Maximum Chaos: Latest Top FDA Regulator Peaces Out After Only 3 Weeks

Failures

from the measuring-time-in-scaramuccis dept

In mid-November, we talked about yet more chaos occurring under RFK Jr., this time at the FDA. At issue was George Tidmarsh, who joined the FDA in July as the agency’s chief drug regulator. Tidmarsh had been accused of using his position to exact a vendetta campaign against a former business partner, Kevin Tang, and companies related to him. Tang had pushed Tidmarsh to resign from three companies years back and Tang recently sued Tidmarsh, claiming he’d dangled the approval of a drug ingredient over his head unless he made monetary payments to an organization associated with Tidmarsh for decades.

Tidmarsh resigned amidst the accusations, putting his tenure at the FDA at less than half a year. In his place came Richard Pazdur, an FDA veteran of over 25 years. His appointment was received well by many in the medical community, seen as a consummate professional stepping into the role. For example:

Cancer Nation applauds the choice of Dr. Richard Pazdur as the Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). We can think of no better person than Dr. Pazdur for this position, as he will bring scientific rigor, evidence-based regulatory review, and a commitment to patients to his work as CDER head.

“We are grateful that someone with both scientific rigor and lived compassion will be leading CDER, and we look forward to continuing our shared work to make sure every survivor gets the care they need to live well,” said Shelley Fuld Nasso, Cancer Nation CEO.

Unfortunately for all those feeling the warm fuzzies about Pazdur’s appointment, Padzur decided last week to retire entirely from the FDA. While he will serve in the role through December, his resignation comes a mere two-and-a-half Scaramucci’s after his appointment. (For the uninitiated, a Scaramucci is 11 days, termed due to the length of time Anthony Scaramucci served as White House Communications Director in Trump’s first administration.)

Why is Pazdur retiring so soon after his appointment to be the top drug regulator for the FDA? Simple: his professionalism is at complete odds with the Kennedy-appointed assclowns with whom he’d have to work.

Just days on the job, Pazdur expressed deep concerns about the legality and public health risks of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s plans to overhaul and expedite agency operations. On November 21, the Post reported that Pazdur disagreed with Makary’s plans to reduce the number of studies needed to make drug-related decisions, such as label changes. Pazdur was further concerned that Makary’s plan to shorten drug review times was not sufficiently transparent and could be illegal. Pazdur also pushed back on Makary’s plan to exclude agency career scientists from some drug review processes deemed political priorities.

The immediate tensions led Pazdur to first consider retirement last month, according to the Post’s sources. He has now filed paperwork to retire at the end of this month, according to Stat News, which was first to report his planned departure. The outlet noted that he could still change his mind as the retirement plan is not finalized. But a source for the Post said such a reversal is unlikely.

“This is a very sad day for science and for patients,” Ellen Sigal, chairperson and founder of advocacy group Friends of Cancer Research, told the Post. “Rick was our guiding light and this loss is profound.”

The retention of talent is typically a primary metric by which those in management are judged. And during Kennedy’s time at DHS, retention is best used as a word for delivering a punchline. Susan Monarez was also CDC Director for a mere three weeks, or two-and-a-half Scaramuccis, before being fired by Kennedy, reportedly over her refusal to rubber stamp Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer nonsense.

Whatever you think of RFK Jr., even if you’re a huge fan, this draining of talent over his management style and his anti-scientific bullshit is having a deleterious effect on American health. And that’s sort of the opposite of what a Secretary of HHS should be hoping to achieve.

Filed Under: fda, health and human services, leadership, rfk jr., richard pazdur

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Was Ordered To Release Some Of His Emails With Elon Musk. Most Are Blacked Out.

Journalism

from the hiding-embarrassing-emails-for-the-world's-richest-man dept

This story was originally published by the Texas Tribune and the Texas Newsroom and co-published with ProPublica. Republished under the Texas Tribune’s republish feature.

