Commission concludes that X should not be designated under the DMA
ec.europa.eu
ec.europa.eu
All this gleaned from this official summary article from the EU: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/about-dma_en
EU commission bringing the sick burns
The Commission is just agreeing with X’s own arguments.
It's lazy and unconscionable from a democracy perspective.
But who needs “protection” from any social media company? Just don’t use social media.
Yes I know this is about the EU.
I’m more worried about a powerful government. Government has a “monopoly on violence”. Especially in the US between the electoral college, gerrymandering and the make up of Congress. It’s very much rule by the minority.
Anyone in a failing democracy. No one gets to opt out of the collective effects of social media
I don't think that sort of regulation should extend to private entities, however, who should be able to communicate with their stakeholders however they please, even if I find it annoying.
Otherwise, wealth always wins. And uses those wins to ensure it remains wealthy.
It can even be argued that smart phones should be calculated since they are necessary in today’s world and are a duopoly.
A powerful government can physically take away your freedoms.
Multinational governments should scare people far more than whatever Twitter is doing these days.
I will take potentially misguided trade/business regulations over a megaphone for spreading Nazi speech, thank you very much.
It'd be great if you expanded this argument though, just for the sake of making the conversation more interesting on what exactly you see that's scary.
An average person has some (tiny) input in a representative democracy, where it's one person one vote (even if several layers removed, and only appointed by proxy etc.). They have no real say in a corporation that's usually one dollar one vote.
* Yeah, it happens to governments too!
Commission could be directly elected as well, but no country wants that because then national states would lose relevance - as the local governments would loose control.
> If that were true, explain how Ursula von der Leyen, who never got elected into any EU positions became head of the European Commission
Because each major European political party choose a candidate for Commission President before every European Parliament election. These are typically senior members of their party but there is no requirement that they nominate someone who currently holds a seat as an MEP.
After the election is held the European Council (made up of heads of state of the member nations of the EU, all of the voting members are democratically elected) nominates the candidate of the party that secures the majority of seats (or one of the nominees from one on of the parties that are able to form a majority coalition). This candidate requires a majority vote of the newly elected European Parliament to be confirmed, and the Council must propose a new candidate if this first candidate does not secure the majority.
So yes, it is currently the case that the President of the European Commission was never an MEP, but that is only half the story. She was selected by her party, nominated by a group of democratically elected EU heads of state who are responsible to voters of their respective countries, and confirmed by MEPs who are directly elected by the voters of each respective country that makes up the EU who are also responsible to their constituents.
So that's how she got there and the process for getting there.
gatekeeper for me.
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-conclude...
But https://twitter.com/ still returns 200.
I wonder if there is still a chance it'll move back to Twitter so people can start to recognize it again.
Eventually it's just going to become some invisible unicode char. Fits the "space" theme better.
Hard to say how it works across the EU, but in Spain, there was a point where many of the various local arms of government did use Twitter as the primary tool to reach people, at least here in Barcelona/Catalunya. Not all agencies, and never as the only communication tool, but things often appeared there first.
At one point, Telegram was added to the mix, and seems it's usage is kind of spread now, but again, never the only communication path, just another channel. Twitter usage fell at some point too.
All the important information still goes out via proper websites.
That a government agency would use a for-profit platform for its primary and only way of communicating with the citizens sounds absolutely bananas to me, but I guess it makes sense for a country centered around for-profit enterprises.
The federal / state / local divide makes it more complicated too. We don't have one government but several, usually at least four (fed, state, county, city), not even counting the agencies that actually do things. They all end up reinventing the wheel in some shitty way or else just using some staffer's Twitter or Facebook account.
It's exactly the same here (except besides those, we also have the various EU entities "above", so I guess more complicated actually?), my Spanish and Catalan compatriots seem to handle that just fine.
FIFA and FIBA were never big on those platforms, using instagram instead, it was mostly invested by politics or other people trying to emulate/simulate the US media space. The only people i know outside of tech and politics who use twitter are NBA fans.
To me using it in europe is a clear marker of americanization, and most europeans aren't americanized yet, so it isn't really am important gateway.
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
According to the press release, "The non-confidential version of the decision will be published on the Commission's DMA website[1]," but it doesn't appear to have been published there yet.