What's bizarre about it? There's lots of legislation that requires companies to report on various data or to provide access to auditors. It's legally valid.
I think there's a compelling case to be made for requiring large social media platforms to provide data access to researchers, considering the platform's incredible ability to influence elections and society at-large.
Auditors are hired by the company being audited, have a very narrow and fixed mission justified by previous financial blowups that caused a lot of concrete damage to specific people, and there are strict standards defining what they are looking for and how. Audits don't tend to suck up personal data of customers.
"Researchers" here means self-selecting academics going on arbitrary fishing expeditions with full access to everyone's data. It's not narrowly defined, not justified by prior unambiguous harm to anyone, and given the maxed out ideological bias in academia is clearly just setting up universities to be an ideological police force on the general public.
It's not clear what "full access to everyone's data" actually means, isn't it limited to things that are already publicly available? So for example, I don't think researchers would get access to someone's Likes because that feature is now considered private, but they could access things like Posts and Retweets. My expectation is that researchers would be allowed to run queries against publicly available data as part of their research, but they wouldn't be allowed to do a huge download with a copy of everything posted during the last 5 years.
Facebook / Meta is compliant with these laws, and the way that they handle researcher access is by providing carefully controlled remote environments with sandboxed access to user data, which forms the basis for my understanding of how researchers are typically provided access to social media data.
Because those researchers become a potential data leak. We all know that deanonymized data isn't actually anonymous. Do you, as the user, really want people poking around your private data "for research purposes"? Where there are basically no consequences if they mess up and leak your data?
I chose to give my data to the company. I didn't choose to give it to some unrelated third party.
I guess one point of confusion is exactly what data is shared, because I understood it to be general access to things that are already publicly available.
Furthermore, X offers paid access to the same data through their enterprise API program, so you're already giving access to unrelated third parties. Is there a significant distinction between the data that researchers could access and what's available through enterprise API?
There is a big difference between auditors and "researchers". Researchers are just academics whose incentives are to publish things and makes a name for themselves - possibly the worst group to give data access to.
Maybe it’s stupid in your perspective. nevertheless; nations have the right to put laws in place and enterprises willing to provide goods and services ought to follow those rules.
A lot of people seem to be forgetting that the Cambridge Analytica scandal started off with data that was supposed to be used for research projects at the University of Cambridge being exfiltrated for commercial political use [0].
That said, this is most likely a tit-for-tat by the EU against the Trump administration, because we live in a world where all countries (even the US) have now weaponized regulations for negotiating leverage.
Our red line in both the Biden admin as well as the current admin was the DSA. The EU's red line is not being included in any negotiation over the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. The US fights against the DSA by arguing about infringement on free speech. The EU then tries to fight back over market competition. And it goes on and on and on.
This is why a lot of businesses get antsy about trade wars.
They could implement a similar system to what Facebook currently provides when doing research with platform data. I think they only allow access to carefully controlled data through a remote sandboxed environment.
I think Twitter is already providing access to this data through paid APIs too, so this is effectively subsidizing researcher access.
Probably, but as I mentioned before, the EU has been using the DSA as a negotiating tool against the US - just like we are using Free Speech absolutism and "censorship" as a tool against the EU in negotiations.
Unlike other major tech companies like Meta or Alphabet that fall under the DSA, X doesn't have a similar presence in the EU to give it a firewall. Alphabet has Poland on it's side [0], Meta has Ireland on it's side [1], Amazon has Luxembourg on it's side [2], and Microsoft has Czechia on it's side [7][8][9], and because of Musk's ties to the GOP, it becomes a useful political lever while not directly hurting individual EU states. If X somehow complies, some other issue will crop up against (eg.) Tesla despite the Gigafactory because Brandenburg is a lost cause if you aren't affilated with the AfD or BSW. It's the same reason why X doesn't push back when India passes a diktat because Indian law holds corporate leaders criminally liable and X has a significant India presence [10]
It's the same way how if you want to hold Germany by the balls you pressure Volkswagen [3] and if you want to pressure France [4] you target LVMH's cognac, scotch, and wine business [5].
This is a major reason why companies try to build GCCs abroad as well - being in the same room gives some leverage when negotiating regulations. Hence why Czechia, Finland, Luxembourg, and Greece pushed back against French attempts at cloud sovereignty [6] because OVHCloud only has a presence in France and Poland, but Amazon and Microsoft have large capital presences in the other 4.
The DSA is decades overdue. It's absurd that there hasn't been one. There's also a dozen non-EU countries that have one, and that number has been growing rapidly.
To call it a "negotiation tool" is like calling literally any import tax or tariff - of which hundreds of thousands existed and were entirely accepted as squarely in the Overton Window long before Trump took office - purely a "negotiation tool". Just because it's new doesn't make it one any more so than such import taxes which have been around for ages.
> There's also a dozen non-EU countries that have one, and that number has been growing rapidly
Not really. Most of them offer significant carve-outs for American BigTech companies, or their implementation has been stayed, or significant capex subsidizes are provided to help reduce their impact for American BigTechs considering FDI in those countries.
