The European Union fines X.

Summary

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Tangle Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Title: The European Union fines X.
Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Isaac Saul

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Overview

This episode delves into the European Union’s decision to fine X (formerly Twitter) €120 million ($140 million) for violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The discussion explores the details behind the fine, reactions from across the political spectrum, including US and European commentators, and Isaac Saul’s nuanced take on the international implications for free speech, tech regulation, and platform transparency.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Correction & Transparency Update [01:57–04:03]

• Isaac Saul opens by maintaining the podcast’s commitment to transparency, correcting two previous errors in their reporting—one about a US town and a verbal slip concerning US presidents.

2. News Rundown (“Quick Hits”) [04:03–05:29]

• Student Loan Plan: Trump administration reaches agreement halting US federal student loan enrollments for certain programs.
• Ghislaine Maxwell Case: DOJ granted to unseal grand jury records.
• Supreme Court Case: Review of campaign and party spending rules.
• Thai-Cambodian Border Fighting: Significant casualties reported.
• Australia’s Social Media Ban: Children under 16 now blocked from platforms like X, TikTok, Meta, and YouTube—the world’s first such national law.

3. Breakdown: What Happened with X and the EU [05:29–09:10]

• Announcement:
  • “Today. The commission has issued a fine of 120 million Euro to X for breaching the Digital Services Act. This is the first ever fine under the DSA.” – [05:29]
• Key Violations:
  • Misleading users via the Blue checkmark system: Checkmarks now available for purchase with little to no actual verification, increasing risk of impersonation and scams.
  • Inadequate ad transparency: Nonfunctional ad repository and lack of researcher access.
  • Prohibiting effective data access for researchers.
• Elon Musk’s Response:
  • Musk labeled the EU’s post about the fine "bullshit".
  • On X: “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries so that governments can better represent their people.” – Paraphrased from X post.
• US Political Reactions:
  • Marco Rubio, Trump admin Secretary of State: “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on X. It’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments.” – [Approx. 08:00]
• Context:
  • EU’s DSA (2022) aims to regulate very large online platforms.
  • X’s recent history: Musk’s takeover, policy changes, controversy over misinformation and bots, recent Brazil ban (subsequently lifted).
  • This is the first major sanction under the DSA.

4. What the Left is Saying [11:01–13:56]

• Position: The fine addresses clear violations, not censorship.
• Key Arguments:
  • Transparency requirements are basic legal frameworks not related to suppressing speech.
  • “The blue checks charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish.”
    —Daphne Keller, Tech Policy Press [11:32]
  • X’s ad repository shortcomings and restricted data access for public-interest research.
  • Some on the left argue the fine could have been larger and that the EU is “pulling its punches”—possibly weakening regulatory precedent for enforcement against other platforms.
  • “X misled users by monetizing its blue check marks so anyone could become verified. It blocked independent researchers… penalty could have been much bigger.”
    —Parme Olsson, Bloomberg [12:29]

5. What the Right is Saying [13:56–16:36]

• Position: The fine is an attack on free speech and/or Elon Musk's political views.
• Key Arguments:
  • Skepticism that official reasons are the real motive; belief that the fine is about controlling dissenting, unmediated information.
  • “The real reasons have little to do with those allegations and everything to do with the kind of speech the EU wants to suppress.”
    —Editors, The Free Press [14:12]
  • The DSA enforcement is seen as incentivizing US companies to limit speech, not just in Europe but globally.
  • EU’s requirement for open ad data seen as a way to arm activist groups/regulators against platforms.
    • “Brussels wants to force X… to share data that hostile activists can wield against the platforms in future regulatory actions…”
      —The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board [15:06]
  • Musk’s support for insurgent populist movements cited as a motive for targeting X.

6. What European Writers are Saying [16:36–19:33]

• Diverse Views:
  • Some see US conservative backlash as opportunistic attacks fueling the “culture war”.
    • “Talking up Britain and Europe as lost hands could act as a way of warning Americans what might happen if they allow the left to govern again.”
      —Katie Balls, The Times [16:58]
  • Warnings that if the US populist right stays in power, transatlantic criticism of the EU will intensify.
  • Conservative European writers frame the DSA as a censorship regime.
    • “The DSA is clearly intended to have a chilling effect on free speech online… the law is far from neutral. Rather, it has been routinely weaponized against the EU’s critics, especially from the right.”
      —Lawrence Smith, The European Conservative [17:54]
  • Points out DSA’s election “risk” guidance as a tool to preemptively restrict “politically inconvenient views”.

