Tag: eu

The EU Insists Its X Fine Isn’t About Censorship. Here’s Why It Is.

When the European Commission fined X €120 million on December 5, officials could not have been clearer. This, they said, was not about censorship. It was just about “transparency.”

They repeat it so often you start to wonder why.

The fine marks the first major enforcement of the Digital Services Act, Europe’s new censorship-driven internet rulebook.

It was sold as a consumer protection measure, designed to make online platforms safer and more accountable, and included a whole list of censorship requirements, fining platforms that don’t comply.

The first target is Elon Musk’s X, and the list of alleged violations look less like user safety concerns and more like a blueprint for controlling who gets heard, who gets trusted, and who gets to talk back.

The Commission charged X with three violations: the paid blue checkmark system, the lack of advertising data, and restricted data access for researchers.

None of these touches direct content censorship. But all of them shape visibility, credibility, and surveillance, just in more polite language.

Musk’s decision to turn blue checks into a subscription feature ended the old system where establishment figures, journalists, politicians, and legacy celebrities got verification.

The EU called Musk’s decision “deceptive design.” The old version, apparently, was honesty itself. Before, a blue badge meant you were important. After, it meant you paid. Brussels prefers the former, where approved institutions get algorithmic priority, and the rest of the population stays in the queue.

The new system threatened that hierarchy. Now, anyone could buy verification, diluting the aura of authority once reserved for anointed voices.

However, that’s not the full story. Under the old Twitter system, verification was sold as a public service, but in reality it worked more like a back-room favor and a status purchase.

The main application process was shut down in 2010, so unless you were already famous, the only way to get a blue check was to spend enough money on advertising or to be important enough to trigger impersonation problems.

Ad Age reported that advertisers who spent at least fifteen thousand dollars over three months could get verified, and Twitter sales reps told clients the same thing. That meant verification was effectively a perk reserved for major media brands, public figures, and anyone willing to pay. It was a symbol of influence rationed through informal criteria and private deals, creating a hierarchy shaped by cronyism rather than transparency.

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“The Days Of Censoring Americans Online Are Over”: Senior US Diplomats Slam EU’s “Attack” On American Tech Platform X

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several other senior U.S. officials have criticized the internet policies of the European Union (EU), likening them to censorship, after the governing bloc last week levied Elon Musk’s social media platform X with a $140 million fine for breaching its online content rules.

On Dec. 5, EU tech regulators fined X 120 million euros (about $140 million) following a two-year investigation under the Digital Services Act, concluding that the social platform had breached multiple transparency obligations, including the “deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark,’ the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.”

The EU accused X of converting its verified badges into a paid feature without sufficient identity checks, arguing that this deceived users into believing the accounts were authentic and exposed them to fraud, manipulation, and impersonation.

This meant the platform had failed to meet the Digital Services Act’s accessibility and detail standards, leaving out key information that prevented efforts to track coordinated disinformation, illicit activities, and election interference, according to the EU.

Even before the EU’s fine was announced, U.S. Vice President JD Vance suggested it amounted to punishing X for “not engaging in censorship.”

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‘Fourth Reich’: Musk Strikes Back At EU ‘Tyrants’ After X Fine

Elon Musk is not taking the outrageous fine from Brussels bureaucrats lying down, lashing out at EU officialdom for taking on Nazi characteristics and oppressing their own citizens’ best interests…

As Catherine Salgado reports for PJMedia.com, Musk also re-shared a post about Irish teacher Enoch Burke, who was jailed for refusing to use transgender pronouns, and later replied to another user, “So many politicians in Europe who are traitors to their own people.”

And Musk highlighted the fact that Meta has a verification program similar to X’s, yet the EU hasn’t onerously fined the more censorship-prone Meta.

Musk reposted and reiterated his previous explanation of why he bought X (then Twitter) in the first place.

“I didn’t do the Twitter purchase because I thought it was a great way to make money. I knew that there would be a zillion slings and arrows coming in my direction.

It really felt like, there was a civilizational danger that unless one of the major online platforms broke ranks, then, because they’re all just behaving in lockstep along with the legacy media.

Literally there was no place to actually get the truth. It was almost impossible. So everything was just getting censored. The power of the censorship apparatus was incredible,” Musk said.

