I don’t go on that shithole site, but it seems like he not just letting disinformation go wild, but banning info
And promoting disinfo. The blue checkmarks are basically just a way to pay for prioritized disinformation-spreading.
DSA enforcement is spicy, since the EU can create its own team to fight disinfo on Twitter, and charge it to Musk, in addition to the massive fine.
Please tell me that, as someone outside the EU, I also reap the benefits of this spicy awesomeness.
As long as Twitter does business in the EU, it has to follow the law.
Also, he just says he's autistic. As far as is known, he's never actually gotten an evaluation.
So he's not just using autism as an excuse, he might not even have autism. And he wouldn't, sadly, be the first to pretend he did to excuse his behavior.
The Autistic Community doesn't deserve to mentioned in the same sentence as his.
What if Musk pulls Twitter out of the EU? What fraction of their revenue is that, I wonder?
Normally this would be too crazy to even consider, but... this is Musk we're talking about. I'm sure he hates the EU government's guts already. And that totally sounds like an impulse decision he would make.
I think his main motivation for continuing to run the company is to spread his agenda. If it only costs him a small percent of revenue to keep pushing Nazi taking points, thenbi think he'll just pay the fines.
hehe, double the fines every day of noncompliance. I heard you like fines, so I added some fines on your fines and some fines on top of those to go with your fines. Don't fuck with EU regulators.
Even without doubling, fines on a regular basis can hurt. Norway imposed $100k fine on FB on a daily basis, and FB is scrambling to do something about it, especially before other countries in the EU follow suit
100k isn't that much. However, if the EU decides to go for the total 6% of global revenue it will cost Musk a shitload of money.
100k is a lot when you consider how small Norway's population is. If you extend that same ratio per capita to the rest of the EU, FB would go broke.
As someone who works in the field, DSA-like regulation is coming to many countries over the next couple years. We also have regulations on political ads that are similar to DSA already in many countries already. Mega platforms like X have little choice but to get compliant
We can only hope he does. More people move over to mastodon with large companies running their own instances in the ecosystem.
This would allow for a federated broadcast system similar to how Twitter is now used, but if mastodon gets critical mass and governments start using it like they do Vichy Twitter it would be great news.
If that leads to some extra government grants for the further development of mastodon and the fediverse... Possibly even under the guise of standing up to big american tech.. we all win.
But if he does, he signed the Death warrant of his own platform. A lot of governments and mega corps are there because of users. Governments will all need to replace it immediately if they find out their main broadcasting platform could be turned off tomorrow.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a government institution in the EU above the municipal level which doesn't have a mastodon server or account on some government server.
A lot of companies that loudly "pulled out of Russia" are still working in Russia.
Twitter's business is advertising. If they shun the EU, EU companies just aren't allowed to buy ads without getting in hot water themselves.
This a French scientific study showing how the Russian regime tries to influence the political debate in France with Twitter accounts, especially before the last parliamentary elections. The goal is to promote a party that is more favorable to them, namely, the far right. https://hal.science/hal-04629585v1/file/Chavalarias_23h50_Putin_s_Clock.pdf
In France, we have a concept called the "Republican front" that is kind of tacit agreement between almost all parties, left, center and right, to work together to prevent far-right from reaching power and threaten the values of the French Republic. This front has been weakening at every election, with the far right rising and lately some of the traditional right joining them. But it still worked out at the last one, far right was given first by the polls, but thanks to the front, they eventually ended up 3rd.
What this article says, is that the Russian regime has been working for years to invert this front and push most parties to consider that it is part of the left that is against the Republic values, more than the far right.
One of their most cynical tactic is using videos from the Gaza war to traumatize leftists until they say something that may sound antisemitic. Then they repost those words and push the agenda that the left is antisemitic and therefore against the Republican values.
I mean, yea. Of course it has become a haven for disinformation. That’s why he bought it.
Is 6% of global revenue enough? Or is that just a foot note in the books on the cost of doing business?
It's 6% of revenue, not profit. So it cuts even more into profits as it doesn't allow a company in breach of regulations to reduce the impact of the fine by adding expenses that will temporarily lower their profit.
Even more spicy, they can also impose periodic penalties up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover for each day of delay in complying. That shit can bankrupt you.
6% of profit would mean that EU owes twitter money.
Or Musk could pull Twitter out of the EU.
That would be so wonderful. The EU economy would probably take off just from the saved time/brainpower, lol.
Thank you for showing me the teeth behind this ruling. If non-compliance carries harsher consequences, it may be enough
That could realistically be around 1/3 yearly profit in a reasonable company (18% operating margin is common). No idea whether Twitter is currently profitable (it wasn't when he bought it).
An example could be AliExpress, with a 130B in revenue and 11B in profit (2023), it would reduce their profit to 3.2B with the 6% fine. That's a whopping 70% less profits, and cutting expenses isn't gonna fix it either.
Only 6%? That needs a zero slapped onto the end of it.
Still, it's revenue (not just profit)
They need to first move out their official's accounts out of twitter If they really want to lead by example, there is Threads and mastodon and what not!
Seeing how Facebook and Instagram have been shutting down posts about Israeli atrocities in Gaza. and deleting Palestinian Journalists accounts, Such moves to try and police what is fake news and what isn't by governments according to their own interests and biases is an attack on free speech and freedom of the press.
The European Commission oversees X and two dozens of the world's largest online platforms
Sometimes it's fun to be a grammar Nazi.
Knowing that omitting the word "other" implies that the hangout of REAL Nazis is at most the 25th largest online platform is one of those times 😁
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The European Union is calling Elon Musk to order over how he turned social media site X into a haven for disinformation and illegal content.
The platform could face a sweeping multi-million euro fine in a pioneering case under the bloc's new Digital Services Act (DSA), a law to clamp down on toxic and illegal online content and algorithms.
X has been accused of letting disinformation and illegal hate speech run wild, roll out misleading authentication features and blocking external researchers from tools to scrutinize how malicious content on the platforms spreads.
In preliminary findings, the Commission said X's platform so-called blue checks had misled users into thinking some content was trustworthy when it wasn't necessarily.
The platform also didn't respect an obligation to provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository and limited access to its public data to researchers, the Commission said.
The EU so far launched investigations under the DSA into companies including AliExpress, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram and TikTok over alleged problems like insufficient consumer protection and addictive algorithms.
The original article contains 389 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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