7. Isaac Saul’s Take [19:33–28:26]

• Personal History with X:
  • Initially loved Twitter for open debate/news, but criticized its moderation decisions and Musk's later changes, especially manipulated algorithms and proliferation of bots and misinformation.
  • Strongly dislikes current X but warns against cheering for government overreach.
• Deep Concerns about the DSA and European Regulatory Trends:
  • Europe is “backsliding in genuinely horrifying ways on speech rights.”
    • Examples: UK prosecutions for online speech, Germany’s punitive actions, France’s narrow rights.
  • The DSA empowers the EU to pressure global platforms and potentially override US speech norms.
  • Criticizes the arguments for the fine:
    • Blue Check policy: Users are generally not confused by the paid system; dislikes it, but says it shouldn't be illegal.
    • Ad transparency demands: Considered a severe overreach with consequences for business competition, not just Big Tech.
    • Data access for researchers: Terms of service should be up to the company; sees EU’s demand as subjective and potentially abused.
      • “If my team came up with a brilliant strategy to advertise Tangle on X, I wouldn’t want our timing, location, and price points… shared… where our competitors could mimic or steal the strategy…” [22:47]
  • Warns that even if X technically violated the DSA, the law itself is the true problem—a precedent for international regulatory overreach with major free speech risks.
    • “Believing this enforcement against a US Tech company has nothing to do with speech rights requires head in the sand levels of denial.” [27:09]
  • Urges caution, not because X is virtuous, but because defending its right to run a “crappy, hard to analyze platform full of angry, embittered users” is essential for speech rights.
    • “Trust me when I say we should not want any government in charge of regulating speech in the modern day public square, but especially not these governments.” [26:44]

8. Staff Dissents [28:26–29:58]

• Will Kaback, Senior Editor:

  • Agrees the DSA has issues, but doesn’t find the EU’s action alarming: X can appeal or withdraw from Europe if rules get too restrictive. Unlikely similar regulation would be adopted in the US.

• Ari Weitzman, Managing Editor:

  • Disagrees with Isaac regarding data scraping: Thinks researchers should have a right to automate public data collection; solution is to write clear legal requirements.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The blue checks charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish.”
  —Daphne Keller, Tech Policy Press [11:32]

• “The real reasons have little to do with those allegations and everything to do with the kind of speech the EU wants to suppress.”
  —Editors, The Free Press [14:12]

• “Brussels wants to force X… to share data that hostile activists can wield against the platforms in future regulatory actions…”
  —The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board [15:06]

• “We should not want any government in charge of regulating speech in the modern day public square, but especially not these governments.”
  —Isaac Saul [26:44]

• “Believing this enforcement against a US Tech company has nothing to do with speech rights requires head in the sand levels of denial.”
  —Isaac Saul [27:09]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:57] – Isaac’s correction and commitment to transparency
• [05:29] – Announcement of the EU’s fine and its context
• [11:01] – Left-leaning commentary and analysis
• [13:56] – Right-leaning commentary and analysis
• [16:36] – European writers weigh in
• [19:33] – Isaac’s comprehensive take
• [28:26] – Staff dissenting opinions

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Final Thoughts

This episode underscores the complexity at the intersection of speech rights, tech regulation, and global influence in a shifting political landscape. The EU’s fine against X is portrayed by some as overdue accountability for tech giants, by others as a dangerous overreach, and for Isaac Saul, as a moment to urge vigilance against government intrusion into the digital public square—even (or especially) when the target is a platform he himself has come to dislike.

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Summary prepared for listeners who haven’t tuned in—covering all key arguments, illustrative quotes, and the episode’s unique, non-partisan style.

