The European Union's Digital Services Act is
touted as part of a regulatory strategy to "prevent illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation."
In practice, the DSA,
regarded by critics as a "censorship law," is shaping up to be a cudgel for vindictive continentals to wield against Elon Musk and his relatively open social media platform, X.
There are now indications that the European Commission is plotting to personally target Musk with monster DSA fines for supposed violations of the regulators' content moderation rules on X.
After months of
investigation concerning alleged DSA violations, the European Commission announced on July 11 that X was likely in breach "in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for research."
'We look forward to a very public battle.'
The commission complained that:
- Anyone on X can subscribe to obtain a blue checkmark, which somehow "negatively affects users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with";
- X lacks a "searchable and reliable advertisement repository";
- X "prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping."
Thomas Regnier, a spokesman for the commission, indicated there are additional alleged breaches under consideration, noting in a statement
obtained by TechCrunch, "There is no precise timeline for [the EU completing all its DSA probes of X], and the Commission continues its investigation on the two remaining suspected breaches, namely illegal content and information manipulation more generally."
Musk indicated that he would challenge the findings,
tweeting, "We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth."
The commission said that a noncompliance decision finding X in breach of Articles 25, 39, and 40(12) of the DSA could mean fines of up to 6% of a platform's total worldwide revenue, to be decided by Margrethe Vestager, the commission's Danish executive vice president.
However, insiders revealed this week to Bloomberg that the commission may instead calculate fines based on sales from all of Musk's companies, including SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and the Boring Company.
The apparent thinking behind this punitive play is that since X is a private company and under Musk's control, the billionaire is ultimately the finable entity. This logic bodes well for those foreign nationals seeking to expropriate the maximum amount of money from the American, given that X was
recently valued at only $9.4 billion.
According to the insiders, Tesla Inc.'s sales would be exempt from these fines because the company is publicly traded and Musk is not in total control.
To avoid the Euro fines, X would have to bend over backward to satisfy the regulators.
"The obligations under the DSA are addressed to the provider of the very large online platform or very large online search engine," Regnier told Bloomberg. "This applies irrespective of whether the entity exercising decisive influence over the platform or search engine is a natural or legal person."
'I'm really scared by digital platforms in bad hands.'
In doing so, the EU would be following in the footsteps of the Silva regime in Brazil, which similarly treated Musk-led companies as a single group. Last month, the South American nation confiscated millions of dollars from a Starlink bank account to cover fines imposed on X.
Even if Musk successfully challenges the latest DSA complaints or bends the knee, the Europeans will likely continue trying to extract their pound of flesh.
Evin Incir, a Swedish Social Democrat member of the European Parliament, for instance, recently told Kvartal that the "DSA is an extremely important tool" to combat polarization and so-called "disinformation" on X, which she claims is adversely impacting society.
Incir indicated that the DSA would help tame the "Wild West," which is X under Musk.
European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová
told Politico Wednesday that Musk was "not able to recognize good and evil."
"We started to relativize evil, and he's helping it proactively. He's the promoter of evil," said Jourová. "I'm really scared by digital platforms in bad hands."
Musk
responded on X, "Věra Jourová is the epitome of banal, bureaucratic evil."
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