Really abhorrent how the current US government is spinning this into their tried and true "free speech" crusade despite it being mostly irrelevant. The DSA's core goal is transparency, shown clearly in the X ruling.
> The ‘blue checks’ charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. [...] As the Commission put it, the DSA “clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.”
> The ‘ads transparency’ charge stems from the DSA’s requirement that platforms must maintain a public archive showing what ads the platform ran, who paid for them, and other information. X fell drastically short of meeting this requirement
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
It's clear why the tech monopolies want to keep their secrets in the dark. There is a democratic consensus that what they're pulling either is illegal - or should be illegal. E.g. Scam advertisements, overt editorial practices by selective (de)amplification and/or monetization and looking the other way about bots and third-parties leveraging their systems for spreading political propaganda.
Transparency is their enemy. Free speech is their irrelevant but emotion-laden argument. Europeans see straight through it - the questions is, do the Americans?
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
The EU commission has no right to let researchers perform studies on users of the platform without the explicit consent of each user whose content is included in the study, so kudos for upholding their rights. There is also precedent that this 'research' loophole has in the past been abused to massively scrape data off Twitter.
Additionally, this whole thing isn't just about X, but also about "N"GOs like "Hat aid" who sue individual citizens for stating their opinion on the internet.
I find it deeply cynical that representatives of a federalized union call upon another union to disband in favor of national identity. It is a transparent ploy to sow division within another competing union for geopolitical gain.
Yeah, but geopolitics is a chaotic system and the US foreign policy has failed at pretty much everything for decades now - these are the people who managed to cement Taliban control of Afghanistan and appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe. If it is coming from the US State Department they are so bad at international politics that there is a pretty good chance that the path to thwarting them is following their plan. The most powerful era of Europe was literally when they had lots of small but technically and socially advanced countries competing with each other. It was literally a world-conquering combination that put them centuries ahead of everyone else. In some sense the reason the EU exists is to try and hold the Germans back; talking about breaking it up is one of those careful-what-you-wish-for requests.
> If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.
The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.
Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!
> appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
Not surprising at all considering that socialism and centrally planned economies are inherently more efficient than liberal free markets - by removing the constant pressure for quarterly profit and removing or severely limiting the bourgeoise who only exist to take the value generated by companies for themselves, you have a system that does a much better job of allocating labour and resources. For example, imagine how much better Windows 11 would be if Satya Nadella wasn't taking home a $100m salary and that money was spent hiring or paying developers.
Frankly, American capitalists got so high on their own supply after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they thought they didn't need to keep the boot on the necks of the communists any longer. As soon as the pressure came off the superiority of the Chinese communist system became evident and is virtually impossible to stop now.
Imagine the response to the EU calling for Texas leaving the US via that weird defunct line in their constitution.
Maybe breaking up the US would be a good idea. The blue states are funding the American government which is led by the people mostly popular in the red states. But you won't see EU politicians set up a well-funded plan to actually do it.
America has turned into a ridiculous cartoon of itself in such a short time frame.
Is the idea here to normalize what the Trump administration is doing as “what any hegemon would do”? As far as I’m aware, the US largely avoided using its power to directly prosecute one man’s personal vendettas?
The EU did not call upon the US to disband because of fines levied against Volkswagen. Nor did the EU say that the Clean Air act was only enacted to attack the European car industry.
Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW and BMW including a €875 million fine in 2021. When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?
You are deliberately missing the point. The EU would have continued to conveniently ignore VW diesel emissions had the US, a competing power, not pointed them out.
> Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW including a €875 million fine in 2021.
Only because the US found them out. The EU was quite happy with VW until then, and liked to act all smugly superior about emissions.
> When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?
For what exactly? What US laws have X, under Musk, broken?
Per capita emissions in the US are what, twice as high as in the EU? And given that the US is ruled for the foreseeable future by outright climate change denialists, that's unlikely to change.
You are the one who's deliberately missing the point. The EU accepted the findings from the US and took regulatory action.
Whereas the US ignores the findings from the EU, refuses to take regulatory actions against big tech, enacts sanctions against EU officials and calls for the disbandment of the entire union.
A bit of an overreaction at the very least wouldn't you say?
You're still missing the point. Imagine an alternate reality where the EU denied any of the US findings and instead backed up VW in their assertions they've done no wrong. They then levied sanctions against multiple senators that advocated in favor of the Clean Air act and called for the US to disband.
Does that sound reasonable?
> That's the UK, France and Germany lobbying to keep the emissions tests inadequate so VW can continue.
I'm sure there are many states within the U.S. that are currently lobbying for even less regulation of Big Tech.
The US found VW breaking US and EU laws. The EU has found [tech cos] supposedly breaking EU laws only and keep inventing nonsense to try and force their ideals on the rest of the world. It's boring, hence the (minor) sanctions on these individuals to get them to stop wasting everyone's time.
If the EU want to block parts of the Internet off then go for it. Just don't pretend it's everyone else's fault that it's embracing mass censorship and that this is in any way compatible with the values of the enlightenment.
So you're saying that if the EU had less strict laws then such a reaction would've been appropriate? Then it would've been totally reasonable for the EU to sanction US senators to stop wasting everyone's time with their air quality standards?
I'm using words to say what I mean, not what you are hallucinating, so I will clearly state for the final time:
VW was caught, by US authorities, violating EU laws, and it transpired that EU officials had been lobbying to enable VW and other EU champions to continue to do so.
The equivalent would be the EU catching US companies violating freedom of speech in the US, and clearly pointing this out. This is not what the EU have been doing.
