4 ms·

The EU's attitude to American tech firms is weird. On the one hand, they have extrajudicial private entities they outsource censorship requests to ("trusted fla

by Sol- 4mo ago

The EU's attitude to American tech firms is weird. On the one hand, they have extrajudicial private entities they outsource censorship requests to ("trusted flaggers"), which the companies have to follow at the threat of massive fines and which therefore creates the incentive to ban quickly. On the other hand, there is stuff like this where they created another arbitrary "voluntary" mechanism to punish the companies for banning too much. I think ultimately the EU just wants a set of rules to use as a pretense to levy fines on big tech.

EA-3167 4mo ago
It's almost as though they want to be the government making the rules, rather than sitting back and letting the likes of META do whatever they want. The imperfect approach comes down to the reality of politics.
J-Kuhn 4mo ago
You assume that the EU acts in a coherent manner. I think that premise is wrong - there are many interest groups, and by luck/lobbying/reaching critical mass/... they manage to put one of their interests into a law.
- alex1138 4mo ago
  EU has different things going on though. Some good regulation, some bad
- fooker 4mo ago
  > You assume that the EU acts in a coherent manner. When it comes to aiming for maximum extraction from big tech, yes.
dgellow 4mo ago
There are no fines at all in this story.
stefan_ 4mo ago
There are no fines, this is about having recourse when big tech randomly bans you. Which you will remember, is a very common outcry on this very page. This is just an uninformed EU rant.
petcat 4mo ago
The EU fines are not enough to get the US tech companies to change, or even leave completely. But they are enough to continually fund the EU regulatory bureaucracy itself. So this arm of the government really only exists to preserve itself. I would be interested to see how many EU government jobs the US tech fines are supporting. Maybe Meta or Google is indirectly the largest employer in Brussels?
- rusk 4mo ago
  Another way to read this is the tech companies are stupidly bankrolling the EU by not complying with the laws of the lands (EU states voluntarily enact their own implementations of EU directions in return for a slice). That’s far too good a cash cow to pass up. Keep it coming.
- ginko 4mo ago
  > But they are enough to continually fund the EU regulatory bureaucracy itself Why do people keep repeating this falsehood? The EU budget is hundreds of billions of Euros. Even the largest fines so far would be a drop in the bucket compared to that. But more importantly it's the individual member states that invoke those fines (like Ireland with the €1.2B GDPR fine on Meta) not the EU itself.
- PunchyHamster 4mo ago
  Incorrect. Plenty of changes made because of that, they just apply only to EU member countries coz they still want to sell the data about other country's citizens
vrganj 4mo ago
I think the censorship framing is quite manipulative. It is removal of unlawful content. Is removing CSAM censorship? What about snuff? If no, then where do you draw the line? Why can't our democratically elected governments decide what is and isn't lawful? Why should foreign Big Capital be allowed to decide instead?
- dragonwriter 4mo ago
  Restricting the distribution of any material on content-based criteria by persons other than sender or intended receiver is censorship. Whether it is desirable censorship or not is generally a separate issue from whether or not it is censorship, unless, for example, you have previously adopted a rule that the particular actor committing the censorship shall not engage in censorship at all, in which case they are, of course, inherently the same question. (Where this gets hairy is when one likes to pretend that one has such a rule for a particular actor, but actually really would prefer that actor to censor certain things, which sometimes occurs with modern liberal democratic regimes, and especially frequently occurs with a particular North American one which has what superficially looks like a very strong restriction in that area in its Constitution.)
- like_any_other 4mo ago
  Nice motte-and-bailey. Removing CSAM is good, therefore so is removing “we need to take back our country”: @JudiciaryGOP has been investigating European censorship since the EU tried to silence President Trump last August. In February, we subpoenaed tech companies for their communications with foreign censors in Europe and around the world. Today, we’re releasing a report with preliminary findings about the EU’s censorship regime. The EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), requires platforms to censor so-called “misinformation” and “hate speech,” even when the content “is not illegal.” New documents obtained by the Committee show that European regulators distort these terms to require censorship of legitimate political discourse that is neither harmful nor illegal. In May, the EU hosted a DSA-focused “workshop” where platforms were asked to consider hypothetical “scenarios” involving hate speech online. Unlike other EU “workshops” with tech, the public was NOT allowed to watch this one. And the EU told the platforms to NOT share the “scenarios” with the public. What were they trying to hide? Turns out, the EU wanted to hide what it defines as “illegal hate speech” that must be censored: tweeting ordinary political rhetoric like “we need to take back our country.” https://x.com/jim_jordan/status/1948730617803296910 https://x.com/jim_jordan/status/1948730617803296910 https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/2025-07/DSA_Report&Appendix(07.25.25).pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j...
thefz 4mo ago
As an EU citizen I am glad there's at least some overwatch and control over these companies. I don't trust them at all. In the US unregulated capitalism is fine: everything and his mother are for sale. Here, not so much. Ironically if there is a single population that will immensely benefit from socialism, is the United States. Yet they are raised in fear of the very doctrine that would save them.
- matchbok3 4mo ago
  I'll take our #1 companies, #1 tech scene, #1 innovative companies and #1 stock market over.... whatever you have, any day. We aren't raised in "fear" of anything. We are raised to reach our potential, not depend on a nanny state or the USA. (which the EU does, you conveniently omit)
  - thefz 4mo ago
    > I'll take our #1 companies, #1 tech scene, #1 innovative companies and #1 stock market over.... whatever you have, any day. Good, just don't expect others to do so.
miohtama 4mo ago
The problem is that the EU politicians do not want the think about the problem. They want to outsource it and make someone else to pay it. But there is no solution. Any censorship is always subjective. Also trusted flaggers bans cannot be disputed easily. Meta rather just takes whatever trusted flaggers have flagged, real or not, and it is not their problem. It is a problem between the EU citizen and anonymous trusted flagged with no accountability. The next step is of course corrupted trusted flaggers who can take down business pages, whatever, for a payment.
tsss 4mo ago
EU is an organization of bureaucrats. They want rules, first and foremost. Rules that they can lord over you and that justify their continued existence. What those rules are about is a secondary matter.
mschuster91 4mo ago
> The EU's attitude to American tech firms is weird. At the core, what the difference is is how "free speech" is interpreted. In the US? Unless you literally fake-call "fire" or call for Luigi'ing someone, it's protected free speech, even if it's a bunch of Nazis holding tiki torches and showing the Hitler salute [1]. In Europe? We have been through 1933-1945. Almost every country in continental Europe was either occupied by Hitler's Germany or lorded over by one of his allies (e.g. Spain's Franco, Ante Pavelic in what would be Yugoslavia or Mussolini in Italy). An awful, awful lot of people died thanks to these regimes, and our collective learning from that history is to either ban such speech entirely or at the very least ostracize its followers. The Eastern Bloc countries who had been occupied by authoritarian pseudo Communism in the decades after WW2 added the Communist symbols (e.g. Red Star) for the same reason. Generally, we do not want a repeat of these eras. Now with social media, we saw Americans (and people of other non European countries, but mostly Americans) openly post symbols we see as symbols of hate, we saw them call for a repeat of what happened between 1933 and the 1990s, and US platforms did barely anything against that. We tried the soft way as we almost always do, announced "hey we don't like that", platforms didn't get it under control (and some, like post-Musk Twitter, openly announced they DGAF)... and similarly to GDPR or USB-C, we acted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
zombot 4mo ago
> massive fines What are you smoking? Any fines against these megacorps are at best a tiny fraction of their quarterly profits. They get booked as cost of doing business.