Transcript

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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

[Isaac Saul]

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome. Welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host Isaac Saul and on today's episode we're talking about X versus the European Union. We're going to talk about this fine against the media company formerly known as Twitter and break down arguments from the left and the right about it. Before we do though, quick heads up that we actually have a correction. In yesterday's podcast and newsletter in our have a Nice day section, we identified antler antler, S.D. instead. It was actually supposed to be antler, N.D. somehow we published this error even though the person responsible for summarizing the story swears that they wrote North Dakota. And the section's chief fact checker insists they look the town up on Google Maps. We do not wish to denigrate or erase the Peace Garden State, trust me. But it is a frustrating way to end a nearly two month long error free streak. This was our first correction since October 22nd. It is our 147th correction in our 330 week history. We track those corrections and place them at the top of the podcast in an effort to maximize transparency with our listeners. So if this is the first one, you're here and that's why apologize for the mistake. Also the other day on the show, this was not an error that was in the newsletter. Accidentally said Donald Trump instead of Harry Truman. At one point in the podcast, a couple of people wrote in to point that out. That was my mistake. Apologize for that. Not gonna count it as a correction since it wasn't something that we wrote down and published. I don't know, it's a little bit wishy washy there, but it was a silly misspeak, I think, and the context, I hope, was clear about who I was talking about. All right, got that out of the way. Gonna send it over to John for today's show and I'll be back for my take.

[John Law]

Thanks, Isaac, and welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the Trump administration said it has reached an agreement with seven states to resolve a challenge to the Biden administration's student loan repayment plan, the Saving on a Valuable Education program. The agreement will reportedly require the Education Department to halt new enrollments in the program, reject pending applications, and gradually remove current enrollees from the program. Number two, a federal judge granted a Justice Department motion to unseal the records of the grand jury investigation of Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Number three, the Supreme Court heard arguments in National Republican Senatorial Committee versus Federal Election Commission, a case challenging the limits on what political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. Number four, fighting between Thai and Cambodian forces continued along the border of the two countries after breaking out over the weekend. Cambodia's military said seven civilians were killed and 20 wounded, while the Thai military said three of its soldiers had been killed. And number five, Australia's social media ban for children under 16 went into effect, blocking access to platforms like TikTok, Meta, YouTube and X. It is the first such ban to be implemented in the world.

[Will Kaback / Ari Weitzman]

Today. The commission has issued a fine of 120 million Euro to X for breaching the Digital Services Act. This is the first ever fine under the dsa. X has indeed breached its transparency obligation. Under the dsa. This includes X's blue check mark. It deceives users, anyone can pay to obtain the verified status and X does not meaningfully verify who is behind. Also included includes X advertising repository, which does not work properly and X doesn't provide effective data access for researchers.

[John Law]

On Friday, the European Union announced that it is fining the social media Co. X $140 million for breaching transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act. The European Commission accused the US based social media company of deceptive use of its Blue checkmark validation feature, lack of advertisement transparency and failure to provide access to public data. EX owner Elon Musk responded to the European Commission's announcement of the fine by calling the post bullshit for context. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, bought the social media application then called Twitter in 2022. Along with renaming the company, Musk introduced a number of changes to the online platform, including overhauling its verific, shifting to paid subscriptions and introducing new features like long form posts, AI chatbot integration and user location data. The changes reflect a pivot away from ad driven revenue and towards subscriptions and AI integration, and the platform has drawn controversy from both users and regulators for allegedly proliferating a rise in bot activity and misinformation. Most recently, Brazil banned X from operating in the country in 2024, but its supreme Court lifted the ban after X agreed to pay a $5.1 million fine and blocked accounts accused of SP misinformation. The EU passed the DSA in 2022 to regulate digital companies that operate within the EU's jurisdiction, with specific rules for very large online platforms and search engines. Friday's announcement marks the first major sanctions issued by the EU under the new legislation. The EU regulators said that along with violating the law's advertisement transparency provisions, X violated the DSA by deceiving users into believing accounts had been verified with its Blue Check system. This deception exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors. The European Commission said. X objects to the fine and says the EU is overreaching its authority by attempting to regulate a US Based company. X's head of product Nikita Beer, accused the European Commission of taking advantage of an exploit in the platform's advertising system in making its announcement and terminated its X account on Saturday. Musk criticized the European Union further. The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries so that governments can better represent their people, he boasted on X. The EU's fine also drew the ire of top officials within the Trump administration. The European Commission's $140 million fine isn't just an attack on X. It's an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments, secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X after the fine was announced. The European Commission defended the fine saying it represented compliance with its law and not censorship. Today we'll cover what the left, right and European writers are saying about the battle between the EU and X. And then Isaac's take.

[Isaac Saul]

We'll be right back after this quick break.

