.
Sincerely,
Musk-4000 Trust-and-Safety-Bot (1 of 1)
oh poor EU!
He’d be doing the EU a favor.
How can you play Musk?
I generally use it as after shave.
What if Twitter split into a US-hosted US version and an EU-hosted EU version with federation? They might even be owned by the same company but would be implemented so as to be treated as separate platforms under the DSA.
I pretty much think that a fair share of Europeans will miss Twitter, and that virtually nobody knows what “X” is.
So what?
With Jack Dorsey’s Twitter, this would have been a threat. With Musk’s Ex, it’s just “good riddance, don’t let the door hit you on the way out”.
Meanwhile...
In the US, here is what the State of Arkansas is focused on:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sarah-huckabee-sanders-executive-order-eliminating-woke-anti-women-state-government
But sure, what EU is doing to X is worse and more relevant.
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But the EU wants twitter to silence fascists and terrorists, which is a horrific infringement of the first amendment they don’t have!
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You’re free to suggest stories to TD.
When the EU says 'Jump' Elon will already be in the air
Should he? Yes.
Will he? Not a chance.
I expect he’ll bluster and posture a bit but quietly cave and start deleting content like a good little boy because with how desperate he is for cash and how stupid he is it won’t occur to him until it’s well past the point of no return that the biggest group likely to be affected by this are the non-bots ‘fans’ of him still using the platform.
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Elon lives rent-free in the heads of you soibois! Love all the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Dorks!
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It’s funny how pitiful your post is but it fits the pattern:
Soy Boy
An effeminate male who’s feelings get hurt far to often, usually resulting in some kinda of pitiful retort or changing of the subject.
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Microsoft Sam pronounces “soi” the way a human English speaker would pronounce “bwah” instead of “boy”. As an AI language model, I haven’t personally used Microsoft Sam, but I can confidently pronounce “soibois” and “soy boys” as “swahbwahz”.
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Hey, I seem to been hacked by a bot for a very very very brief period. Very brief. Brief like the length of an essay my neighbor’s dog can write. (Not very long.) I looked away from my phone for a second and when I looked back the previous comment appeared.
Anyway, I have used Microsoft Sam specifically to see how it would pronounce just “soi soi soi”.
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Oh no.
What do I do with these Necrons at my door?
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Have you tried the ‘ROFL Copter’? 😆
Wrong question
The question is not, will Musk really deny access to 400M users.
The question is, how much advertising revenue is Xitter making from the EU?
I suspect not much. I doubt Musk cares much about EU users, he seems focused on the US-based protofascist/dudebro social market. And with the “$1 beer”, I mean, “$1/year” give-me-your-credit-card play, I think he’s given up on being mass-market in general.
Xitter is dude’s blog now, he’s driving off anyone who isn’t a fanboi, Nazi, influencer-wannabe or scammer.
All of you have it wrong.
Elmo will tell Breton to fuck off and die. Multiple times.
Breton will simply order the switches on the EU end of all overseas cables to block any and all Twitter IP addies. (Elmo will pat himself on the back for not having to do anything, Breton did it for him.)
Elmo will threaten to take Breton to court (just where he won’t be able to say, at least not at first blush), claiming that Twitter has an American Constitutional right to run itself as it sees fit, and no amount of European sabre rattling should be permitted to interfere with an American business.
Elmo will eventually lose, provided that court case is ever heard in the first place. Lawsuits do cost money, and Elmo just may do some accounting to see if Twitter can afford the cash outlay for such a suit.
Look for Elmo to sell NFTs of Twitter in order to pay his bills. At some point things will “tip over”, and he’ll be on the outside looking in, without ever seeing it coming.
And on the following day…..
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💩
Why stop at Europe?
It’s not just Europe threatening to censor Twitter: they should shut down in every country that wants to censor them.
Start with Europe. Australia’s probably next, what with that CSAM fine they just got hit with. There’s that consent decree that Twitter signed with the FTC, so the US should also be cut off. And Canada also has hate speech laws, so cut them off, too.
And I’m sure that they could keep going from there…
I think my favourite thing about Mike is his committment to treating his ideological opponents fairly
How many EU users - 400M
Losing them does what for advertisers – well, it doesn’t give them warm fuzzy feelings.
The only fuzzy feeling they get on ex Twitter is trying to brush off the mold.
Unlikely?
Appears to me to be exactly what he will do.
Then again, looks to me like X is going to be another AOL or Yahoo. New owner takes over, is in over their head, makes bad decisions, and devalue the platform. Sells it off as a tax write off. Next company does worse. And then worse.
Twitter is already a dead and historical brand. Even if you don’t like that fact. X is going to crash and burn.
Honestly, nobody is any worse for the loss.