The EU seems to be borrowing ideas from 20th century Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler… 

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EU Pokes Russia Again with “Reparation Loans” to Ukraine

The European Commission proposed a “Reparations Loan” to Ukraine on Wednesday. Some of the funding would come from European financial institutions that hold frozen Russian funds.

They would issue loans backed by their budget. However, they would also give Ukraine loans backed by Russian assets.

The Tin Gods of the EU

It would allocate about 90 billion Euros to Ukraine to aid in its effort to repel Moscow’s invasion. They would just give money without a plan.

France, Spain, and Italy spent almost no money on Ukraine. UK doesn’t have much and Germany has already planned how they will spend their 11 billion. They want to keep the war going without contributing.

President Trump wants to establish peace and Europe wants to take funds from Russians that are in European banks to continue the war. Some of the money belongs to the Russian government, but much of it belongs to Russian investors.

Commissioner von der Leyen said it would cover Ukraine’s expenses and their “defense.”

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EU targets platforms that refuse to censor free speech – Telegram founder

The EU is unfairly targeting social media platforms that allow dissenting or critical speech, Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said.

He was responding to a 2024 post by Elon Musk, the owner of X, who claimed that the European Commission had offered the platform a secret deal to avoid fines in return for censoring certain statements. The EU fined X €120 million ($140 million) the day before.

According to Durov, the EU imposes strict and unrealistic rules on tech companies as a way to punish those that do not comply with quiet censorship demands.

“The EU imposes impossible rules so it can punish tech firms that refuse to silently censor free speech,” Durov wrote on X on Saturday.

He also referred to his detention in France last year, which he called politically motivated. He claimed that during that time, the head of France’s DGSE asked him to “ban conservative voices in Romania” ahead of an election, an allegation French officials denied. He also said intelligence agents offered help with his case if Telegram quietly removed channels tied to Moldova’s election.

Durov repeated both claims in his recent post, describing the case as “a baseless criminal investigation” followed by pressure to censor speech in Romania and Moldova.

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US accuses EU of ‘attack on American people’ after fine on X

The US has accused Brussels of an “attack” on Americans after the EU fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X €120 million ($140 million) for violating the bloc’s content-moderation rules.

The European Commission announced the decision on Friday, noting that it is the first time a formal non-compliance ruling has been issued under the Digital Services Act.

The move comes amid a broader wave of enforcement against major American tech companies. Brussels previously imposed multibillion-euro penalties on Google for abuses in search and advertising, fined Apple under both the Digital Markets Act and national antitrust rules, and penalized Meta for its “pay-or-consent” ad model. Such actions have sharpened disagreements between the US and the EU over digital regulation.

According to the Commission, X’s violations include the deceptive design of its blue checkmark system, which “exposes users to scams,” insufficient transparency in its advertising library, and its failure to provide required access to public data for researchers.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio slammed the decision, writing on X that it is not just an attack on the platform, but “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.” 

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Top ex-EU diplomat Federica Mogherini accused of corruption and fraud

The EU’s former chief diplomat Federica Mogherini and two other people have been formally accused of fraud and corruption, the European prosecutor’s office has said.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) did not refer to Mogherini by name, but said the rector of the College of Europe in Bruges – her role – had been formally notified of the accusations. A senior staff member of the college and a senior official from the European Commission were also indicted, the EPPO said, after all three were questioned by Belgian police.

The investigation, which led to police raids on the headquarters of the EU foreign service in Brussels and the elite College of Europe postgraduate school, as well as Mogherini’s home, has deeply shocked EU insiders. Prosecutors suspect fraud in the tender for a contract to run a training academy for young diplomats, which was awarded to the College of Europe by the EU foreign service.

The EPPO, the EU agency in charge of prosecuting fraud involving European funds, said the accusations concerned “procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest and violation of professional secrecy”. It added: “All persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty by the competent Belgian courts of law.”

All three have been released “as they are not considered a flight risk”, the EPPO said.

On Wednesday, Mogherini issued a statement via the College of Europe. “In its long tradition, the College has always applied and will continue to apply the highest standards of integrity and fairness,” she said. “I have full confidence in the justice system and I trust that the correctness of the College’s actions will be ascertained.”

The College of Europe has said it would cooperate fully with the authorities “in the interest of transparency and respect for the investigative process”.

In a letter to staff seen by the Guardian, the EU’s current foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the allegations were “deeply shocking but should in no way tarnish the good work that the vast majority of you are doing every day”.