Months after fighting to keep secret the emails exchanged between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s companies, state officials released nearly 1,400 pages to The Texas Newsroom.

The records, however, reveal little about the two men’s relationship or Musk’s influence over state government. In fact, all but about 200 of the pages are entirely blacked out.

Of those that were readable, many were either already public or provided minimal information. They included old incorporation records for Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, a couple of agendas for the governor’s committee on aerospace and aviation, emails regarding a state grant awarded to SpaceX and an application from a then-Musk employee to sit on a state commission.

One is an invitation to happy hour. Another is a reminder of the next SpaceX launch.

The documents were provided in response to a public records request by The Texas Newsroom, which asked Abbott’s office for communications with Musk and the businessman’s employees dating back to last fall. Abbott’s and Musk’s lawyers fought their release, arguing they would reveal trade secrets, potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges or confidential legal and policymaking discussions. 

Abbott’s spokesperson, Andrew Mahaleris, said the governor’s office “rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and releases any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure.” 

Open government experts say the limited disclosure is emblematic of a larger transparency problem in Texas. They pointed to a 2015 state Supreme Court decision that allowed companies to oppose the release of records by arguing that they contain “competitively sensitive” information. The ruling, experts said, made it harder to obtain records documenting interactions between governments and private companies.

Tom Leatherbury, who directs the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, said companies took advantage of the ruling. Among the most prominent examples of the ruling’s effect on transparency was McAllen’s refusal to disclose how much money was spent to lure pop star Enrique Iglesias to the city for a concert. The city argued that such disclosures would hurt its ability to negotiate with artists for future performances. Eventually, it was revealed that Iglesias was paid nearly half a million dollars.

The problem has been exacerbated, Leatherbury added, by the fact that the Office of the Attorney General, which referees public records disputes, does not have the power to investigate whether the records that companies want to withhold actually contain trade secrets.

“Corporations are willing to assert that information is confidential, commercial information, and more governmental bodies are willing not to second-guess the company’s assertion,” Leatherbury said. (Leatherbury has performed pro bono legal work for The Texas Newsroom.) 

Musk and his companies’ representatives did not respond to questions about the records. 

One of the richest people in the world, Musk has invested heavily in Texas. He’s relocated many of his businesses’ headquarters to the state and hired lobbyists who successfully pushed for several new laws that will benefit his companies.

As part of an effort to track Musk’s clout in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom on April 20 asked Abbott’s office for communications with employees from four of the businessman’s companies: SpaceX, car manufacturer Tesla, the social media site X and Neuralink, which specializes in brain nanotechnology.

The governor’s office said it would cost $244.64 to review the documents, which The Texas Newsroom paid. After the check was cashed, lawyers representing Abbott’s office and SpaceX each sought to keep the records secret.

SpaceX’s lawyer sent a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton dated June 26, saying that publicly releasing the emails would hurt its competitive advantage.

Abbott’s public information coordinator, Matthew Taylor, also asked Paxton’s office for permission to withhold the documents, arguing they included private exchanges with lawyers, details about policymaking decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Taylor said some of the records were protected under an exception to public records laws known as “common-law privacy” because they consisted of “information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public.”

Releasing the Musk emails, he said, would have a “chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process.”

Ultimately, Paxton’s office mostly sided with Abbott and Musk. In a Aug. 11 opinion, Assistant Attorney General Erin Groff wrote that many of the documents could be withheld. Groff, however, ordered the release of some records determined to be “either not highly intimate or embarrassing” or of “legitimate public interest.”

A month later, the governor’s office released 1,374 pages of records, the vast majority of which were completely redacted.

Some records included a note that appeared to explain why. A note on page 401, for example, cited the exemption for competitive bidding records for 974 redacted pages. Names and emails of Musk’s employees were also removed.