by Sol- 4mo ago

EA-3167 4mo ago

It's almost as though they want to be the government making the rules, rather than sitting back and letting the likes of META do whatever they want. The imperfect approach comes down to the reality of politics.

J-Kuhn 4mo ago

You assume that the EU acts in a coherent manner. I think that premise is wrong - there are many interest groups, and by luck/lobbying/reaching critical mass/... they manage to put one of their interests into a law.

alex1138 4mo ago
EU has different things going on though. Some good regulation, some bad
fooker 4mo ago
> You assume that the EU acts in a coherent manner. When it comes to aiming for maximum extraction from big tech, yes.

dgellow 4mo ago

There are no fines at all in this story.

stefan_ 4mo ago

There are no fines, this is about having recourse when big tech randomly bans you. Which you will remember, is a very common outcry on this very page. This is just an uninformed EU rant.

petcat 4mo ago

The EU fines are not enough to get the US tech companies to change, or even leave completely. But they are enough to continually fund the EU regulatory bureaucracy itself. So this arm of the government really only exists to preserve itself. I would be interested to see how many EU government jobs the US tech fines are supporting. Maybe Meta or Google is indirectly the largest employer in Brussels?

rusk 4mo ago
Another way to read this is the tech companies are stupidly bankrolling the EU by not complying with the laws of the lands (EU states voluntarily enact their own implementations of EU directions in return for a slice). That’s far too good a cash cow to pass up. Keep it coming.
ginko 4mo ago
> But they are enough to continually fund the EU regulatory bureaucracy itself Why do people keep repeating this falsehood? The EU budget is hundreds of billions of Euros. Even the largest fines so far would be a drop in the bucket compared to that. But more importantly it's the individual member states that invoke those fines (like Ireland with the €1.2B GDPR fine on Meta) not the EU itself.
PunchyHamster 4mo ago
Incorrect. Plenty of changes made because of that, they just apply only to EU member countries coz they still want to sell the data about other country's citizens

vrganj 4mo ago

I think the censorship framing is quite manipulative. It is removal of unlawful content. Is removing CSAM censorship? What about snuff? If no, then where do you draw the line? Why can't our democratically elected governments decide what is and isn't lawful? Why should foreign Big Capital be allowed to decide instead?