My root reply in this thread was flagged, despite being stunningly milquetoast, in a transparent attempt to hide any inconvenient dissenting view, which is precisely what the EU are trying to do.
Funny how time and time again, users of this forum mix obvious fiction and facts about Europe and the EU. I guess it's too difficult to read up on these things before posting an opinion reflecting rightwing US politicians
As far as I can tell these people are not on the SDN list (which would defacto deny them a bank account anywhere in the west plus kill their azure ad login) but merely on a travel ban.
This is apparently representative of what that means at this moment in time.
I think it's pretty extreme too, but on searching, none of the participants' positions seem to have been disowned by their own side. One of them actually fundraised $30000 afterwards.
For a country that actively bans school books on "gender ideology", fires federal workers that show any support for all things "WOKE", it is absolutely hilarious that they're also seeing themselves as the last bastion of free speech.
They are not serious people. Plain and simple.
The day these clowns are kicked out can't come soon enough.
Europe is struggling with an energy crisis because of its sanctions against Russia. I'm sure those Iranian and Venezuelan oil fields willook awfully enticing after the Americans break down more and more American-European trade ties. Who knows, maybe a sizable oil investment might convince the Iranians to stop contributing to the Ukrainian invasion.
This just isn't really true any more. The Scandinavian countries have become net green energy exporters including over winter (lots of wind power and biogas in municipal heating networks) and the block as a whole is banning Russian gas imports from next year. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IP...)
The price per kWh has dropped sharply in recent years compared to the invasion peak, though they are about double what they were before COVID (not inflation adjusted) - see https://skilky-skilky.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Househ.... It's the UK that's up the shitter but that's far from uncommon....
The day will come when we ban Steve Bannon, Elon Musk and JD Vance from the UK, and I think for the first two at least, the day is getting closer.
(I personally expect Vance to be banned from the UK - along with Denmark and Greenland - as soon as he is no longer VP. But then I suspect his days of international travel will end then more generally.)
But since diplomacy requires proportionality, maybe we start with Bannon, or Nick Fuentes, or Andrew Auernheimer. (They really should be banned from travel here like Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Don Black and Mark Weber already are.)
I don't think Dubya has been in Europe since his presidency, in 2011 he famously cancelled a speech in Switzerland because a human right groups called for his arrest for war crimes..
It'd be awkward to ban Vance as he's the Vice President so covered by the Vienna Convention. The others, I'm quite surprised they haven't been banned already, especially after Elon Musk quite literally attempted to incite violence on the streets of the UK.
A general atmosphere that we sometimes ban white nationalists and neo-nazis when they actively provoke violence or hatred or illegally interfere in our politics to destabilise the country?
Oh no, I'm sorry if this is upsetting or surprising to anyone!
Seriously: Vance will be persona non grata when this is over. The list of countries that should ban him is longer than the one I made (Germany should, for example). The list of countries he won't risk visiting is probably longer still. But then I think he won't risk leaving the USA at all after this is all over. And nor should he.
And as others have observed, Musk has actively attempted to foment violence in the UK; people get banned from other countries (including the USA) for that all the time.
Your country is being 'destabilized' by your own government refusing to address popular concerns. No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
Instead of addressing the underlying issues causing societal destabilization, just as countless failed governments have before, your government is focused on doubling down and making people shut up about it.
Yes, a lot of these people are bigots or cranks. But people living in well-run countries don't listen to bigots and cranks. They aren't a problem. People start listening to bigots and cranks when nobody else will listen to them. Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms. Silencing people to maintain public order and harmony is the siren song of every failing authoritarian government there's ever been.
I don't understand how Trump was ever allowed back into the UK on the basis of his criminality (e.g. a persistent offender who shows particular disregard for the law).
What purpose would a travel ban on those people serve? The UK is totally unable to police its own border nor remove violent predators. They've been reduced to paying perpetrators of sex offences to leave.
Bannon is a convicted criminal money-launderer and fraudster; we ban such people all the time (and so do other countries). But he's also agitating against UK interests (and interfered in our politics before).
Musk has literally called for violence on our streets; we ban people who do that too. We should consider banning foreigners who appear to be funding political activity here.
Vance is actively acting against the interests of the UK and EU (actively agitating against political union) in a way that benefits our adversaries, and he lionises neo-nazis.
In the last electoral cycle I've seen firsthand censorship applied to remote acquaintances because of the newly added EU DSA (this in and of itself would not be a huge disaster [by EU standards] if it wasn't accompanied by arrests), which was used as justification over some posts on TikTok and X; therefore I don't really care who hurts the pro-censorship faction within the EU. People have been arrested in WE for speech online for more than a decade now, but now it also happens in EE, where I live, bringing back communist-era "vibes". You would excuse me if the anti-Trump or anti-US (because of the current administration) rhetoric doesn't move me regarding this.
Or let me guess, "Trump bad and therefore we should accept DSA/Chat control 2.0/3.0/etc."? Sorry, I don't care. And people who think this is only about the recent X fine are also wrong (this started last year when Thierry Breton started influencing european elections while also boasting about how he can annul such elections without repercussions; you can deduce what I'm talking about by asking an LLM). This is in part US gov. protecting private companies (and thus itself) from fines, sure, but the broader point about censorship within the west applies. Everything that hurts the people making legislation regarding the Internet (or software in general) within the EU should be welcomed with open arms.