“The fact that a governmental body can redact more than 1,000 pages of documents that are directly related to a major business’s activities in Texas is certainly problematic,” said Reid Pillifant, an attorney specializing in public records and media law. (Pillifant has represented a coalition of media outlets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, in lawsuits seeking the release of public information related to the May 2022 mass shooting at an Uvalde elementary school.)

He and other experts said such hurdles are becoming more common as legislation and court decisions have weakened the state’s public records laws.

Four years after the 2015 Supreme Court decision, legislators passed a new law that was meant to ensure the release of basic information about government deals with private businesses. But open government experts said the law did not go far enough to restore transparency, adding that some local governments are still objecting to the release of contract information.

Moreover, lawmakers continue to add carve-outs to what qualifies as public information every legislative session. Just this year, for example, legislators added the following exceptions to public records and open meetings laws: information relating to how government entities detect and deter fraud and discussions during public government meetings about certain military and aerospace issues.

Even with the increasing challenges of accessing public records, Leatherbury and Pillifant were stumped by the governor’s decision to release thousands of pages only to black them out fully. Leatherbury said that the governor’s office may have wanted to show the volume of records responsive to the request.

“They wanted you to see what little you could get in the context of the entire document, even though that’s kind of meaningless,” he said.

The Texas Newsroom has asked the Office of the Attorney General to reconsider its decision and order the release of the Musk emails. There is little other recourse to challenge the outcome.

If a member of the public believes a government agency is violating the law, they can try to sue. But the experts noted that a recent Texas Supreme Court decision made it more difficult to enforce the public records law against the governor and other executive officers. Now, Leatherbury said, it’s not clear how challenging such a records decision would work.

“Every Texas citizen should care about access to these kinds of records because they shed light on how our public officials are making big decisions that affect the land where people live and how their taxpayer dollars are being spent,” Pillifant said.

Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT News in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.

Filed Under: elon musk, foia, greg abbott, ken paxton, open records, redactions, secrecy, texas
Companies: spacex, tesla, x

Paramount (With Jared Kushner And Saudi Help) Launches $108 Billion Hostile Takeover Bid For Warner Brothers

Deals

from the no-means-no dept

Last week Netflix announced a $82.7 billion acquisition of Warner Brothers, elbowing out rival acquisition bids (for now) by Comcast/NBC and Paramount/CBS. But the deal still needs regulatory approval from Trump, who has already stated several times that he’d prefer it if his bestie new owner of CBS, right wing billionaire Larry Ellison, comes away victorious.

Even before the deal was finalized, Paramount and/or the Trump administration had begun seeding complaints in Republican-friendly media that the bidding process was unfair to Larry Ellison and CBS/Paramount, and that the Trump administration is concerned about the antitrust impact of a Netflix Warner Brothers combination.

Now Paramount has announced that it’s trying to appeal directly to shareholders with a $108 billion hostile takeover bid:

“The tender offer is for $30 per share, all in cash, a contrast to Netflix’s offer, which is a $27.75 mix of cash and some stock, with shareholders also getting a stake in the linear TV spinout. Netflix is also only buying WBD’s streaming and studios business, while Paramount is pursuing the whole company, making for a complicated comparison, depending on how you value the linear TV business.”

Curiously omitted from Paramount’s press release is the fact that the $108 billion bid includes money from Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners, as well as funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. This is pretty clearly part of the Ellison family bid to dominate the entirety of U.S. media after their successful acquisition of CBS and Paramount.

If that’s not clear enough: one of the president’s top billionaire donors and son in law are working alongside Saudi Arabia and other foreign autocrats in a bid to dominate the shitty remnants of U.S. mainstream media. It sounds hyperbolic and alarmist when you say it out loud, but it’s no less true.

If you read this recent profile piece on Paramount’s new executives under Larry and David Ellison, you walk away with the sense that they’re kind of assholes. The kind of men who loathe actual creatives, don’t understand what “no” means, and are mostly interested in a company that builds lowest-common denominator engagement bait barfed from the dreams a dim 12-year-old boy trapped in 1989.