Kallas, who is one year into a five year mandate, said integrity and accountability “will only improve under my watch” and that the current process showed “safeguards are in place and working”.

One of the accused is understood to be Stefano Sannino, a senior commission official, who was secretary general of the European External Action Service from 2021 to 2024. A request for comment sent to him was referred to the commission, which declined beyond saying it was co-operating with an investigation into activities that took place before the term of the current EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas.

Mogherini was the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs from 2014 to 2019, after a brief stint as Italy’s foreign minister. She went on to become rector of the College of Europe, a training ground for European officials and politicians. Her appointment in 2020 proved controversial, with some alumni arguing she lacked academic credentials and experience of running a major academic institution.

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“We Must Protect Volodymyr”: Leaked Call Shows European Leaders Conspiring Against Trump Peace Plan

In a development that is not entirely surprising, European leaders are claiming that Washington is looking to “betray” Ukraine and President Zelensky during potential formal peace negotiations with Russia. “There is a possibility that the United States will abandon Ukraine on territorial questions without providing clarity on security guarantees,” French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly said according to a “leaked” phone call record with other European leaders.

Likely this was an intentional leak and bit of strong signaling to the Trump administration, as Europe has not been on board with the US President’s proposed peace plan from the start. “There is a possibility that the US will betray Ukraine on the issue of territory without clarity on security guarantees,” Macron continued. He laid his view that there was “a great danger” for Zelensky. However, Macron’s office has subsequently sought to clarify that “The president did not use those words.”

The leaked transcript of the call between European leaders strategizing about how to protect the Zelensky government and Kiev’s interests was published Thursday by the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Also reportedly on the line engaged in the conversation were German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, and of course Zelensky as well.

Merz had in the dialogue agreed that Zelensky should be “extremely careful in the coming days” and warned the Ukrainian leader that “they are playing games with you and with us.”

Finland’s President Stubb followed with, “We must not leave Ukraine and Volodymyr alone with these people” – after NATO Secretary General Rutte chimed in: “I agree with Alexander. We must protect Volodymyr.” The underlying assumption seems to be that Zelensky is in a weak position and is being bullied by the more powerful US officials who have leverage.

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EU Directs Hundreds of BILLIONS to Ukraine in Latest Plan

According to Ursula von der Leyen’s options paper provided to member states on October 23, Ukraine will need €71.7 billion ($83.2 billion) in 2026. An estimated €51.6 billion ($59.9 billion) will go directly to military needs. The estimate is based on the false assumption that the war will end next year. The price tag for funding Ukraine through 2027 is €135.7 billion on the low end.

The majority will be funneled through the EU’s Ukraine Facility mechanism. “It will now be key to rapidly reach a clear commitment on how to ensure that the necessary funding for Ukraine will be agreed at the next European Council meeting in December,” the European Commission President wrote to the 27 member states. “Clearly, there are no easy options.”

Ursula is not prepared to accept the peace plan. There IS AN OPTION to end this war, but the neocons are currently refusing to surrender. Trump must use America’s NATO status as leverage—end the war or the US will pull out.

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EU Push to Make Message Scanning Permanent Despite Evidence of Failure and Privacy Risks

The European Union has a habit of turning its worst temporary ideas into permanent fixtures. This time it is “Chat Control 1.0,” the 2021 law that lets tech companies scan everyone’s private messages in the name of child protection.

It was supposed to be a stopgap measure, a temporary derogation of privacy rights until proper evidence came in.

Now, if you’ve been following our previous reporting, you’ll know the Council wants to make it permanent, even though the Commission’s own 2025 evaluation report admits it has no evidence the thing actually works.

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

The report doesn’t even hide the chaos. It confesses to missing data, unproven results, and error rates that would embarrass a basic software experiment.

Yet its conclusion jumps from “available data are insufficient” to “there are no indications that the derogation is not proportionate.” That is bureaucratic logic at its blandest.

The Commission’s Section 3 conclusion includes the sentence “the available data are insufficient to provide a definitive answer” on proportionality, followed immediately by “there are no indications that the derogation is not proportionate.”

In plain language, they can’t prove the policy isn’t violating rights, but since they can’t prove that it is, they will treat it as acceptable.

The same report admits it can’t even connect the dots between all that scanning and any convictions. Section 2.2.3 states: “It is not currently possible…to establish a clear link between these convictions and the reports submitted by providers.” Germany and Spain didn’t provide usable figures.

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