EU apologists would rather change the subject and talk about Trump and the polarizing social environment in the US rather than acknowledge that within the EU, there's not even a chance for discourse to be had about any policy(especially the nonexistent free speech) due to the aforementioned laws. The same people will act surprised when extreme positions regarding the EU are adopted by an ever-increasing number of people "until morale improves".
The EU does far too little to prevent election influencing. From Cambridge Analytica, proof of foreign bribery, algorithmic promotion of bot content by X and Meta specifically intended to undermine democracies, there's plenty of election fixing happening, and the EU should be much more aggressive about preventing it.
Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
"Interference" in elections, even foreign interference, is not a new problem. It has been a problem for at least 2500 years. The nice thing about a democracy, though, is you still have to convince masses of people to vote a certain way, rather than simply influencing a few bureaucrats/aristocrats. And well, if masses of people can be convinced to vote for something you don't like, in a democracy it's your responsibility to show them why they're wrong, rather than treating them like dummies without the intellectual capacity to make their own responsible decisions. If you think people are too stupid to make decisions in the face of the wrong propaganda, you are conceding that you don't believe in democracy at all - at best you believe in stage-managed popular support to make your non-democratic government appear legitimate.
The EU doesn't want to accept that millions of people don't share the EU elite consensus on several issues - usually still a minority of people, but a substantial minority. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to steer the ship of state with the winds of the times, they are simply declaring all bad political opinions to be the result of the Russians, the Americans, or the corporations, or some combination of the three. Countries in which serious conversations are had about banning one of the most popular political parties for wrongthink can only ironically be considered democratic.
Everybody knows about Cambridge Analytica being used in the US/UK, but, for example, little to no one knows that Cambridge Analytica was also used by political parties within the EU (I won't give specific names [for now], but parties [from Italy, Malta, CZ, and Romania], members of the euro-parliamentary groups EPP/RE/SD, in the 2014-2016 period). Why did nothing happen back then? Those mentioned parties were usually pro-EU, so it's not really surprising no such "scandal" was being discovered until later on, when Cambridge Analytica was being used by the UK/US.
And the Cambridge Analytica "phenomenon" is not really something you can realistically prevent. I'm sure it happens now with some other better firm (Palantir probably), but this is really beside the point. The point is that normal citizens, like you and me, are effectively censored upon suspicion before any burden of proof is provided. Nothing says "protecting democracy" like deleting posts from social media and then finding out the context.
> Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Sure, nobody likes bots/paid shills. But of course, in a normal society, you have to prove those posts are made by actual bots/content farms before taking any action. Otherwise it's just censorship. Election interference always happens, without exceptions, but degrees vary. This is not to say we shouldn't point out when it happens, but to not do censorship against our own citizens because "the models indicate a pattern akin to foreign entities." Patterns are not burdens of proof, and thus employing a "crowdfunded" fact-checking system like Community Notes or the one from YouTube is at least partly the actual solution instead of directly removing content. Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.
The only arrest (including jail time) I've heard of over internet shit was someone named Tate, and I'm pretty sure it was over suspicion of online pimping/hustling (not sure how it ended up), so I would love to know who was arrested because of the DSA, to see if it match.
See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system. But tbh, Europeans deserve it, for they use and abuse of sanctions themselves, as some of Swiss citizens can attest.
> Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?
When it stops being a disagreement over policy and becomes a paid job for a foreign government to spread as much malicious FUD as possible.
The former commander of Russian ground forces recently gave a long interview in which he said that the Russian army was on the verge of total collapse in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were pushing them back during the highly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. Mearsheimer, Sachs, et al played a vital role in spreading FUD and unfounded fears that led to less military support for Ukraine than was needed. As a result, hundreds of thousands more people are dead than might have been had Ukraine been supported properly.
Mearsheimer alone has done more to deny modern weapons to Ukraine than the entire Russian air force could. In terms of ROI, he has been a spectacularly cost-effective propaganda asset. He has the blood of countless people on his hands and deserves to be hanged. But instead, he will kick the bucket due to natural causes in old age, a luxury not afforded to the children who died in their bedrooms under Russian missile attacks that Mearsheimer twisted himself into a pretzel to enable and justify.
Blaming a YouTube analyst for the slow pace of weapons transfers and not the EU and NATO officials who were actually responsible for said transfers is a spectacular cope. If NATO is getting marching orders from random 3rd parties on YouTube and TV networks then there are a million problems more urgent to address than Mearscheimer's analysis here.
No, the reason for the slow trickle of weapons was because the West got high on their own supply after the successful 2022 offensives and actually thought they could break the Russian line without advanced weaponry. In that way Mearscheimer's message of caution was bang on - Ukraine should have negotiated peace when they had the upper hand, hundreds of thousands of good Ukranian and Russian men would be alive today.
If the people who attacked Ukraine without provocation - just as they attacked other neighbours in other regions - are attempting to bring down a democratically elected regimes across the region, so they can replace them with weak compliant puppets, the "thought crime" becomes straightforward self defence.
It was though. If Russia wanted to annex Ukrainian separatist states, it could have done so before they invaded.
Since it didn't, Ukraine never attacked Russian territory.
Then Ukraine the elected a Jewish person whose mother tongue is Russian and speaks Ukrainian with a slight russian accent. Which threw their 'Nazis who want to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainians' narrative in the trash, and maybe it was lived as a provocation since it made Russian propagandists looks like fools.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, they were officially neutral (law from 2010, pushed by Russia). At the time of the invasion, there was neither political nor public will to join NATO.
Another fact: Maidan was not about joining NATO, but having equal economic ties to both Russia and EU.
So can you acknowledge that Russia didn't invade Ukraine because of NATO expansion?