To be clear, any media consolidation, including a Netflix acquisition of Warner Brothers, is likely bad for the sector, consumers, and labor. The huge debt accumulated from these deals always involves a ton of layoffs, corner cutting, quality erosion, and price hikes as the remaining company tries to dig out from under the debt while still providing Wall Street its demand for impossible quarterly growth.

The correct antitrust play here, which wouldn’t happen under either U.S. political party (but is even less likely under Trump), is to put an end entirely to harmful, pointless consolidation to protect labor, consumers, and market competition, and to viciously protect independent, diverse media ownership.

But in a country too corrupt to engage with serious antitrust enforcement, of the three bidders for Warner Brothers, Netflix is likely the least bad option.

They’ve historically been the least lodged up the Trump administration’s colon (though that will change as they curry favor for regulatory approval), and their lack of as many redundant business units means there theoretically should be fewer layoffs.

Ellison ownership of CBS, CNN, HBO, Warner Brothers, Paramount, and a part of TikTok could prove to be significantly more problematic. And not just because of consolidation. The Trump administration and Ellison clearly want to build an authoritarian-friendly propaganda machine propped up by its infotainment arm. Think Fox News and Fox, but somehow worse and even less ethical.

They’re following the media domination playbook seen in other authoritarian-led countries like Hungary. Consolidate and acquire everything, and steadily replace already shaky journalism with gibberish and agitprop ahead of efforts to permanently retain power. The only upside here is that many of these zealots and nepobabies may not have the competency to pull it off.

The Netflix Warner Brothers bid includes a $5.8 billion breakup fee, suggesting that Netflix is likely to fight tooth and nail against any hostile takeover bids or any sort of strange, pro-Ellison shenanigans by the Trump administration and its Saudi allies (which as we noted last week, were going to be all but guaranteed in the months and weeks to come).

The hostile takeover bid guarantees months or years of legal fighting. But it also guarantees months of performative bullshit by Trump, Ellison, Kushner and right wing media about how Netflix ownership would be a woke antitrust nightmare, but letting the Saudis, Larry Ellison and his nepobaby son David dominate U.S. media would be a delightful, populist spritzer.

Expect a lot of shitty establishment corporate journalism on this that normalizes and helps prop up the phony gambit by Ellison and Trump. And a lot of kayfabe from all of these authoritarian-enabling assholes, suddenly pretending they appreciate “robust regulatory scrutiny” and a “healthy debate on market impacts based on the merits,” despite having a violent disdain for both.

But if Netflix truly digs in and doubles down (again probably the best of a bunch of bad options), it’s a fight that could outlast an unhealthy Trump and his increasingly unpopular administration entirely.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, donald trump, hostile takeover, larry ellison, mergers, streaming, video
Companies: affinity partners, netflix, paramount, skyedance, warner bros. discovery

Your Job Was Stopping CSAM? Trump Says No Visa For You!

Content Moderation

from the censoring-the-non-censors-for-anticensorship dept

You want to see actual government censorship in action? And have it done by people claiming they’re doing it to stop censorship? Check out last week’s revelation (originally reported by Reuters) that the US State Department will now start denying H-1B visas for anyone who has anything to do with trust & safety, fact checking, content moderation, or mis- or disinformation research. The government is now punishing people for speech—specifically, punishing them for the false belief that their work constitutes censorship.

The cable, sent to all U.S. missions on December 2, orders U.S. consular officers to review resumes or LinkedIn profiles of H-1B applicants – and family members who would be traveling with them – to see if they have worked in areas that include activities such as misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance and online safety, among others.

“If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible,” under a specific article of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the cable said.

It’s like JD Vance’s “the rules were you weren’t going to fact check me” taken to a new level.