dragonwriter 4mo ago
Restricting the distribution of any material on content-based criteria by persons other than sender or intended receiver is censorship. Whether it is desirable censorship or not is generally a separate issue from whether or not it is censorship, unless, for example, you have previously adopted a rule that the particular actor committing the censorship shall not engage in censorship at all, in which case they are, of course, inherently the same question. (Where this gets hairy is when one likes to pretend that one has such a rule for a particular actor, but actually really would prefer that actor to censor certain things, which sometimes occurs with modern liberal democratic regimes, and especially frequently occurs with a particular North American one which has what superficially looks like a very strong restriction in that area in its Constitution.)
like_any_other 4mo ago
Nice motte-and-bailey. Removing CSAM is good, therefore so is removing “we need to take back our country”: @JudiciaryGOP has been investigating European censorship since the EU tried to silence President Trump last August. In February, we subpoenaed tech companies for their communications with foreign censors in Europe and around the world. Today, we’re releasing a report with preliminary findings about the EU’s censorship regime. The EU’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), requires platforms to censor so-called “misinformation” and “hate speech,” even when the content “is not illegal.” New documents obtained by the Committee show that European regulators distort these terms to require censorship of legitimate political discourse that is neither harmful nor illegal. In May, the EU hosted a DSA-focused “workshop” where platforms were asked to consider hypothetical “scenarios” involving hate speech online. Unlike other EU “workshops” with tech, the public was NOT allowed to watch this one. And the EU told the platforms to NOT share the “scenarios” with the public. What were they trying to hide? Turns out, the EU wanted to hide what it defines as “illegal hate speech” that must be censored: tweeting ordinary political rhetoric like “we need to take back our country.” https://x.com/jim_jordan/status/1948730617803296910 https://x.com/jim_jordan/status/1948730617803296910 https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/2025-07/DSA_Report&Appendix(07.25.25).pdf https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j...

thefz 4mo ago

As an EU citizen I am glad there's at least some overwatch and control over these companies. I don't trust them at all. In the US unregulated capitalism is fine: everything and his mother are for sale. Here, not so much. Ironically if there is a single population that will immensely benefit from socialism, is the United States. Yet they are raised in fear of the very doctrine that would save them.

matchbok3 4mo ago
I'll take our #1 companies, #1 tech scene, #1 innovative companies and #1 stock market over.... whatever you have, any day. We aren't raised in "fear" of anything. We are raised to reach our potential, not depend on a nanny state or the USA. (which the EU does, you conveniently omit)
- thefz 4mo ago
  > I'll take our #1 companies, #1 tech scene, #1 innovative companies and #1 stock market over.... whatever you have, any day. Good, just don't expect others to do so.

miohtama 4mo ago

The problem is that the EU politicians do not want the think about the problem. They want to outsource it and make someone else to pay it. But there is no solution. Any censorship is always subjective. Also trusted flaggers bans cannot be disputed easily. Meta rather just takes whatever trusted flaggers have flagged, real or not, and it is not their problem. It is a problem between the EU citizen and anonymous trusted flagged with no accountability. The next step is of course corrupted trusted flaggers who can take down business pages, whatever, for a payment.

tsss 4mo ago

EU is an organization of bureaucrats. They want rules, first and foremost. Rules that they can lord over you and that justify their continued existence. What those rules are about is a secondary matter.

mschuster91 4mo ago

> The EU's attitude to American tech firms is weird. At the core, what the difference is is how "free speech" is interpreted. In the US? Unless you literally fake-call "fire" or call for Luigi'ing someone, it's protected free speech, even if it's a bunch of Nazis holding tiki torches and showing the Hitler salute [1]. In Europe? We have been through 1933-1945. Almost every country in continental Europe was either occupied by Hitler's Germany or lorded over by one of his allies (e.g. Spain's Franco, Ante Pavelic in what would be Yugoslavia or Mussolini in Italy). An awful, awful lot of people died thanks to these regimes, and our collective learning from that history is to either ban such speech entirely or at the very least ostracize its followers. The Eastern Bloc countries who had been occupied by authoritarian pseudo Communism in the decades after WW2 added the Communist symbols (e.g. Red Star) for the same reason. Generally, we do not want a repeat of these eras. Now with social media, we saw Americans (and people of other non European countries, but mostly Americans) openly post symbols we see as symbols of hate, we saw them call for a repeat of what happened between 1933 and the 1990s, and US platforms did barely anything against that. We tried the soft way as we almost always do, announced "hey we don't like that", platforms didn't get it under control (and some, like post-Musk Twitter, openly announced they DGAF)... and similarly to GDPR or USB-C, we acted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally

zombot 4mo ago

> massive fines What are you smoking? Any fines against these megacorps are at best a tiny fraction of their quarterly profits. They get booked as cost of doing business.