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[John Law]

All right, first up, let's start with what the left is saying. Many on the left say X's fine is for straightforward infractions, not censorship. Others suggest the EU went too light on the platform for fear of political blowback. In tech policy press, Daphne Keller argued the fine is not about speech or censorship. Don't let anyone, not even the US Secretary of State, tell you that the European Commission's 120 million euro enforcement against Elon Musk's X under the Digital Service act is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform, Keller wrote. The blue checks charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. It's kind of like if a grocery store said it had vetted all the produce in its special blue checks section for worms, but then once consumers started relying on that, it actually stopped checking the ads. Transparency charge stems from the DSA's requirement that platforms must maintain a public archive showing what ads the platform ran, who paid for them and other information. X fell drastically short of meeting this requirement, according to EU investigators. The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. Keller said. The fine announced today is important mostly because it answers long standing questions about how aggressively the commission would enforce the DSA in the current transatlantic political climate. But it is also not remotely surprising given how clearly X was violating some pretty basic legal requirements. In Bloomberg, Parme Olsson said Musk's $140 million fine shows the EU is losing its nerve. X's descent into a racist, politically radical hellscape fueled by porn in recent years is the predictable outcome of chronic opacity and deliberate obfuscation. X misled users by monetizing its blue check marks so anyone could become verified. It blocked independent researchers from accessing public data and charged prohibitive fees for limited application programming interface access, making it nearly impossible to study misinformation patterns, according to the commission's findings, Olson wrote. And the company declined to maintain a searchable, reliable advertising database, too obscuring who is paying what to influence public discourse. The penalty could have been much bigger. The commission had originally considered calculating a fine based on Musk's entire private company portfolio, or what the commission called the Musk Group. To have abandoned a higher number after a two year investigation suggests the EU is pulling its punches, Olson said. X was the European Union's first probe under its other new law addressing harmful online content. Now, Europe's handling of this initial case sets the template for its enforcement against TikTok, Meta and others, and its weak response to Musk threatens to undermine the entire regulatory framework.

Alright, that is it for what the left is saying. Which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right see the fine as the EU's latest assault on free speech standards. Others suggest Musk is being targeted for his political leanings, the Free Press's editors wrote. Europe's censors put a price on dissent. The stated reasons for the fine are a lack of transparency, a violation of advertising rules and misleading users with deceptive design. The real reasons have little to do with those allegations and everything to do with the kind of speech the EU wants to suppress. Perspectives that have not been filtered through bureaucrats, academics or media professionals, views that go against the received wisdom of policymakers and views that have not been vetted and found to be acceptable by governments, the editor said. The heart of what the EU is investigating is the content that gets posted on X. That was what the EU itself said when it started its Digital Services act investigation, announcing that it would focus on the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech, the editors wrote. The stakes here are much larger than the fine that the EU wants Musk and X to pay for the US or other American corporations to give in to these kinds of demands would invite nonstop extortion from foreign mandarins. Europe's aim is not to change the color of X's checkmarks. It is to make it more expensive for US Companies to allow speech than to restrict it. And not only speech in Europe but across the world. The Wall Street Journal editorial board criticized Europe's foolish war on X.com, brussels insists X must make data about advertising on the platform readily available to outsiders and shouldn't use its terms of service to prohibit data scraping by eligible researchers. The EU claims this open access to X's commercial data is vital to allow researchers and civil society to spot scams and information warfare. The board said that reference to civil society is a tell. Brussels wants to force X and inevitably other platforms to share data that hostile activists can wield against the platforms in future regulatory actions or litigation, all based on a theory that European citizens are too dumb to take things that they read on X or elsewhere online with a grain of salt. Musk has become a thorn in the side of many European politicians with his support for insurgent movements in many countries, sometimes to good effect and sometimes for ill. Insurgent policies are highly effective at using X and other social media to spread their messages. This makes X an inviting target in Brussels, the board wrote. Europe can't afford any of this. Not the censorship of Europeans own political speech, not the diplomatic battle with Washington, not the war on economically vital data and technology. Earth to Brussels. Are you awake?