This policy censors non-censors for not doing the thing that the White House and MAGA folks are actively doing every day. MAGA knows content moderation is necessary—they’re super eager to have it applied when it’s speech they don’t like. As we’ve recently discussed, they’ve suddenly been demanding social media companies stop foreign influence campaigns and remove anything mean about Charlie Kirk. At the same time, the White House itself is engaged in a twisted version of what it claims is fact checking and demanding that media orgs hire MAGA-friendly censors.

The hypocrisy is the point. But it’s also blatantly unconstitutional. As Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to this news:

People who study misinformation and work on content-moderation teams aren’t engaged in ‘censorship’— they’re engaged in activities that the First Amendment was designed to protect. This policy is incoherent and unconstitutional.

Incoherent and unconstitutional is being too kind.

The real work that trust & safety professionals do makes this policy even more perverse. As trust & safety expert (and occasional Ctrl-Alt-Speech guest host) Alice Hunsberger told (the recently defunded) NPR:

“Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it,” she said. “Bad actors that target Americans come from all over the world and it’s so important to have people who understand different languages and cultures on trust and safety teams — having global workers at tech companies in [trust and safety] absolutely keeps Americans safer.”

So the administration is now barring entry to people whose work includes stopping child sexual abuse material and protecting Americans from foreign bad actors—all while claiming to oppose censorship and demanding platforms remove content about Charlie Kirk. The only way this makes sense is if you understand what the actual principle at work is: we get to control all speech, and anyone who might interfere with that control must be punished.

There are no fundamental values at work here beyond “we have power, and we’re going to abuse it to silence anyone who stands in our way.”

Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, content moderation, disinformation, donald trump, fact checking, free speech, h1-b visas, marco rubio, misinformation, trust and safety

Recent Boat Strike Sure Looks Like A War Crime

Legal Issues

from the murdering-people-and-daring-the-system-to-stop-it dept

Now that congressional members on both sides of the aisle have decided it might be worth taking a look at the Defense Department’s “murder people in boats” program, we’re finally learning more than the Trump administration has been willing to share about these extrajudicial killings.

The administration’s lawyers have cobbled together justifications for these actions — OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) memos that rely heavily on claims that trafficking drugs (whether or not those drugs ever end up in the United States) is the same thing as engaging in a conventional war against the US government and its citizens.

All that’s really happening is this: the US military is sinking boats in international waters it claims are loaded with drugs. That alone would be horrific enough, especially since drug interdiction processes have historically always involved the seizure of alleged drug boats and their occupants, not justified-after-the-fact drone strikes.

Most legal experts believe these actions are illegal. No court has ruled otherwise, which means Trump will keep doing them until (and, most likely, after) they’ve been found to be illegal.

One recent boat strike has not only undercut the Trump administration’s justifications for these attacks, but has exposed the ruling party as bloodthirsty thugs willing to cross the line into war crimes just because it can.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the U.S. military on Sept. 2 to kill all 11 people on a suspected drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea because they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists who U.S. intelligence and military officials determined could be lethally targeted, the commander overseeing the operation told lawmakers in briefings this past week, according to two U.S. officials and one person familiar with the congressional briefings.

[…]

The detail that the 11 people on the boat were on an internal U.S. military target list has not previously been made public. It adds another dimension to the Sept. 2 operation that has been mired in controversy over the military’s decision to launch a second strike after the first left two survivors in the water.

It’s that last sentence that’s raising an issue here even Republican representatives are having difficulty defending. The recording of the September boat strike (which has yet to be released to the public) shows two survivors of the first strike clinging to the boat wreckage and waving their arms in hopes of being rescued.

The administration has made a couple of claims about what’s shown in this recording. First, it claims the survivors were waving to their compatriots, hoping to be rescued along with whatever drugs had survived the first strike. It also insists this “waving” is indicative of drug traffickers who wish to remain “in the fight.” In other words, the government is insisting any boat strike survivors who refuse to immediately die are only interested in delivering their drug payload, rather than simply being the byproduct of violent acts: the people who somehow manage to live through a government attack designed to kill them.