Does it sound weird to you that after Russia's invasion in 2014, Ukraine cancelled their neutral status and wanted to join NATO?
I’ve seen his interviews on YouTube and I’m not sure if he is a Russian asset or just says things contrary to the western narrative. There is a propaganda war.
So what hard evidence that he is working for the Russians?
Jaques Baud is not a "mouthpiece". He has never appeared on Russian state TV and has taken great pains to avoid citing Russian sources in his analysis. The problem is that what he has been saying about the Ukraine war (that the war is not winnable and peace should be negotiated as soon as possible) is dangerous as to European leadership.
It's not remotely dangerous to the European leadership.
It is dangerous to EU citizens who are on the receiving end of a campaign to radicalise national governments with far-right Russian-funded puppet regimes which will - clearly, as we can see in the US - be absolutely hostile to existing freedoms.
If they don't want far-right Russian puppets to win then they should actually respond to the wants and needs of their voters instead of scolding anyone who goes against their neoliberal warmonger groupthink as "pro-Russian", whatever that means. They're only digging their own graves if they think denying reality will save them.
Honestly I feel like people won't care and the sanctioning helps less and less if it doesn't do the opposite.
They feel like repeatedly the baby was thrown out with the bathwater wrt migration and the like despite popular opinion being very much against those.
Often getting no genuine choice of opposition that wasn't fringe right.
Now I know so many people who will in turn throw out the bathwater containing their national or supranational interests, rule of law (that limited their options), etc.
People who one will struggle to reach across the isle... and it was utterly predictable.
> See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.
You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.
You can't just hold a referendum to decide the relations between Switzerland and the EU -- the EU also gets to have a say. We have been incredibly patient with Switzerland in this regard but it can't continue. You must respect the agreements we already have with you and you cannot dictate the terms of new agreements with us.
(Background: some of the agreements with Switzerland have run out and we need new ones to replace them. Both sides continue as if the old agreements are still valid, Switzerland because it would hurt the country enormously if we didn't, the EU because it avoids antagonizing Switzerland and because it would slightly annoying if we didn't. We can literally take our marbles and go home without breaking any treaties with Switzerland. Many Swiss don't seem to understand that.)
Gun ownership is legal in France, why would EU care about it in Switzerland? Are you sure this information is from a trustworthy source? The rest I see where you're coming from, but this particular bit sounds like propaganda to me.
>If we don't comply, they will impose sanctions. They are even trying to make gun ownership illegal in Switzerland...
UK is the proof that nobody is forced to be part of EU or have good relations with EU. EU also forces food not contain excrements, where is your freedom to buy food with exfements?
As you can see I can also say ridiculous things.
Which "leftists" have monopolized the EU? What positions do they have to exert that kind of power, and what parties are they affiliated with?
Or is the EPP with the likes of Weber and von der Leyen "leftist" now? You have move quite far towards the extreme right for traditional conservative politicians to appear "leftist" to you.
Nationalism is on the rise in most EU countries and they get away with saying all kinds of things you apparently dream about, but feel censored to say. The tale of lacking free speech is a lie.
Free speech in the EU is different from the US. Insulting people is not considered free speech in the EU. Calling "fire" in a packed cinema wrongly is not covered by free speech in the EU.
You can say a lot of things, but you might feel social pressure, which is a feature, not a bug.
It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically. Brusselocrats are career politicians caring more about their CV than the spirit of their actions. They do populist flashy things, it's not like they'd lose an election or anything. Ban them all you want, you re just buttering their bread , it's another bullet in their CV, a badge of honor.
Then again, Trump has to win the election, and the Bell curve is symmetrical. Sanctioning EU politicians is less like sanctioning elected national politicians, and more like sanctioning artists. No nation was offended
From the thread, "If you want an explainer on why the EU’s DSA Fine Against X is Not About Speech or Censorship read this article:" https://www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-fine-against-x-is-not-a...
Really abhorrent how the current US government is spinning this into their tried and true "free speech" crusade despite it being mostly irrelevant. The DSA's core goal is transparency, shown clearly in the X ruling.
> The ‘blue checks’ charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. [...] As the Commission put it, the DSA “clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.”
> The ‘ads transparency’ charge stems from the DSA’s requirement that platforms must maintain a public archive showing what ads the platform ran, who paid for them, and other information. X fell drastically short of meeting this requirement
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
It's clear why the tech monopolies want to keep their secrets in the dark. There is a democratic consensus that what they're pulling either is illegal - or should be illegal. E.g. Scam advertisements, overt editorial practices by selective (de)amplification and/or monetization and looking the other way about bots and third-parties leveraging their systems for spreading political propaganda.
Transparency is their enemy. Free speech is their irrelevant but emotion-laden argument. Europeans see straight through it - the questions is, do the Americans?
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
The EU commission has no right to let researchers perform studies on users of the platform without the explicit consent of each user whose content is included in the study, so kudos for upholding their rights. There is also precedent that this 'research' loophole has in the past been abused to massively scrape data off Twitter.
Additionally, this whole thing isn't just about X, but also about "N"GOs like "Hat aid" who sue individual citizens for stating their opinion on the internet.
I find it deeply cynical that representatives of a federalized union call upon another union to disband in favor of national identity. It is a transparent ploy to sow division within another competing union for geopolitical gain.
