No. of Recommendations: 3
Right out of the dictator's playbook. $140M is barely walking around money to Musk, but make it an insult to all USians. Just like Bush #43 "they hate America" and Hillary "they have a problem with strong women".
How about we take a step back and ask ourselves, "Should the European Union be allowed to dictate what speech is allowed on American social media platforms?"
...and start there.
Since somebody is going to come along and challenge the premise of the question, and since somebody else is going to dismiss the premise as just another RWTRUMPHITLERMAO conspiracy theory, let's use a left-leaning site to establish the basic facts:
https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/4831049-...Europe’s plot to regulate political speech in America
by Jonathan Turley, Opinion Contributor - 08/17/24 10:30 AM ETTurley's even a liberal!
One of the greatest threats to free speech today is the European Digital Services Act. The act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager celebrated its passage by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.”
In Europe, free speech is in free fall. Germany, France, the United Kingdom and other countries have eviscerated free speech by criminalizing speech deemed inciteful or degrading to individuals or groups. The result had made little difference to the neo-Nazi movement in countries like Germany, which is reaching record numbers. It has, however, silenced the rest of society.
According to polling, only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their opinions in public. Fifty-nine percent of Germans do not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Only 17 percent feel free to express themselves on the internet.
They have silenced the wrong people, but there is now a massive censorship bureaucracy in Europe and the desire to silence opposing voices has become insatiable.Now let's ask, what is the EU's "Digital Services Act" and how is it being used?
https://eu.boell.org/en/2025/02/18/trump-vs-europe...What rules do platforms now have to follow?
Put simply, the DSA comprises four pillars. The first chapter defines liability rules, i.e. answering the question of when platforms can be held liable for illegal content shared by their users. So if, say, a person travels to the US from the UK and visits a gun range, shoots a gun, and has a picture taken of themselves posted on social media...then that outlet may be liable for promoting a criminal act. And be fined accordingly.
From there the law gets murkier:
These platforms must publish reports analysing what "systemic risks" emanate from their services. What exactly such systemic risks are, remains unclear: the DSA lists broad categories, such as negative impacts on fundamental rights, civic discourse and electoral processes, public safety and health, as well as adverse impacts relating to gender-based violence or a person's physical and mental well-being. However, there are no definitions or concrete examples of these risks. It is therefore up to the most powerful platforms themselves to decide how much responsibility they take for these societal risks and how they mitigate them. "Systemic risk" to what? If Joe Blow says "men are men and women are women" then somebody may have a problem with that and here's your "systemic risk". Under the DSA then...these companies have to "mitigate" these "risks". Somehow.
The example they cite about the cancelling of the Romanian elections absent a direct link between TikTok and voting should give anyone pause.