For nearly an hour, DoD personnel — including Admiral Bradley — discussed what to do with these impertinent “traffickers” who had somehow survived the initial strike. According to Bradley, he ordered a second strike. When that failed to sink the wreckage the survivors were clinging to, he ordered two more strikes, ceasing his attack only after the boat was sunk and both survivors were definitively dead.

The head of the Defense Department — Pete Hegseth — continues to claim he neither ordered the additional strikes, nor had any knowledge there had been survivors of the first strike. This simply cannot be true given his position and access to boat strike footage. Furthermore, both the administration and Hegseth himself released truncated recordings of this boat strike while bragging about their willingness to engage in extrajudicial killings in international waters.

There’s no reason to believe this boat strike program is legal. Pretty much everyone outside of the administration and Trump’s MAGA gravitational pull have stated as much. The administration itself is still struggling to generate legal rationale for these strikes. What it has produced so far is just as incoherent as its defense of this “double tap” attack that targeted shipwreck survivors, including its absurd claim that the less threatening these alleged traffickers appear to be, the more the administration is justified in killing them and removed the obligation for Trump to approach Congress to ask permission to continue the extrajudicial killings.

But there’s nothing that justifies the actions witnessed here:

It is considered a war crime to kill shipwrecked people, which the Pentagon’s law of war manual defines as people “in need of assistance and care” who “must refrain from any hostile act.” Although most Republicans have signaled support for President Donald Trump’s broader military campaign in the Caribbean, the secondary strike on September 2 has drawn bipartisan scrutiny — including, most consequentially, a vow from the Senate Armed Services Committee to conduct oversight.

While the laws surrounding the executive branch deployment of military force have been significantly diluted since 2001 (the current Authorization of Use of Military Force [AUMF] is still in effect, 25 years later but was only supposed to be in response to terrorists connect to the 9/11 attacks), the administration can’t simply wave away literal war crimes by claiming people just trying to survive the sinking of their boat constituted a clear and present threat to the United States that demanded three additional US military strikes to ensure they were dead and their boat was completely destroyed.

And if you still think none of the above is persuasive, there’s also this fact: the boat hit by four military strikes wasn’t even headed towards the United States. It was headed to another South American country that usually serves as a transport point for drugs headed away from the US.

The alleged drug traffickers killed by the US military in a strike on September 2 were heading to link up with another, larger vessel that was bound for Suriname — a small South American country east of Venezuela – the admiral who oversaw the operation told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his remarks.

[…]

US drug enforcement officials say that trafficking routes via Suriname are primarily destined for European markets. US-bound drug trafficking routes have been concentrated on the Pacific Ocean in recent years.

It’s immediately apparent that this boat strike program has nothing to do with deterring trafficking and everything to do with the administration’s desire to destroy anything and anyone coming from countries south of our southern border. I mean, it’s already made it clear it won’t prosecute military troops or officials for engaging in illegal activities related to its boat strike program.

With that deterrent removed, the only constraint left is the consciences of those asked to carry out the administration’s orders. And anyone with a functional sense of right and wrong will find themselves out of a job during the next Trump administration purge cycle until there’s no one left to refuse to do Trump’s dirty work.

Filed Under: boat strikes, crimes against humanity, defense department, doj, donald trump, extrajudicial killings, frank bradley, murder, pete hegseth, trump administration, war crimes, war on drugs

Daily Deal: Lavisha Cashmere-Blend Shawl

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Looking for a holiday gift? Bring the luxuriously soft touch of cashmere to their wardrobe with Lavisha Cashmere-Blend Shawl. Made cashmere wool, this shawl will feel superbly comfortable draped over their shoulders and will serve as the perfect accessory for any winter outing. Its soft fringe enhances any outfit, and with an impressive six feet of length, they can bundle up and stay warm no matter how chilly it gets. There are a variety of colors to choose from and they are on sale for $14.97.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Elon’s Crying Censorship Over An EU Fine That Has Nothing To Do With Censorship

Legal Issues

from the such-a-fucking-snowflake dept

Elon Musk is now calling for the dissolution of the European Union because it fined him $140 million for violating a law he once said was “exactly aligned” with his vision for (what was then called) Twitter.