It has been a DNC supported policy [0] as well to put pressure on countries that are even considering a digital services act. Heck the Biden admin began the process of making a legal example out of Canada [1] as a warning shot to other countries considering such options.
> To call it a "negotiation tool" is like calling literally any import tax or tariff ... purely a "negotiation tool".
That is what import taxes and tariffs are when not clubbed with subsidizes and formal sector specific industrial policy, because the act of giving MFN status to certain nations is itself a negotiating tactic. Canada's backing down on a digital service tax is a good example of that [2]
The whole point of (eg.) giving the UK preferential market access to the US over the EU, and giving Japan and South Korea preferential market access to the US over China is because it is a lever we can use when negotiating. Heck, France and Germany have both constantly tried leveraging tariffs and import taxes as a negotiating tactic against the US under the Biden admin [3][4] (and of course earlier).
As I mentioned above, this has been a slow-rolling negotiation between the US and EU since 2019. We in the US have bipartisan support to oppose the DSA and DSA-equivalents abroad. It was prominent stance in the Biden administration [0], and even Harris would have put a similar degree of pressure on the EU.
We have no obligation to give Europeans a red carpet, and you guys are not in a position to push back anyhow. The Chinese [5] and Russians have given similar ultimatums to the EU as well. What are you going to do? Sign an FTA with India and then face the same problem in 10 years with them?
You guys have fallen into the same trap that the Mughal and Qing Empires fell into in the 18th-19th century. Anyhow, we've unofficially signalled we are leaving the responsibility of Europe's defenses to Europe by 2027 [6] - meaning member states have no choice but to end up buying American gear or completely vacillate to Russia on Ukraine.
You're still not explaining how the DSA is supposedly a negotiating tactic from the EU any more than you could say that about GDPR. It's a new legal framewo tackling a relatively new set of problems. If any of them get watered down because of deals with the US, then you could make that sort of claim.
> Anyhow, we've unofficially signalled we are leaving the responsibility of Europe's defenses to Europe by 2027 [6] - meaning member states have no choice but to end up buying American gear or completely vacillate to Russia on Ukraine.
Or just buying from the existing European providers? Most American gear has a (sometimes better, cf. all the stuff even the US buys from European companies) European based equivalent. The only major exception is the F-35, but at least one 6th gen European jet is in the works, and unless fighting with the US, an 5th gen stealth fighter isn't really that needed. European manufacturers need to increase output, and they have been working on it and have done so quite a lot already.
It's not "any company", it's exceptionally large platforms who can give insight into large societal questions and have enough influence to sway people's opinions. The data is technically public already, researchers could scrape it, but investigations has to be able to be done to ensure the platforms aren't used to intentionally steer people's opinion in a specific direction, since they're unable to self regulate that it seems.
They changed the blue check from an exclusive club of the rich and popular, to just Ive got a paying account. How is that misleading? Why does the EU have a say about design choices?
The blue check symbolised (symbolises) being verified, i.e. this account belongs to who it says it does. But it doesn't carry out any/sufficient checks to actually verify that.
They have the legal right, similar to the federal government in the USA. You can disagree with their judgement, but they clearly have the right to enforce it.
USanians have been raised to believe that corporations are somehow above the law but that’s not true. Play stupid games, earn stupid fines a.k.a fuck with people and people will fuck back.
At this point, X is a propaganda tool for the radical right. I won't miss X in Europe if you decide to remove access to EU. Please, do it.
Mind you, 120M USD is peanuts for Musk. If it were me, I'd just fine X 1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 USD just because I want to retaliate against Trump's silliness. If you wanna play hardball, expect it back. But, but... freedom of bullshit. You can keep that, we can perfectly use freedom of speech on solid platforms instead.
\1 In real actual history, the US didn't developed a working nuclear weapon based on UK provided designs until after the German surrender.
So in real history there was no chance to "glass" an active EU war zone during WWII.
\2 In the GP's fantasy history in which the US left Europe alone to deal with the Nazi's on their own, the MAUD folk would have never passed on their research to the US and the US would have wallowed in their belief that nuclear weapons were impractical and continued on messing about with atomic power from big piles.
We... do? Of course, if you'd like to name whatever wars we're a) involved with and b) not fighting ourselves, then that would be splendid.
Anyway, how is that relevant to enforcing the DSA on X?
> We civilized them. And we may have to civilize them again.
What does this even mean? What do you mean by "civilize"? Also this sounds very much like how colonialism and imperialism were justified back in the 19th and 20th centuries.
But again, what does this have to do with X and DSA?
> But until they turn to yet another genocide maybe we should just let the Europeans have at each other.
Russia is currently conducting a genocide over in Ukraine, for example by kidnapping children and bringing them over to Russia and beyond, for example to North Korea.
This is a war crime and also genocidal. So by your admission you ought to be helping.