Yeah, but geopolitics is a chaotic system and the US foreign policy has failed at pretty much everything for decades now - these are the people who managed to cement Taliban control of Afghanistan and appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe. If it is coming from the US State Department they are so bad at international politics that there is a pretty good chance that the path to thwarting them is following their plan. The most powerful era of Europe was literally when they had lots of small but technically and socially advanced countries competing with each other. It was literally a world-conquering combination that put them centuries ahead of everyone else. In some sense the reason the EU exists is to try and hold the Germans back; talking about breaking it up is one of those careful-what-you-wish-for requests.
> If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.
The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.
Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!
> appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
Not surprising at all considering that socialism and centrally planned economies are inherently more efficient than liberal free markets - by removing the constant pressure for quarterly profit and removing or severely limiting the bourgeoise who only exist to take the value generated by companies for themselves, you have a system that does a much better job of allocating labour and resources. For example, imagine how much better Windows 11 would be if Satya Nadella wasn't taking home a $100m salary and that money was spent hiring or paying developers.
Frankly, American capitalists got so high on their own supply after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they thought they didn't need to keep the boot on the necks of the communists any longer. As soon as the pressure came off the superiority of the Chinese communist system became evident and is virtually impossible to stop now.
Imagine the response to the EU calling for Texas leaving the US via that weird defunct line in their constitution.
Maybe breaking up the US would be a good idea. The blue states are funding the American government which is led by the people mostly popular in the red states. But you won't see EU politicians set up a well-funded plan to actually do it.
America has turned into a ridiculous cartoon of itself in such a short time frame.
Reminds me of this comic: https://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html
See the fourth row.
competing of what?
the entire EU couldn't even defect Russia that has a GDP smaller than a single state of the US.
The world hegemon caught doing cynical thing, news at 11.
The world hegemon is currently throwing away its hegemonial power in a series of unforced errors, that's the real news here.
Is the idea here to normalize what the Trump administration is doing as “what any hegemon would do”? As far as I’m aware, the US largely avoided using its power to directly prosecute one man’s personal vendettas?
[flagged]
The EU did not call upon the US to disband because of fines levied against Volkswagen. Nor did the EU say that the Clean Air act was only enacted to attack the European car industry.
Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW and BMW including a €875 million fine in 2021. When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?
You are deliberately missing the point. The EU would have continued to conveniently ignore VW diesel emissions had the US, a competing power, not pointed them out.
> Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW including a €875 million fine in 2021.
Only because the US found them out. The EU was quite happy with VW until then, and liked to act all smugly superior about emissions.
> When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?
For what exactly? What US laws have X, under Musk, broken?
Per capita emissions in the US are what, twice as high as in the EU? And given that the US is ruled for the foreseeable future by outright climate change denialists, that's unlikely to change.
Hard to disagree with you: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-franc...
Thanks for digging that up.
And yet many persist in their delusions of EU infallibility.
These are all unsubstantiated vibes. My advice is to exchange fido for intellego.
You are the one who's deliberately missing the point. The EU accepted the findings from the US and took regulatory action.
Whereas the US ignores the findings from the EU, refuses to take regulatory actions against big tech, enacts sanctions against EU officials and calls for the disbandment of the entire union.
A bit of an overreaction at the very least wouldn't you say?
What are you on about?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-franc...
That's the UK, France and Germany lobbying to keep the emissions tests inadequate so VW can continue.
> Whereas the US ignores the findings from the EU
What findings? That X acts as a forum for openly contradicting centrally decreed EU dogma and thus needs to be shut up? That's not a winning argument.
You're still missing the point. Imagine an alternate reality where the EU denied any of the US findings and instead backed up VW in their assertions they've done no wrong. They then levied sanctions against multiple senators that advocated in favor of the Clean Air act and called for the US to disband.
Does that sound reasonable?
> That's the UK, France and Germany lobbying to keep the emissions tests inadequate so VW can continue.
I'm sure there are many states within the U.S. that are currently lobbying for even less regulation of Big Tech.
The US found VW breaking US and EU laws. The EU has found [tech cos] supposedly breaking EU laws only and keep inventing nonsense to try and force their ideals on the rest of the world. It's boring, hence the (minor) sanctions on these individuals to get them to stop wasting everyone's time.
If the EU want to block parts of the Internet off then go for it. Just don't pretend it's everyone else's fault that it's embracing mass censorship and that this is in any way compatible with the values of the enlightenment.
So you're saying that if the EU had less strict laws then such a reaction would've been appropriate? Then it would've been totally reasonable for the EU to sanction US senators to stop wasting everyone's time with their air quality standards?
> So you're saying . . .
I'm using words to say what I mean, not what you are hallucinating, so I will clearly state for the final time:
VW was caught, by US authorities, violating EU laws, and it transpired that EU officials had been lobbying to enable VW and other EU champions to continue to do so.
The equivalent would be the EU catching US companies violating freedom of speech in the US, and clearly pointing this out. This is not what the EU have been doing.
My root reply in this thread was flagged, despite being stunningly milquetoast, in a transparent attempt to hide any inconvenient dissenting view, which is precisely what the EU are trying to do.
"Their ideals" being not deceiving consumers and giving researchers access to data, as required in our market.
Why is whatever law VW broke "real", while these are "nonsense"?
You're talking as if eu officials knew about vw hiding its emissions
Sanctions in this context mean visa restrictions (travel ban to US). So not financial sanctions. Just thought it would be a good thing to clarify.
Like a petulant rich kid running to his parents after being told No for the first time in their lives.
If anyone still doubts whether the Americans are serious about going solo in geopolitics this should be nail #192873 in your Trans-Atlantic coffin.