Alright, that is it for what writers from the left and the right are saying. Which brings us to what European writers are saying. Some European writers see the backlash to the fine as part of US conservatives growing attacks on Europe. Other writers argue the EU is clearly attempting to suppress conservative voices. In the Times, Katie Balz asked what's behind the Trump administration's ideological assault on the EU. In February, J.D. vance used his Munich Security Conference speech to launch an ideological assault on Europe. This month, Elon Musk said the EU should be abolished after its executive Branch issued a $140 million fine against Musk's social media platform, Balls wrote. Some Republicans say this all comes from a good place. It's because they care and stems from Anglophilia, a feeling of shared values. As Trump put it this week when asked about the X fine Musk is facing, look, Europe has to be very careful. They're doing a lot of things. We want to keep Europe Europe. But it's also a useful political device. Talking up Britain and Europe as lost hands could act as a way of warning Americans what might happen if they allow the left to govern again. How much European leaders have to worry remains in the air. Republicans in Congress could limit some of the powers of the administration on issues like troop withdrawal. Also, if the polls and recent elections are anything to go by, the Democrats could be finding a path to recovery before 2028, Balls said. But make no mistake, if the populist right stays in power, the criticism and likely actions will only harden after Trump leaves office. In the European Conservative Lawrence Smith wrote, the EU censorship regime is coming for X again. European Commission tech chief Hanna Wirkonen maintains that the DSA is having nothing to do with censorship, but it's hard to imagine what else it could be. We need only look at Musk's previous skirmishes with the EU to see that the DSA is clearly intended to have a chilling effect on free speech online, smith said. Ahead of last year's US presidential election, then internal market commissioner Terry Breton cautioned Musk that streaming his planned Donald Trump interview on X might breach the dsa. That could expose the platform to massive penalties, even the risk of being shut out of the EU entirely. Anyone who has been paying attention since the DSA came into force in 2022 will know that the law is far from neutral. Rather, it has been routinely weaponized against the EU's critics, especially from the right, smith wrote. Just look at how the DSA handles elections and crisis moments. The commission's election risk guidance asks very large platforms to anticipate and mitigate threats to electoral processes and civil discourse during specific campaign periods. This effectively pushes them to preempt information manipulation before it spreads and inevitably catches lawful but politically inconvenient views. Alright, let's head over to Isaac for his take.

[Isaac Saul]

