Yes, it is unfortunately becoming increasingly clear that even in the EU, billionaires and their companies are above the law. The legal situation should be clear here and there should be consequences - but there apparently aren’t any.
Unfortunately, this applies not only to Twitter, but to most US tech giants in particular, to meta, for example. I have already stopped counting the massive violations of the GDPR that meta and others are constantly committing, because nothing happens anyway. If anything, the fines are so low that violating the law brings these companies far more revenue than it costs them.
So unfortunately, the same major issue that brought the US to the brink of a straight up dictatorship also applies in Europe: even the most blatant violations of the law have no serious consequences for the richest of the rich – and that is why billionaires are becoming more and more powerful.
The situation may be better in the EU for now than in the US, whose legal system obviously no longer even maintains the appearance of fairness, but even in the EU, the enforcement of the law is miles away from anything that could even remotely be called justice.
The reason seems to me to be the same as in the US: concentration of power in a tiny billionaire class that asserts its influence through corruption.
I think that if things continue like this, and I see no indicators that they will not, it will not be long before even the appearance of justice is abandoned in the EU as well.
Edit: Here is an example of how this is possible - it’s just plain old corruption, but in the highest ranks of our institutions: From Meta to the EU Parliament: Former chief lobbyist negotiates data protection (German article)
Aura Salla was Meta’s chief lobbyist in Brussels for many years. Her task: to convince politicians to weaken EU digital rules such as data protection in order to generate even higher profits with Facebook, WhatsApp, and other platforms.
How about we just fine them to oblivion and make the people responsible answer for their crimes?
How about we start throwing executives into jail starting with the top and working the way down?
How do you enforce the fines? Wouldn’t you have to invade the USA to enforce any meaningful fines?
I’d rather not see a great firewall of Europe.
I’d be happy to see them banned from doing business here though. Hit them where it hurts, their money.
Shouldn’t they want it banned because it already broke the law? How many lines have to be crossed before anyone does anything?
I’m not clicking the link to read this but these sort of headlines are often a result of their survey intentionally wording things like this to spin the narrative. Anyone who does in fact want it banned immediately would still say yes to the question. I’d suspect there are many such folks across Europe.
Lmao, if only
If we obstinantly refuse to call it anything else, then it as twitter shall forever remain
Nearly half? Sheesh.
Maybe it’s because most Europeans don’t have a strong opinion about X. I really don’t think it’s quite as popular here as in the USA. Which is also the reason many don’t know how unhinged the current admin is.
To be fair, the only time I used Twitter was in a data science course that required to capture some data from the “firehose” (unsorted and unfiltered realtime stream of tweets). Other than that I never cared for it. Wouldn’t affect me at all if they ban it, so it’s easy to be in favor of such a ban.
banning this website would be super good for Blue sky and mastodon
lol people will go to meta threads first, not that.
And why would not these be also banned shortly thereafter?
to be clear, I do not advocate the banning of any social media website for any reason
I say that, in order to save the species, ban all social media, everywhere.
I want it banned regardless :D
I think all USA/Israel social media application must be banned.
What is a Israel sozial media application?
American ones it seems like. American politicians sure love Israel for some reason.
All USA social media indirectly product of Israel .
Ban it, do it, we are not gonna cry!
Unfortunately, the other half of the people who don’t want it banned have all the political capital.
I want it banned here too.
If X fails to respond to the Commission’s fine, 70% of respondents were supportive of repercussions [3]. Among those, between 17-28% think that further fines should be given to X, between 23-29% believe X should be banned, and the largest segment - between 40-52% of those in favour of repercussions - believe that the Commission should fine and ban the social media service entirely from the EU [4].
Ditch it.It will have 0 to none effect of EU. And Mr.NaciSalute won’t get broke.Mastodon is the way.
And there is our main argument against ChatControl.
What is?
ChatControl is pushed with the excuse of CSAM. If that was a true concern of the proponents, we would have a push towards stronger and faster enforcement of the DMA and in particular of X. Instead, nothing.
I see. I have some doubts about the motivation of these people, too. But regulators are going after X.
Consider that the chatcontrol equivalent would be going after services that don’t spy enough on their users.
ChatControl would be going after all messages of all users by default. And CSAM is the excuse.
What I’m getting at is that these laws demand that companies should do the spying. Surveillance is expensive, so foisting on these foreign companies is politically the easiest solution.
