Making Elon Musk, the Elites' Number One Enemy, By Richard Miller (Europe)
The EU elites have got Elon Musk in their sights. Thus, Věra Jourová, the EU's outgoing Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency, an office which is like a 1984 parody, showed her true colours, not that they were ever hidden, by calling Musk a "promoter of evil" for allowing freer speech. This must not be tolerated as it might make the natives restless about all that the ruling elites are doing. "We started to relativize evil, and [Musk] is helping it proactively. He is a promoter of evil," Jourová said. That is one elite, but the entire EU Digital Services Act (DSA) is now directed against Musk as reported by Bloomberg:
"Under the EU's Digital Services Act, the bloc can slap online platforms with fines of as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to tackle illegal content and disinformation or follow transparency rules. Regulators are considering whether sales from SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and the Boring Company, in addition to revenue generated from the social network, should be included to determine potential fines against X, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public. -BBG
More from Bloomberg:
The European Commission has been investigating X for several potential breaches of the Digital Services Act, newly introduced rules meant to ensure platforms police illegal content. The EU is leading a global crackdown on harmful online content and disinformation that's sparked increasingly vocal responses from Musk, who has said such measures restrict free speech.
...
The commission hasn't yet decided whether to penalize X, and the size of any potential fine is still under discussion, the people said. Penalties may be avoided if X finds ways to satisfy the watchdog's concerns."
Musk has already got his legal team up and wants this battle to be very public. That will be good as it will bring the European censorship industrial complex into the spotlight.
"Věra Jourová, the EU's outgoing Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency decided to show what true EU 'values' were with a ranting parting shot. True to form, she went on a moralizing rant against free speech—and a certain billionaire who holds it dear.
In an interview with Politico, published on Wednesday, October 16th, Jourová went as far as to brand Elon Musk, the owner of X, a "promoter of evil" just because he turned the platform formerly known as Twitter into one of the internet's last remaining hubs of freedom of expression following years of insidious censorship tactics employed primarily against conservatives by the previous management.
Unlike other Silicon Valley tech bosses, Musk "is not able to recognize the difference between good and evil," the Commissioner asserted. A more appropriate question would be whether she herself is able to differentiate between free speech and hate speech.
"We started to relativize evil, and [Musk] is helping it proactively. He is a promoter of evil," Jourová said.
She explained that since big tech companies hold "monstrous" power over political and social narratives, she was "really scared" by enterprises that are in "bad hands." Her prime example, of course, is X, which—according to Jourová—has become "the main hub for spreading antisemitism now," something she warned EU countries about a day earlier.
Now we are in the situation where the member states' law enforcement powers have to protect the people who are under threat, under physical threat … This is what I mean … This new chapter, new intensity of antisemitism, where we don't see sufficient action from the side of the platforms.
X has been in the crosshairs of EU regulators ever since it was purchased by Musk, but relations between the platform and the European Commission really began to deteriorate after the billionaire refused to sign up to the EU's "voluntary" anti-disinformation pact like other social media giants. Brussels almost immediately found X's content moderation falling short of EU rules, and initiated an ongoing non-compliance case against it.
In August, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton—the EU's self-styled "digital enforcer" responsible for creating the bloc's infamous social media censorship tool, the Digital Services Act (DSA)—went as far as to threaten Musk with further "legal repercussions" if he fails to censor Donald Trump and other political figures deemed of engaging in "hate speech." Breton's outburst came after Musk reinstated the former president's account and conducted a two-hour-long interview with him, amassing 100 million views in 24 hours.
Following the public outrage against Breton's undemocratic suggestion, the EU Commission immediately threw him under the bus, claiming that he acted alone, without authorization from Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. The episode probably contributed to Breton's dramatic exit from the Commission the next month, after it was revealed that von der Leyen silently pressured French President Emmanuel Macron to drop Breton's reappointment bid in favor of somebody else.
But Breton's not the only one not returning to Brussels in the new mandate starting in a few weeks. Jourová's entire portfolio—"Values and Transparency"—has been scrapped under von der Leyen's new distribution plan. The commissioner is no longer a member of any party back in her native Czechia, meaning Jourová is unlikely to be nominated for another role.The transparency portfolio was not only redundant throughout the past five years—we already have a transparency watchdog in the office of the European Ombudsman, after all—but also quite counterproductive, given Jourová's glaring hypocrisy and personal scandals in the area.
For instance, she's still refusing to disclose key documents related to her 2023 trip to Slovenia, during which she may or may not have encouraged the local constitutional court to go ahead with the completely unconstitutional purge of conservatives from the country's public broadcaster and near-entire media landscape.
Jourová also kept silent in the case of Pfizergate, failing to remind von der Leyen of the principles of transparency as she still refuses to disclose both the EU's unlawfully redacted vaccine contracts and her mysteriously missing text messages with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, despite being ordered to do so by both the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Ombudsman.
In short, Jourová's portfolio was always about promoting very specific 'values' of one side of the political aisle over the other, while acting as one of the least transparent members of the European Commission. If this is the person who thinks Elon Musk is a "promoter of evil" for allowing free speech on his platform, then it's probably best for Musk to just take it as a compliment."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-rise-of-anti-elonism/
"Radical EU bureaucrats are weaponizing the Digital Services Act (DSA) to crack down on free speech that doesn't align with government-approved narratives on social media, including Elon Musk's 'free speech' platform X. The EU's attack on free speech online has possibly entered a new chapter, with Musk's entire business empire potentially in the crosshairs of fines.
Bloomberg reported that EU bureaucrats are mulling over how to calculate fines against X for failing to combat what the bloc deems 'illegal content or disinformation' on the social media platform (this spat between EU-Musk has been ongoing for about a year). In other words, EU officials are livid with Musk because X does not censor and/or shadow-ban folks based on political views. So, these bureaucrats must potentially resort to lawfare against their political enemies.
The report cites people familiar with the matter who said EU bureaucrats are mulling over whether to expand the potential fine of up to 6% of X's yearly global revenue to Musk's other companies, including SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI, and the Boring Company.
Under the EU's Digital Services Act, the bloc can slap online platforms with fines of as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to tackle illegal content and disinformation or follow transparency rules. Regulators are considering whether sales from SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and the Boring Company, in addition to revenue generated from the social network, should be included to determine potential fines against X, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information isn't public. -BBG
More from Bloomberg:
The European Commission has been investigating X for several potential breaches of the Digital Services Act, newly introduced rules meant to ensure platforms police illegal content. The EU is leading a global crackdown on harmful online content and disinformation that's sparked increasingly vocal responses from Musk, who has said such measures restrict free speech.
...
The commission hasn't yet decided whether to penalize X, and the size of any potential fine is still under discussion, the people said. Penalties may be avoided if X finds ways to satisfy the watchdog's concerns.
Musk has previously stated on X that he wants a "very public battle in court" with the EU over its censorship tactics...
Bloomberg continued:
The review of X began under Thierry Breton, the EU's former tech czar who often feuded with Musk online and had been granted special powers to enforce the DSA without the need for the commission's rubber stamp. After Breton resigned in September, he bequeathed his fining powers to competition and digital boss Margrethe Vestager. Decisions on the penalties and how they are calculated would ultimately lie with Vestager.
In August, commissioner Breton sent a letter to Musk threatening X with punishment if they didn't crack down on "content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation."
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