Alright, that is it for the left and the Right are saying. Which brings us to my take. I have no love lost for X. Over the last few years, the platform has gone through a rollercoaster of ups and downs. When I started my career in journalism, Twitter was my favorite social media application. It was an awesome way to debate smart people in public and get the fastest breaking news updates in the world. But when it throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story and disingenuously framed it as Russian propaganda, I strongly criticized it. When Elon Musk was supposed to join the board, I supported his push to add ideological diversity to the platform. When Musk bought the platform outright, I worried about the richest man in the world forcing the purchase of such a critical source of information. When Musk began very obviously thumbing the algorithmic scales to promote his worldview and selectively nuked accounts, I again vocally criticized the platform. Today, X is a cesspool. It is overrun with bots, misinformation, porn and bigotry. The community notes system remains helpful, but is far too slow to be effective in reining in misinformation. Too many users delegate their thinking to Grok, which is clearly an unreliable arm of Musk's own beliefs. Elon himself promised to, quote, unquote, fix it when it started, giving answers he didn't like. Which is all just to say I'm not the person you might expect to be defending X right now, even though I once believed in Musk and once loved the platform. And yet, I also think Europe's enforcement of these rules and its trajectory more broadly is deeply concerning. Whenever we cover the Trump administration, we often face the criticism that you can't look at the president's individual actions in a vacuum, but have to look at the whole. That's true. Fitting pieces together shows a more complete picture, which was the underpinning of my piece. Yes, things are pretty bad right now. The fundamental context of this enforcement, which has to be explicated up front, is that Europe is backsliding in genuinely horrifying ways on speech rights. The Digital Services act is the latest government overreach, but it's part of a frightening trend. In the uk, thousands of people are being arrested each year for statements on social media. In Germany, online hate speech can bring the police to your door, and politicians can sue Germans for criticizing them. In France, laws narrowing online rights have proliferated. We see these attacks on speech pop up in the US from the left and the right, but they are much rarer and face far more backlash in Europe. The DSA is an important piece of this picture an enforcement mechanism not just for the continent but apparently the globe, and this is its first major enforcement. Remember that last year, before the US Presidential race, then Commissioner Terry Breton threatened Musk, telling him that if he livestreamed an interview with Donald Trump on X, it could violate the DSA. Months ago, Musk alleged that the EU's bureaucratic arm was offering him a secret deal to drop the case in exchange for the platform censoring forms of speech. Musk didn't specify, but the claim seems more plausible after the EU struck deals with TikTok and Facebook. All of this makes the criticisms Vice President J.D. vance and Musk have leveled at Europe much more plausible. There are allies and Democratic peers, but if these kinds of draconian stances on speech spread to the United States, that could cause social upheaval. All of this is the context leading to the EU's fine and X's supposed transgression. First, that its blue check mark policy purportedly violated the DSA because it might confuse users about which accounts are verified. The symbol represented external identity verification years ago. But the platform has not been ambiguous about how to get a verification check mark. Now you pay for it. I hate this change, and I think it's partially how Musk ruined the platform. But do I think it should be illegal for a private company to change this feature? No, I don't. Am I confused about what that check mark means? No, I'm not, and I don't think many users are. Another of X's alleged crimes is that it has not met the DSA standard for advertising transparency. The DSA requires companies to maintain an easily searchable, publicly available archive of who bought X and what the ad's content was, who the ads targeted, the legal name of the entity paying for the ad, and how many users the ad reached, among other things. Easily tracking how money flows on a platform like X has clear upside, but demanding that data be widely accessible is an incredible overreach. Advertising data is exactly the kind of proprietary information that makes X valuable. And for advertisers, it's the kind of thing you intentionally keep private to have an advantage on your competition. Which, by the way, means that this action supposedly targeting a tech behemoth will have consequences for countless smaller players. For example, if my team came up with a brilliant strategy to advertise Tangle on X, I wouldn't want our timing, location, and price points to be shared widely in a place where our competitors could mimic or steal the strategy for their own gain. Yet this is what the DSA demands of X. The final allegation against X is that it is not meeting the DSA's transparency requirements because it's too hard for researchers to access data posted publicly on the platform. Specifically, the EU claims X's terms of service forbid researchers from using a method called scraping to access public data that's using scripts that visit web pages and get relevant information from the site's HTML, and that it puts up bureaucratic hurdles and delays for researchers who want to access that data through permitted channels. At base, I feel that X is within its rights here on the terms of service. If Tangle became the most well read news outlet in the world and researchers wanted to scrape our comments section to study our readers, I think I should be able to make terms of service that make that more difficult. But putting aside the question of why these researchers should have the right to access that public data of a private company, the complaint itself seems like an incredibly subjective standard ripe for abuse. Some commentators defending DSA argued that this law was similar to the US Platform Accountability and Transparency Act PATA, which was introduced on a bipartisan basis in 2023. The difference obviously, is that PATA is a narrow regulation that also didn't become law, not a part of a massive regulatory framework empowering Oversight Commission to fine or shut down platforms. Under the dsa, the EU can ignore difficulties posed by one company while easily tacking on a claim that another made accessing data too hard to some other allegations, which in my opinion is happening here. So has X violated the dsa? The EU says yes, and maybe they did. We haven't seen the evidence and X hasn't yet had the opportunity to defend itself. They could appeal, but it's not clear if they will. Even presuming X violated the rules, though, the issue isn't X's policies, it's the law itself. In tech policy press, Daphne Keller, under what the left is saying, summed all this up with a cheeky that's it. That's everything X is in trouble for under the dsa, at least for now. But that's not it. The same bill being enforced now also gives the EU enforcement power to compel companies like X to hand over internal data, which Keller herself acknowledges just sentences before Plus Europe has two other investigations open against X, including one for illegal content under the dsa, which would open the door to the EU restricting speech that is legal in the us. Now X has three months to hand over an action plan explaining how it will address these infringements, all with the other open investigations, or face a potential $140 million fine. Perhaps for people who loathe X, are furious at musk and despise online hate speech. I'm all three. It feels nice to watch someone throw a punch at the platform. But trust me when I say we should not want any government in charge of regulating speech in the modern day public square, but especially not these governments. In Germany, insulting a politician can get you three years in prison. In France, a woman is on trial and facing $14,000 fine for calling Emmanuel Macron filth in a Facebook post. Believing this enforcement against a US Tech company has nothing to do with speech rights requires head in the sand levels of denial. No different than thinking Trump's test run of national guard troops in D.C. wasn't going to be expanded across the country. At the very least, we should all be deeply alarmed that a European enforcement agency, some of whose members won't tolerate insulting public officials, is now reaching into the US to dictate how a major social media platform here is run. If we're lucky, X will fight and win. Not because they're the good guys, but because they have every right to run a crappy, hard to analyze platform full of angry, embittered users if that's what they want to do. All right, that is it for my take. There are two staff dissents today, one from Senior Editor Will Kaback, one from Managing Editor Ari Weitzman. You can ignore them. These guys don't know what they're talking about. No, I'm just kidding. All right, first up, here's Will.