Funny how time and time again, users of this forum mix obvious fiction and facts about Europe and the EU. I guess it's too difficult to read up on these things before posting an opinion reflecting rightwing US politicians
As far as I can tell these people are not on the SDN list (which would defacto deny them a bank account anywhere in the west plus kill their azure ad login) but merely on a travel ban.
Presumably the US wants the EU to permit more Far-right 'conservativism'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S-WJN3L5eo 1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan)
This is apparently representative of what that means at this moment in time.
I think it's pretty extreme too, but on searching, none of the participants' positions seem to have been disowned by their own side. One of them actually fundraised $30000 afterwards.
For a country that actively bans school books on "gender ideology", fires federal workers that show any support for all things "WOKE", it is absolutely hilarious that they're also seeing themselves as the last bastion of free speech.
They are not serious people. Plain and simple.
The day these clowns are kicked out can't come soon enough.
Unfortunately, they're very serious about their racism and dividing up the country between themselves and their billionaire pals.
The digital Euro and dedollarization can't come quickly enough.
[flagged]
- for you.
Europe is struggling with an energy crisis because of its sanctions against Russia. I'm sure those Iranian and Venezuelan oil fields willook awfully enticing after the Americans break down more and more American-European trade ties. Who knows, maybe a sizable oil investment might convince the Iranians to stop contributing to the Ukrainian invasion.
This just isn't really true any more. The Scandinavian countries have become net green energy exporters including over winter (lots of wind power and biogas in municipal heating networks) and the block as a whole is banning Russian gas imports from next year. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IP...)
The price per kWh has dropped sharply in recent years compared to the invasion peak, though they are about double what they were before COVID (not inflation adjusted) - see https://skilky-skilky.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Househ.... It's the UK that's up the shitter but that's far from uncommon....
The day will come when we ban Steve Bannon, Elon Musk and JD Vance from the UK, and I think for the first two at least, the day is getting closer.
(I personally expect Vance to be banned from the UK - along with Denmark and Greenland - as soon as he is no longer VP. But then I suspect his days of international travel will end then more generally.)
But since diplomacy requires proportionality, maybe we start with Bannon, or Nick Fuentes, or Andrew Auernheimer. (They really should be banned from travel here like Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Don Black and Mark Weber already are.)
I don't think Dubya has been in Europe since his presidency, in 2011 he famously cancelled a speech in Switzerland because a human right groups called for his arrest for war crimes..
It'd be awkward to ban Vance as he's the Vice President so covered by the Vienna Convention. The others, I'm quite surprised they haven't been banned already, especially after Elon Musk quite literally attempted to incite violence on the streets of the UK.
Your suggestion should it materialize would certainly be in line with the general atmosphere which has been developing in the UK.
Overreach in some areas does not conflict with proportional and appropriate action in others.
A general atmosphere that we sometimes ban white nationalists and neo-nazis when they actively provoke violence or hatred or illegally interfere in our politics to destabilise the country?
Oh no, I'm sorry if this is upsetting or surprising to anyone!
Seriously: Vance will be persona non grata when this is over. The list of countries that should ban him is longer than the one I made (Germany should, for example). The list of countries he won't risk visiting is probably longer still. But then I think he won't risk leaving the USA at all after this is all over. And nor should he.
And as others have observed, Musk has actively attempted to foment violence in the UK; people get banned from other countries (including the USA) for that all the time.
Your country is being 'destabilized' by your own government refusing to address popular concerns. No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own. Instead of addressing the underlying issues causing societal destabilization, just as countless failed governments have before, your government is focused on doubling down and making people shut up about it.
Yes, a lot of these people are bigots or cranks. But people living in well-run countries don't listen to bigots and cranks. They aren't a problem. People start listening to bigots and cranks when nobody else will listen to them. Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms. Silencing people to maintain public order and harmony is the siren song of every failing authoritarian government there's ever been.
I don't understand how Trump was ever allowed back into the UK on the basis of his criminality (e.g. a persistent offender who shows particular disregard for the law).
What purpose would a travel ban on those people serve? The UK is totally unable to police its own border nor remove violent predators. They've been reduced to paying perpetrators of sex offences to leave.
Bannon is a convicted criminal money-launderer and fraudster; we ban such people all the time (and so do other countries). But he's also agitating against UK interests (and interfered in our politics before).
Musk has literally called for violence on our streets; we ban people who do that too. We should consider banning foreigners who appear to be funding political activity here.
Vance is actively acting against the interests of the UK and EU (actively agitating against political union) in a way that benefits our adversaries, and he lionises neo-nazis.
[flagged]
[flagged]
Because it went so well last time Europe was ruled by strongmen.
If you elect weaker leadership by intention to avoid strongmen, then you naturally deserve to be a vassal state. Why complain, then?
In the last electoral cycle I've seen firsthand censorship applied to remote acquaintances because of the newly added EU DSA (this in and of itself would not be a huge disaster [by EU standards] if it wasn't accompanied by arrests), which was used as justification over some posts on TikTok and X; therefore I don't really care who hurts the pro-censorship faction within the EU. People have been arrested in WE for speech online for more than a decade now, but now it also happens in EE, where I live, bringing back communist-era "vibes". You would excuse me if the anti-Trump or anti-US (because of the current administration) rhetoric doesn't move me regarding this.
Or let me guess, "Trump bad and therefore we should accept DSA/Chat control 2.0/3.0/etc."? Sorry, I don't care. And people who think this is only about the recent X fine are also wrong (this started last year when Thierry Breton started influencing european elections while also boasting about how he can annul such elections without repercussions; you can deduce what I'm talking about by asking an LLM). This is in part US gov. protecting private companies (and thus itself) from fines, sure, but the broader point about censorship within the west applies. Everything that hurts the people making legislation regarding the Internet (or software in general) within the EU should be welcomed with open arms.
