Breton Wields DSA As Censorship Tool, Musk Tells Him To ‘Go Fuck His Own Face’ (original) (raw)

from the meme-diplomacy dept

I know that many Elon Musk supporters assume that my mockery of the many stupid things that Elon does means that I won’t give him a fair shake. But when he does something good, I’m happy to highlight it and give him kudos.

In this case, he’s right (if a bit provocative) in telling EU Commissioner Thierry Breton to, well, [checks notes] go fuck his own face.

Let’s take a step back, because this requires some background. We’ve been warning for many years that the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) would be abused for censorship by the government. EU officials and supporters of the DSA kept insisting that we were overreacting. But, Thierry Breton has made it clear that while the DSA is under his purview as a Commissioner, it is his own personal censorship tool for anything he dislikes online.

When Elon first sought to buy Twitter, Breton had a sit-down meeting with him. He got Musk to stupidly give a full-throated endorsement of the DSA. We warned him at the time that he (1) looked foolish doing so and (2) would regret it. Now that ExTwitter has been accused of violating the DSA, it looks like our warning was prescient.

Anyway, that brings us to yesterday. As you might have heard (or, I guess, given the massive technical difficulties, perhaps you didn’t hear), Donald Trump joined Elon Musk for a conversation on “Spaces,” the extremely buggy real-time audio chat feature on ExTwitter. Before that happened, however, Thierry Breton posted one of his typically smug open letters that more or less warns Elon that if Trump said anything bad, the EU might seek to take action against ExTwitter.

There’s a lot of text in that letter. If you really want to read it, here’s a larger version, but the short version is “Hey, Elon, I hear you’re going to have Donald Trump on. Under the DSA, I’m warning you that you better stop him from saying anything that I consider ‘harmful.’ In the meantime, I need you to waste a bunch of your time and tell me how you plan to block Trump from saying such things.”

While Breton sprinkles the phrase “illegal content” throughout the letter, he’s not really warning about that. First of all, Trump is not saying anything that is actually illegal, no matter how much nonsense he spews. But more importantly, Breton very clearly calls out “harmful content” in the third paragraph:

This notably means ensuring, on one hand, that freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism, are effectively protected and, on the other hand, that all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events, including live streaming, which, if unaddressed, might increase the risk profile of X and generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security. This is important against the background of recent examples of public unrest brought about by the amplification of content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.

That is flat out demanding that Musk and ExTwitter have tools in place to silence Donald Trump if he says something that Breton and other EU technocrats believe is “harmful.”

And that’s bullshit.

Especially coming right after he says “freedom of expression… are effectively protected.”

And therefore, I actually appreciate Elon going into meme form to tell Breton what he thought of his letter:

I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily call it the most diplomatic approach. Nor is it one that is likely to endear many in the EU ruling class to Musk. But, honestly, someone should be calling out Breton and his repeated use of the DSA as a tool for issuing personal threats over speech he disagrees with.

I’m no fan of either Trump or Musk, but (1) the idea anything being said that would violate the law is crazy and (2) the idea that it’s any of the EU’s business is beyond stupid. And at least someone is calling it out.

Filed Under: censorship, donald trump, dsa, elon musk, eu, free speech, thierry breton
Companies: twitter, x