And he’s doing it by lying about what the fine is actually for.

The EU hit X with a $140 million fine last week for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). But (despite what you may have heard) this isn’t some censorship overreach by Brussels bureaucrats. The violations—which have been known for over a year—have nothing to do with content moderation. Zero. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying.

The fine is for three specific transparency failures: misleading users when Elon changed verification from actual verification to “pay $8 for a checkmark,” maintaining a broken ad repository, and refusing to share required data with researchers.

The European Union has announced a fine of $140 million against Elon Musk’s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for several failures to comply with rules governing large digital platforms. A European Commission spokesperson said the fine against X’s holding company was due to the platform’s misleading use of a blue check mark to identify verified users, a poorly functioning advertising repository, and a failure to provide effective data access for researchers.

Again, let’s repeat: it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the way X handles content moderation or what speech it allows on its platform. As Daphne Keller explains:

Don’t let anyone — not even the United States Secretary of State — tell you that the European Commission’s €120 million enforcement against Elon Musk’s X under the Digital Service Act (DSA) is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this fine is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law. Many of these requirements resemble existing US laws or proposals that have garnered bipartisan support.

There are three charges against X, which all stem from a multi-year investigation that was launched in 2023. One is about verification — X’s blue checkmarks on user accounts — and two are about transparency. These charges have nothing to do with what content is on X, or what user speech the platform should or should not allow. There is plenty of EU political disapproval about those things, for sure. But the EU didn’t choose to pick a fight about them. Instead, it went after X for violating much more basic, straightforward provisions of the DSA. Those violations were flagrant enough that it would be weird if the EU hadn’t issued a fine.

Both Daphne and I have criticized attempts by EU officials to abuse the DSA in pursuit of censorship. I directly called it out when former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton clearly went way over the line last year, a move that quickly led to Breton losing his job. I’ve been highly critical of the DSA for years, so if this were actually an abuse of the law for censorship, I’d be first in line to call it out and side with Elon (I’ve done it in other circumstances as well).

But this is not that. This has nothing to do with “content moderation” or “censorship” in any way.

And yet, Elon Musk is running around pretending it is a free speech issue, and his once-again friends in the Trump administration are bolstering that false claim.

As Daphne pointed out, the EU could investigate certain aspects of X’s content moderation, and that could lead to serious questions about censorship and free speech. But they have not done so.

Honestly, this move is little different than the Trump FTC taking action against a Chinese company for violating COPPA. Which it has done. Did we see Chinese politicians lose their minds over that? Did we see the CEO of that company, Apitor Technology, call for dissolving the United States like Elon Musk is now calling for dissolving the EU? No. No, we did not.

But because the Elon Musks/JD Vances/Marco Rubios of the world can only think in terms of memes and culture wars, they know that if they just insist that this is about censorship, that the media will cover it that way, and the ignorant rabble on X will buy their version of the story.

All this is even more incredible because Elon Musk told the EU that he was entirely on board with the DSA while he was in the process of buying Twitter. Yes, the law he’s now claiming is censorship tyranny requiring the dissolution of an entire governmental body is the very same law he declared was “exactly aligned” with his vision for the platform.

At the time, we called out how the EU was clearly playing Musk, who seemed to have no clue what he was actually endorsing. It was obvious he hadn’t read or understood the DSA. But there he was, recording a video claiming perfect alignment with a regulatory framework he’s now treating as an existential threat to free speech.

So it’s pretty rich for him to whine about it now.