But again, what does this have to do with X and DSA?
> We can pay them the $150m to let them take care of Ukraine themselves. It was bad enough we had to drag them by the nose to the water. Maybe enough is enough.
We are taking care of Ukraine. Most of the aid is coming from various EU states, and the organisation itself.
Of course, the United States is the largest singular donator and also has donated some very important capabilities to Ukraine, for which people should be and are thankful for, but the claim that Europe isn't doing anything for Ukraine is just false. Could we do more? Absolutely. Should we? Yes. But that doesn't mean that nothing is happening.
But I must ask again, what does this have to do with X or the DSA?
> What does this even mean? What do you mean by "civilize"?
Teach them not to gas millions of people, that kind of thing. Nothing outrageous or anything.
> Russia is currently conducting a genocide over in Ukraine, for example by kidnapping children and bringing them over to Russia and beyond, for example to North Korea.
Ukrainian casualties are nothing like what Germany was inflicting on people. The latter rises to the standard. The former perhaps not.
To be honest, at first I thought we had to help a European country being invaded by Russia, but over time I've realized that Europeans mostly don't want us there. This is an internal affair for them. Some Europeans killing other Europeans. If it gets to the millions of civilians dead, then yeah they've fallen back into their atavistic ways and we have to go clean up again. But otherwise you kind of have to let Europeans be Europeans.
Blowing up their pipeline to get them to help themselves was unnecessary. If they don't want to help, they don't have to. It's up to them. We've got stuff to deal with. And they don't appreciate it anyway. They primarily treat the US as some kind of pinata to pop out money and weapons any time they decide to go kill each other.
> Ukrainian casualties are nothing like what Germany was inflicting on people. The latter rises to the standard. The former perhaps not.
The UN convention on prevention of genocide doesn't have any victim threshold for what counts as genocide.
> To be honest, at first I thought we had to help a European country being invaded by Russia, but over time I've realized that Europeans mostly don't want us there
Anyone using "Europeans" to broadly paint a whole continent with a single brush as expressing a singular opinion is at best extremely misinformed, at worst...
Anyways, Ukrainians very much want American support. And have been providing invaluable information on exactly how the Russians work and think in exchange for it.
In most EU member states, the majority of people, wanted US and EU side by side helping Ukraine. After all, most of those countries sent soldiers to help US kill a bunch of Iraqis, wouldn't it be nice to do it for a good cause for a change? Of course, the ~20-30-40% of Russophiles in multiple Central and Eastern European countries (like Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, etc) didn't want that, they wanted their "brothers" to win. But they're mostly irrelevant, and mostly dying off.
That's also why it's stupid to paint any war as just "it's just Europeans killing Europeans or just Africans killing Africans". How does that change anything about the war, or its casualties? Was Srebrenica not a genocide that merited being stopped just because both were Balkan peoples? Does the war in Sudan deserve no attention because it's just Africans?
But Trump and Vance have completely changed how Europeans see the US. Now everyone knows that they're no longer a partner. There is no going back on this.
> Trump and Vance have completely changed how Europeans see the US. Now everyone knows that they're no longer a partner. There is no going back on this.
The quietly released (no fanfare) 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States of America that dropped last night explicitly steers the US away from traditional European allies and embraces Russia.
Don't do business in Europe if you don't like it. It's not hard.
And if you must use these kind of loaded terms, insisting you MUST be allowed to do business on YOUR TERMS and your terms alone is pretty much how colonisation started.
> "Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations," Carr said.
And America is taxing Americans via tariffs to subsidize a corrupt executive branch lining its own pockets. At least Europe is looking out for a whole continent. Not just a handful of grifters.
Taxes which are used wisely for the people’s benefit is not a wasteful thing. That was the point original commentator made.
Your reasoning is that taxation is always bad and the more you pay the worst, a very American view which I can understand given how badly US government spends money in this regard.
It's just a dog whistle. People hate tax, so calling things that are not tax "tax" triggers anger in people without deep critical thinking skills. Or people with skills but not enough energy or time to use them on this particular issue.
Actually the difference isn't that big when you consider that "taxes" (I'm using this to describe all (semi-)mandatory state money extraction from revenues, whether they're called tax, insurance, cotisation, etc) in European countries cover the majority of healthcare and retirement costs that Americans pay out of pocket. But still have to pay. So if the US had the same "tax" model as European countries do, the rate wouldn't be that off (VAT is usually higher than American sales taxes, income tax often has higher brackets, but Americans spend a lot more on healthcare and retirement).
> "Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU," said European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen.
I agree. Good EU!
> Pre-empting the announcement on Thursday night, United States Vice President JD Vance that "the EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage."
Sorry, but your garbage has influence outside the US. Keep it to yourself or clean up.
Deception and fraud aren't even protected by the 1st Amendment, and the blue checkmark scheme being pay-to-win is definitely leaning that way, if not just straight up there. Seems the EU thought is just is.
And if you care so much about free speech, maybe you should be more open about those ads of yours?
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