Europe Fires a Speech Warning

With a huge fine of Elon Musk's X, the Digital Services Act sets sail on its first transatlantic voyage. Is Germany the model for a post-Trump future?

From the New York Times:

The European Union on Friday fined X, the social media company owned by Elon Musk, $140 million for violating one of the bloc’s major laws targeting the technology industry… X is the first company to be fined under the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a sweeping law intended to force large internet companies to protect their platforms against manipulation and illicit content… In addition to Mr. Musk’s ties to the Trump administration… Mr. Musk has also become involved in European politics, backing far-right groups like the Alternative for Germany party.

The Digital Services Act, the European Commission’s content control law developed across multiple stages dating to the mid-2010s, has finally become fully operational, in Star Wars parlance. Officials announced a long-threatened €120 million (about $140 million) fine of Elon Musk’s X platform, with the major offenses being the use of a “deceptive” check mark program and failure to “provide researchers with access to the platform’s public data.”

The fine comes at a strange time. A few weeks ago, the EC began a public campaign of walking back its biggest censorship initiatives, thanks to a growing belief that its stifling regulatory environment was costing Old-World companies a chance to compete for investment in AI technology. Last summer, Europe’s former Vice President Margrethe Vestager — a tough-talking Danish pol who inspires heartburn in CEOs and is said to be the inspiration for the character of Birgitte Nyborg in the political drama Borgen — took the lead not only in Digital Markets Act cases against Apple and Meta, but in trolling CEOs like Musk over alleged DSA violations. Musk responded by accusing the EU of offering to drop their DSA case if they “censored speech without telling anyone.”

Margrethe Vestager, the “tax lady”

A year later, Vestager — branded the “tax lady” who “really hates the U.S.” by Donald Trump — is out, and President Ursula Von der Leyen is reportedly trying to push Europe in a less punitive direction, under the auspices of a plan loosely called digital simplification. “Regulation cannot be the best export product of the E.U.,” said Finnish parliamentarian Aura Salla.

Still, the fine of Musk and X isn’t surprising, given anxiety on the continent about the rise of Trump and nationalist movements in key countries like Germany and the U.K. Although EC politicians seem to be in a mood to loosen some tech sector screws, the Times assured readers that “officials remain committed to enforcing laws like the Digital Services Act.” The paper also noted Europe through the DSA and its vast network of regional laws — see a later accompanying Q&A on Germany — has already created a “template” for Latin America and Asia to regulate the tech sector.

With the world focusing on more immediately lethal issues at the moment, and with “free speech” having been improbably reborn in the American press as a rallying cry for anti-Trump agitation, questions about digital censorship in the AI age have taken a back seat, for now.

Neither Elon nor EC spokesperson Thomas Reginier responded to request for comment about the size of the fine, but it’s worth noting that the Times quoted German content moderation hawk Josephine Ballon on the incident. She said it was “long overdue but insufficient,” adding that the E.U. “must not bow to geopolitical pressure from the U.S.” Ballon a year ago played a starring role in a glowing 60 Minutes feature about German speech crackdowns:

About those crackdowns: Racket-profiled playwright C.J. Hopkins faces more new charges in Germany, which still gives “zero fucks” about the law, according to the author. Also, old friend Andrew Lowenthal of Liber-Net put out a new report showing the scale of content-monitoring just in Germany to be much larger than previously thought. So despite talk about Europe withdrawing from content control at the continental level, surveillance at the national level is stiffening. With the Trump administration awash in problems, it may be time to look more closely at the aforementioned “template,” as it could presage our future. More to come.