RTFri, 12 Jul 2024 18:25 UTC
© Emin Sansar/Getty Images
Brussels has gone after the platform over alleged "deceptive practices"
X (formerly Twitter) is facing persecution by the European Union because it rejected Brussels' demand to secretly censor opinions on the platform, its owner Elon Musk has revealed.The EU announced on Friday that it considered X in violation of its Digital Services Act (DSA) and intended to levy massive fines against the company unless it changed its practices.
"The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us," Musk wrote in response. "The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not."
"We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth," he added.Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, after voicing displeasure over widespread censorship on the social media platform. He has since unbanned most blocked accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump.
When Musk announced "the bird is freed," one of the responses came from Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market."In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules," Breton said, with a reference to the DSA.On Friday, Breton explained the European Commission's move against Musk by arguing that X violates the EU's "transparency requirements" by denying access to "researchers," among other things.
"Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information. Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA," Breton said.
According to the Commission, allowing anyone to obtain verification in exchange for a subscription fee "negatively affects users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with."
The Commission also objected that X does not maintain "a searchable and reliable advertisement repository" that would "allow for the required supervision and research into emerging risks."
What most bothered the EU body was that X does not allow scraping its public data by "researchers" or grant access to its application programming interface (API), as DSA mandates.
Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official, highlighted this to suggest
the EU's real motivation is to "use the DSA to force X to restaff the censorship squad fired when Elon took over." He further alleged that people who present themselves as researchers are actually "censorship activities & political operatives."Musk
reposted Benz's analysis with just one word of comment: "Exactly."
X is now expected to respond to the Commission in writing.
If the EU upholds Breton's preliminary findings, X could be fined "up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover" and ordered to address its "breach" under "enhanced supervision," the body said.
Comment: Will X exit the EU or be sold off to someone who wishes to comply?
Here are some headlines from the days when all was well from the EU perspective?
Twitter admits shadowban on Federalist co-founder's Lisa Page tweet with lame excuse: "To keep people safe"
Censoring conservatives: Rep. Gaetz files FEC complaint against Twitter over shadow bans
Gaetz's decision comes after several weeks of conservative users proving that they've been subject to "Quality Filter Discrimination" (QFD) shadowbans, as well as a "glitch" reported by VICE that excluded user's names from auto-populating search results.
During an appearance with Fox's Tucker Carlson, Gaetz announced that he had filed the FEC complaint, which "gives his political rivals an unfair advantage," reports Cassandra Fairbanks of the Gateway Pundit.
Hungary to oppose 'shadowbanning' of 'Christian, conservative, and right-wing' voices online
"Tech companies thus violate all those fundamental democratic legal norms that form the basis of Western-type culture," she accused, adding that "we could... only learn about the system-wide practice of shadow banning from a now-leaked voice recording of the Twitter CEO [Jack Dorsey].
Kim Dotcom accuses Twitter of 'shadowbanning' pro-Assange tweets: 'Deep state controls social media to control you'
"Twitter just shadowbanned my Julian Assange tweets, again. You should know that Twitter is not on your side," Dotcom tweeted, railing against the platform's murky censorship practices.
"If you want to read my free speech and that of many other censored voices you have to visit our Twitter profiles. The deep state controls social media to control you."
Twitter tells Trump that it does not 'shadowban,' then admits that it does
In response to growing outrage over the practice of "shadow banning" conservatives, as confirmed last week by the liberal publication VICE and promptly tweeted about by President Trump, Twitter issued a strange explanation to "set the record straight," where they explicitly state that they do not engage in the practice - except then they describe how they do exactly that.
"People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not. But let's start with, "what is shadow banning?"
The best definition we found is this: deliberately making someone's content undiscoverable to everyone except the person who posted it, unbeknownst to the original poster." -Twitter
Then, Twitter reiterates they don't shadow ban - with the caveat in parentheses that you may need to go directly to the timeline of some users in order to see their tweets. (tee hee!)
What the EU would like might be something more substantial than mere shadow banning.
Von der Leyen proposes 'vaccines' for minds and a 'shield' for democracy
Italy's Meloni slams 'surreal' backroom deals for EU jobsConsidering what happened to
Donald Trump, the
Slovakian Robert PM Fico, and the threat against the
Georgian PM, there is no telling what will happen next. Given the complacency of the majority of the EU population, the EU might well get away with restricting X, in one way or another. In other words, the window of opportunity offered to EU citizens by Elon Musk taking over Twitter may be closing. Why not make some use of it while it is still there?
Comment: Will X exit the EU or be sold off to someone who wishes to comply?
Here are some headlines from the days when all was well from the EU perspective?
Twitter admits shadowban on Federalist co-founder's Lisa Page tweet with lame excuse: "To keep people safe"
Censoring conservatives: Rep. Gaetz files FEC complaint against Twitter over shadow bans Hungary to oppose 'shadowbanning' of 'Christian, conservative, and right-wing' voices online Kim Dotcom accuses Twitter of 'shadowbanning' pro-Assange tweets: 'Deep state controls social media to control you' Twitter tells Trump that it does not 'shadowban,' then admits that it does What the EU would like might be something more substantial than mere shadow banning.
Von der Leyen proposes 'vaccines' for minds and a 'shield' for democracy
Italy's Meloni slams 'surreal' backroom deals for EU jobs
Considering what happened to Donald Trump, the Slovakian Robert PM Fico, and the threat against the Georgian PM, there is no telling what will happen next. Given the complacency of the majority of the EU population, the EU might well get away with restricting X, in one way or another. In other words, the window of opportunity offered to EU citizens by Elon Musk taking over Twitter may be closing. Why not make some use of it while it is still there?