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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

A major reason why American social media companies flipped support from the Dems to GOP this cycle was because the EU is rolling out the DSA, and felt the Biden admin didn't do enough to push back on this.

Social Media organizations like FB/Meta and Google have historically been some of the largest donors to the Dems, and their flip was a massive reason why 2024 went the way it did.

Vance has been consistently lobbying against the DSA over the past few weeks, and that's where his "free speech" argument is coming from.

I don't really care one way or the other, but I care about ensuring that large donors who flipped from D to R return to the D fold.

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And do what exactly? Sanctions against the EU for not allowing social media poison while at the same time banning Chinese social media?

Diplomatic pressure from the US against passing the DSA. Or, if it really comes down to it, offers of local amnesty for companies that violate the DSA in the EU. There's a lot to do. The US spends a lot of money on NATO and its influence in the region is a huge lever to do a lot with.

> spends a lot of money on NATO and its influence in the region is a huge lever to do a lot

Not any more, it's been made quite clear that's over and is now an extortion racket against Ukraine. Long term consequences of this are unclear.

Again: what's the argument for trying to ram US social media right wing propaganda into an unwilling Europe, while banning tiktok?

> what's the argument for trying to ram US social media right wing propaganda into an unwilling Europe, while banning tiktok?

To get the tech oligarchs back on the Dems side of course, just like alephnerd said above.

> while banning tiktok?

Is this ideological contradiction bothering you? Well, unfortunately the world is full of these. Norway is a huge oil and gas exporter and yet maintains very stringent standards on its domestic usage. Why do they profit off exporting O&G to countries with less state capacity to manage the externalities of O&G? Well them's the shakes. Pick your priorities. For me, I'm fine if tech companies stay unregulated if I don't get 4 more years of MAGA politics. I'd prefer neither 4 more years of MAGA politics nor unregulated tech companies but I also want to build affordable condos in Beverly Hills so ;)

The tech companies (mostly Facebook) are responsible for MAGA both times, but there's no amount of ass kissing that would have got them to do the necessary level of pro Dem moderation.

I'm far from able to understand american politics but didn't Dems get far more money in the last election than Republicans? I've read about twice as much? What would big (social media oligarchs/moguls ?) donors flipping back bring about?

That was mostly because ActBlue (the DNC's fundraising platform) is well built while GOP's WinRed is a hot piece of garbage, and donors now sidestep the GOP to create SuperPACs for Trump and Trump-affiliates directly.

What you end up seeing is the GOP raises nearly as competitive as the DNC when you add Trump PACs plus WinRed.

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