Of course, Musk isn’t just misrepresenting the fine. He’s responding with a series of escalating tantrums designed to feed his false censorship narrative. First, he called for abolishing the entire EU:

Then came the petty retaliation. First, he canceled the EU Commission’s X advertising account. X claimed it was because they “exploited” X’s ad platform by posting a link that appeared to be a video, but replies to that tweet suggested many, many people said that claimed “exploit” was not an exploit at all, but a tool that many others had used.

After that, Musk started threatening to punish EU Commissioners directly for the fine. In doing so he incorrectly references the Streisand Effect:

As the coiner of “The Streisand Effect,” I’d just like to point out that this is not what the Streisand Effect means at all.

Each move—calling to dissolve the EU, canceling ads, threatening individuals—is transparently designed to manufacture a free speech crisis where none exists. It’s performance art for an audience that won’t bother checking whether the fine is actually about censorship (it isn’t).

And he’ll likely keep escalating with the help of the Trump administration.

The DSA certainly has some issues, but this fine is not one of them. But that hasn’t stopped Elon Musk and his crew of political supporters from pretending that this is some huge attack on American free speech. It’s not. No more than the FTC’s fine against Apitor was an attack on China-based speech.

But, of course, most of the media will continue to pretend this is about free speech. They will frame it that way and for years into the future we’ll hear false stories—that the media and tons of other people will simply accept as true—that the EU fined X and Elon $140 million for not censoring people.

This is the template now. Violate fairly modest regulations, claim it’s censorship, get your political allies to amplify the lie, use it to de-legitimize any attempt at platform accountability for actively misleading users. It’s not about free speech. It never was. It’s about securing freedom from accountability while wielding the power of both private platforms and state resources to crush anyone who tries to impose it.

So yeah, anytime you hear someone claim the EU fined Musk for not censoring people, call it out. Because the truth matters, even when powerful people would prefer you didn’t notice they’re lying.

Filed Under: content moderation, dsa, elon musk, eu, fine, free speech, jd vance, marco rubio, transparency, verification
Companies: twitter, x

Netflix Makes Itself Less Useful, Removes Casting With No Explanation

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the enshittify-the-world dept

All out of original ideas and facing market growth saturation, we’ve noted repeatedly how streaming companies are increasingly looking like the stodgy old traditional cable TV giants they once disrupted. That means a lot of pointless mergers, endless price hikes, a steady erosion of quality, and the slow paring back of useful features (like going easy on password sharing).

The latest case in point: fresh on the heels of its latest price hike, Netflix is removing customers’ ability to cast streams to most home devices and smart televisions. The change came with absolutely no warning, removed a core feature, and Netflix refuses to tell anybody why it made the decision:

“The casting changes announced on Netflix’s support page do not explain why the feature has been removed. It follows a similar move in 2019 when Netflix removed AirPlay support, citing a desire to “ensure our standard of quality for viewing is being met.” We have reached out to Netflix for comment.”

After a week or two of pressure, Netflix will likely come out with some inane explanation about how they’re just “improving the customer experience,” despite the fact the justification makes no sense.

I suspect the real reason is Netflix is trying to make it more difficult for users to share their Netflix streaming services on their mobile phones while at other peoples’ homes, in the hopes of forcing your friends and relatives to sign up for Netflix. A choice that may or may not be supported by any actual real-world data.

This is the path of enshittification. It’s not good enough to offer a good product people like. The need for relentless quarterly growth means that inevitably companies find the easiest route is not to nurture useful and interesting new innovations, but to engage in a sort of cannibalization of the underlying brand. Endless price hikes; endless cut corners and feature erosion.

That’s likely going to accelerate with Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Brothers, which, if allowed by the Trump administration, means a massive new debt load the company will then cut even more corners to accommodate for. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Pay more, get less, then get scolded as entitled by industry executives who can no longer see the forest for the trees.

Filed Under: alternatives, cable, casting, enshittification, streaming, tv, video
Companies: netflix