Summary
A German court ruled that Elon Musk’s X must immediately provide researchers with data on politically related content ahead of Germany’s Feb. 23 election.
The lawsuit, filed by Democracy Reporting International and the Society for Civil Rights, accused X of blocking efforts to track election interference.
The ruling enforces the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), requiring major platforms to grant researcher access. It also orders X to pay legal costs and imposes a €6,000 procedural fine.
The decision sets a legal precedent, but it remains unclear if X will appeal.
€6,000 is peanuts to the worlds richest man, they should shut down access to the site until X comply.
Even 1000x that fine would just be a rounding error to him. What gives with the low-ball punishment?
Legal penalties are often (mostly?) a set monetary amount. We need percentage penalties.
As of now it’s just a small thing. If X keeps denying the requested information the penalty can increase quickly by for example by setting a daily late fee of several million Euro. If X still doesn’t comply they can raid their German offices for the requested information. If X still doesn’t comply they can shut X down in Germany, maybe even in all of EU to force compliance.
But usually you don’t need the extreme stuff.
Me: *tries to read source*
Source: “No, you don’t.” *blocks*
Get ready for more anti-EU / anti-regulation / pro-AfD propaganda.
It’s not like the EU can’t look at Brazil and see how to handle Musk. His platform doesn’t matter if people can’t use it.
Brazil’s dictator-judge Alexandre de Moraes only had free reign last year to do what he did because the US used to have a living corpse as the president. Now, with Orange-Man-Bad as president, I don’t know if the same judge would have the guts to block X nationwide again. Especially with Trump showing he’s not afraid to impose tariffs on a whim. And it’s also apparent that Trump hears what Elon has to say, and Elon is hungry for revenge. The judge only needs to step out of the line for Elon to retaliate.
Nobody cares about Trump’s tariffs, it’s the US import companies that have to pay, not the foreign companies selling the imports, and they just pass those costs on to the American consumer.
Which flavor of shoe polish do you like most?
Any flavor that would send Alexandre de Moraes to the jail cell, his rightful place.
That has the same chances of happening as Trump going to jail for his lengthy list of crimes, ya know?
You never know what the political world has in store. Before Alexandre de Moraes, doing blatant preventive censorship was unthinkable. When he made this practice into the “new normal”, he radicalized the right even more, and they might turn to dirty tricks to get to him.
The fact that it hasn’t been banned outright in the EU is cowardice. This is such a horrible timeline we are living in. How in the world did the biggest governments in the entire world and legal systems just get cucked to the point where a literal hate platform ran by a Nazi sympathizer throwing sig heils all over the place is even allowed in Europe?
How in the world did the biggest governments in the entire world and legal systems just get cucked to the point where a literal hate platform ran by a Nazi sympathizer throwing sig heils all over the place is even allowed in Europe?
Can’t help but chuckle in despair at that sentence. Well put.
Most governments are designed, intentionally, to move at a snails pace.
Historically this is a good thing. You don’t want waves of populism leading to super powerful leaders that turn the government on its head their first week in charge.
But our society is advancing way faster than we did historically. My kids world is a totally different one than mine…my world is totally different than my parents…their world is totally different from their parents. Before that, the world didn’t change that much in a generation or two.
As a species, we have to figure out a better way to work together than nation-states while also being able to smooth out the wild emotions of the general public. We have real-time information and communication now. We have the entire sum of human knowledge in a pocket-sized device. We need an overhaul…but not like this.