[Will Kaback / Ari Weitzman]

Hi. This is Senior Editor Will Kbach. Reading my Descent to Isaac's take.

I disagree with many of the DSA's provisions, and I would oppose similar laws here in the US but I'm not particularly alarmed by the EU's fines against X. The platform can challenge the penalty in court, which it seems likely to do. And if the EU's rules become too disruptive for the platform, it can always shut down its European operations and lobby EU citizens to elect politicians who will change the law. Obviously, that would be a scandalous proposition for Europe, and I don't desire that happening. But I don't think there's any risk of a similar regulation taking hold in the us. All right, now I'm going to pass it over to Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, who had a separate dissent. This is Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with my staff Dissent today. I think the EU's third accusation against X is valid, and I disagree that companies have a right to prevent data scraping. Yes, in the absence of a specific law that prevents companies from banning the practice in their terms of service. The DSA can be unevenly enforced, but the solution to that problem should be to write that law. Why should I be able to enter data I manually read into a spreadsheet, but disallowed from writing a script to do the same thing? Just doesn't make sense to me.

[Isaac Saul]

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[Aramco Narrator]

Who drives the world forward? The one with the answers or the one asking the right questions? At Aramco, we start every day by asking how? How can innovation help deliver reliable energy to the world? How can technology help develop new materials to reshape cities? How you can how can collaboration help us overcome the biggest challenges? To get to the answer, we first need to ask the right question. Search Aramco Powered by How Aramco is an energy and chemicals company with oil and gas production as its primary business.

[Isaac Saul]

All right, that is it for my take and the staff. Dissents from Will and Ari. We're skipping the audience question today, so I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod. Peace.

[John Law]

Thanks Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Thursday, the Journal of the American Medical Association Network published the results of a large scale study in France on the safety and efficacy of MRNA COVID 19 vaccines. The study followed 22.7 million vaccinated individuals and 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals for approximately four years and found that the vaccinated group had a 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID 19 and a 25% lower risk of death of any cause. Separately, the vaccinated group was 15% less likely to be diagnosed with cancer than the unvaccinated group. The study's authors said the results offer significant new support for the safety of those vaccines with potential applications beyond COVID 19. Reason has this story and there's a link in today's episode Description.

All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of European Parliament members who voted in favour of the Digital Services act in July 2022 was 539. The number of European Parliament members who voted against The DSA was 54. The maximum percent of a company's global revenue that the EU can fine for violations of The DSA is 6%. The number of days X has to implement changes to address issues flagged by the EU in its fine or risk additional penalties is 90 days. The approximate amount that the EU fined Meta in July for alleged antitrust violations is $232 million. The approximate amount that the EU fined Apple in July for alleged antitrust violations is $580 million. According to a March 2025 YouGov survey, 63% of citizens in France, 59% of citizens in Germany, and 49% of citizens in Spain say that the EU's enforcement of laws addressing big tech's influence and power is too relaxed, while 7% of citizens in France, 8% of citizens in Germany, and 9% of citizens in Spain say that the EU's enforcement of laws addressing big tech's influence and power is too strict.

And last but not least, our have a nice day story. While traveling for work in 2022, TV host and nursing mother Emily Calandrelli faced a problem. A frozen gel pack she needed to store her breast milk had thawed and the TSA told her to throw it out or check it. After sharing her story online, Calandrelli learned that she wasn't the only mother who faced similar problems with the tsa, and that those problems sometimes threaten women's health and the safety of their breast milk. She began lobbying Congress for clearer protocol that would protect women's ability to travel in airports with breastfeeding equipment. Her activism gained traction and eventually produced the bipartisan Babes Enhancement act, which passed Congress with unanimous support and was signed into law in late November. Forbes has this story and there's a link in today's episode description alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, Please go to retangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'.

[Isaac Saul]

All.

[John Law]

Peace.

[Isaac Saul]

Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saw, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tango and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

[Aramco Narrator]

Who drives the world forward? The one with the answers or the one asking the right questions? At Aramco, we start every day by asking how? How can innovation help deliver reliable energy to the world? How can technology help develop new materials to reshape cities? How can collaboration help us overcome the biggest challenges? To get to the answer, we first need to ask the right question. Search Aramco Powered by How Aramco is an energy and chemicals company with oil and gas production as its primary business.

[Isaac Saul]

So good, so good, so good.

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