EU apologists would rather change the subject and talk about Trump and the polarizing social environment in the US rather than acknowledge that within the EU, there's not even a chance for discourse to be had about any policy(especially the nonexistent free speech) due to the aforementioned laws. The same people will act surprised when extreme positions regarding the EU are adopted by an ever-increasing number of people "until morale improves".
The EU does far too little to prevent election influencing. From Cambridge Analytica, proof of foreign bribery, algorithmic promotion of bot content by X and Meta specifically intended to undermine democracies, there's plenty of election fixing happening, and the EU should be much more aggressive about preventing it.
Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
"Interference" in elections, even foreign interference, is not a new problem. It has been a problem for at least 2500 years. The nice thing about a democracy, though, is you still have to convince masses of people to vote a certain way, rather than simply influencing a few bureaucrats/aristocrats. And well, if masses of people can be convinced to vote for something you don't like, in a democracy it's your responsibility to show them why they're wrong, rather than treating them like dummies without the intellectual capacity to make their own responsible decisions. If you think people are too stupid to make decisions in the face of the wrong propaganda, you are conceding that you don't believe in democracy at all - at best you believe in stage-managed popular support to make your non-democratic government appear legitimate.
The EU doesn't want to accept that millions of people don't share the EU elite consensus on several issues - usually still a minority of people, but a substantial minority. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to steer the ship of state with the winds of the times, they are simply declaring all bad political opinions to be the result of the Russians, the Americans, or the corporations, or some combination of the three. Countries in which serious conversations are had about banning one of the most popular political parties for wrongthink can only ironically be considered democratic.
Everybody knows about Cambridge Analytica being used in the US/UK, but, for example, little to no one knows that Cambridge Analytica was also used by political parties within the EU (I won't give specific names [for now], but parties [from Italy, Malta, CZ, and Romania], members of the euro-parliamentary groups EPP/RE/SD, in the 2014-2016 period). Why did nothing happen back then? Those mentioned parties were usually pro-EU, so it's not really surprising no such "scandal" was being discovered until later on, when Cambridge Analytica was being used by the UK/US.
And the Cambridge Analytica "phenomenon" is not really something you can realistically prevent. I'm sure it happens now with some other better firm (Palantir probably), but this is really beside the point. The point is that normal citizens, like you and me, are effectively censored upon suspicion before any burden of proof is provided. Nothing says "protecting democracy" like deleting posts from social media and then finding out the context.
> Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Sure, nobody likes bots/paid shills. But of course, in a normal society, you have to prove those posts are made by actual bots/content farms before taking any action. Otherwise it's just censorship. Election interference always happens, without exceptions, but degrees vary. This is not to say we shouldn't point out when it happens, but to not do censorship against our own citizens because "the models indicate a pattern akin to foreign entities." Patterns are not burdens of proof, and thus employing a "crowdfunded" fact-checking system like Community Notes or the one from YouTube is at least partly the actual solution instead of directly removing content. Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.
The only arrest (including jail time) I've heard of over internet shit was someone named Tate, and I'm pretty sure it was over suspicion of online pimping/hustling (not sure how it ended up), so I would love to know who was arrested because of the DSA, to see if it match.
it is perfectly legitimate to want to regulate foreign (and domestic) media companies
You obiously have no idea hoe the EU or Europe works. Go read something other than social media
See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system. But tbh, Europeans deserve it, for they use and abuse of sanctions themselves, as some of Swiss citizens can attest.
Are you referring to Jacques Baud who has been sanctioned recently because he has been working as a mouthpiece of the russian government?
In the same way John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are mouthpieces of the Russian govt?
Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?
The former commander of Russian ground forces recently gave a long interview in which he said that the Russian army was on the verge of total collapse in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were pushing them back during the highly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. Mearsheimer, Sachs, et al played a vital role in spreading FUD and unfounded fears that led to less military support for Ukraine than was needed. As a result, hundreds of thousands more people are dead than might have been had Ukraine been supported properly.
Mearsheimer alone has done more to deny modern weapons to Ukraine than the entire Russian air force could. In terms of ROI, he has been a spectacularly cost-effective propaganda asset. He has the blood of countless people on his hands and deserves to be hanged. But instead, he will kick the bucket due to natural causes in old age, a luxury not afforded to the children who died in their bedrooms under Russian missile attacks that Mearsheimer twisted himself into a pretzel to enable and justify.
Do you remember the name of that Russian commander, by any chance?
Blaming a YouTube analyst for the slow pace of weapons transfers and not the EU and NATO officials who were actually responsible for said transfers is a spectacular cope. If NATO is getting marching orders from random 3rd parties on YouTube and TV networks then there are a million problems more urgent to address than Mearscheimer's analysis here.
No, the reason for the slow trickle of weapons was because the West got high on their own supply after the successful 2022 offensives and actually thought they could break the Russian line without advanced weaponry. In that way Mearscheimer's message of caution was bang on - Ukraine should have negotiated peace when they had the upper hand, hundreds of thousands of good Ukranian and Russian men would be alive today.
What kind of "peace" would that be? Russia is not interested in peace, or do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?
The peace of Ukraine being neutral? Ukraine was officially neutral in 2014 (law from 2010, pushed by Russia), and see how that went.
So again, what kind of peace are you talking about?
[flagged]
If the people who attacked Ukraine without provocation - just as they attacked other neighbours in other regions - are attempting to bring down a democratically elected regimes across the region, so they can replace them with weak compliant puppets, the "thought crime" becomes straightforward self defence.
[flagged]
It was though. If Russia wanted to annex Ukrainian separatist states, it could have done so before they invaded.
Since it didn't, Ukraine never attacked Russian territory.
Then Ukraine the elected a Jewish person whose mother tongue is Russian and speaks Ukrainian with a slight russian accent. Which threw their 'Nazis who want to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainians' narrative in the trash, and maybe it was lived as a provocation since it made Russian propagandists looks like fools.
Sorry but the "Jewish President" defence is invalid since the Gaza war.
Here are some facts for you:
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, they were officially neutral (law from 2010, pushed by Russia). At the time of the invasion, there was neither political nor public will to join NATO.
Another fact: Maidan was not about joining NATO, but having equal economic ties to both Russia and EU.
So can you acknowledge that Russia didn't invade Ukraine because of NATO expansion?
Does it sound weird to you that after Russia's invasion in 2014, Ukraine cancelled their neutral status and wanted to join NATO?
I’ve seen his interviews on YouTube and I’m not sure if he is a Russian asset or just says things contrary to the western narrative. There is a propaganda war.
So what hard evidence that he is working for the Russians?
Jaques Baud is not a "mouthpiece". He has never appeared on Russian state TV and has taken great pains to avoid citing Russian sources in his analysis. The problem is that what he has been saying about the Ukraine war (that the war is not winnable and peace should be negotiated as soon as possible) is dangerous as to European leadership.
It's not remotely dangerous to the European leadership.
It is dangerous to EU citizens who are on the receiving end of a campaign to radicalise national governments with far-right Russian-funded puppet regimes which will - clearly, as we can see in the US - be absolutely hostile to existing freedoms.
If they don't want far-right Russian puppets to win then they should actually respond to the wants and needs of their voters instead of scolding anyone who goes against their neoliberal warmonger groupthink as "pro-Russian", whatever that means. They're only digging their own graves if they think denying reality will save them.
Honestly I feel like people won't care and the sanctioning helps less and less if it doesn't do the opposite.
They feel like repeatedly the baby was thrown out with the bathwater wrt migration and the like despite popular opinion being very much against those. Often getting no genuine choice of opposition that wasn't fringe right.
Now I know so many people who will in turn throw out the bathwater containing their national or supranational interests, rule of law (that limited their options), etc. People who one will struggle to reach across the isle... and it was utterly predictable.
[flagged]
You are correct, everybody should go for peace.
The Munich agreement of 1938 also prevented a lot of deaths, so I really can't understand why the don't want to do the same peace deal today.
> See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.
You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.
SWIFT is belgian...
Can you explain what sanctions impact swiss citizens?
Straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/former-swiss-in...
Sanctions on Jacques Baud for anti-war activism: https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/1802...
Sanctions on Nathalie Camp for of anti-colonialist speech: https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/1764...
[flagged]
You can't just hold a referendum to decide the relations between Switzerland and the EU -- the EU also gets to have a say. We have been incredibly patient with Switzerland in this regard but it can't continue. You must respect the agreements we already have with you and you cannot dictate the terms of new agreements with us.
(Background: some of the agreements with Switzerland have run out and we need new ones to replace them. Both sides continue as if the old agreements are still valid, Switzerland because it would hurt the country enormously if we didn't, the EU because it avoids antagonizing Switzerland and because it would slightly annoying if we didn't. We can literally take our marbles and go home without breaking any treaties with Switzerland. Many Swiss don't seem to understand that.)
Gun ownership is legal in France, why would EU care about it in Switzerland? Are you sure this information is from a trustworthy source? The rest I see where you're coming from, but this particular bit sounds like propaganda to me.
>If we don't comply, they will impose sanctions. They are even trying to make gun ownership illegal in Switzerland...
UK is the proof that nobody is forced to be part of EU or have good relations with EU. EU also forces food not contain excrements, where is your freedom to buy food with exfements? As you can see I can also say ridiculous things.
[flagged]
Which "leftists" have monopolized the EU? What positions do they have to exert that kind of power, and what parties are they affiliated with?
Or is the EPP with the likes of Weber and von der Leyen "leftist" now? You have move quite far towards the extreme right for traditional conservative politicians to appear "leftist" to you.
Nationalism is on the rise in most EU countries and they get away with saying all kinds of things you apparently dream about, but feel censored to say. The tale of lacking free speech is a lie.
Free speech in the EU is different from the US. Insulting people is not considered free speech in the EU. Calling "fire" in a packed cinema wrongly is not covered by free speech in the EU.
You can say a lot of things, but you might feel social pressure, which is a feature, not a bug.
Can you give examples of the little freedom of speech?
By "conservative/nationalist", do you mean <MAGA-Aligned> , like PVV or AFD?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically. Brusselocrats are career politicians caring more about their CV than the spirit of their actions. They do populist flashy things, it's not like they'd lose an election or anything. Ban them all you want, you re just buttering their bread , it's another bullet in their CV, a badge of honor.
Then again, Trump has to win the election, and the Bell curve is symmetrical. Sanctioning EU politicians is less like sanctioning elected national politicians, and more like sanctioning artists. No nation was offended
Breton is 70 so he will probably do a soft retirement now.
He has had a fantastic career in business, academia, and (French) politics. Less than 5 years of that career was spent in Bruxelles.
> It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically.
It's odd anyone paying attention to what Breton says could possibly think otherwise.