US sanctions EU government officials behind the DSA

https://mastodon.social/@fj/115773761468906515

by pojntfx • 7 months ago

129 128 7 months ago

derelicta4• 7 months ago

See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system. But tbh, Europeans deserve it, for they use and abuse of sanctions themselves, as some of Swiss citizens can attest.

looperhacks• 7 months ago

Can you explain what sanctions impact swiss citizens?

derelicta4• 7 months ago

Straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/former-swiss-in...

Sanctions on Jacques Baud for anti-war activism: https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/1802...

Sanctions on Nathalie Camp for of anti-colonialist speech: https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/1764...

drooopy• 7 months ago

Are you referring to Jacques Baud who has been sanctioned recently because he has been working as a mouthpiece of the russian government?

newsclues• 7 months ago

I’ve seen his interviews on YouTube and I’m not sure if he is a Russian asset or just says things contrary to the western narrative. There is a propaganda war.

So what hard evidence that he is working for the Russians?

YY348762378• 7 months ago

Jaques Baud is not a "mouthpiece". He has never appeared on Russian state TV and has taken great pains to avoid citing Russian sources in his analysis. The problem is that what he has been saying about the Ukraine war (that the war is not winnable and peace should be negotiated as soon as possible) is dangerous as to European leadership.

vfclists2• 7 months ago

In the same way John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are mouthpieces of the Russian govt?

Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?

avianlyric5• 7 months ago

See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.

You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.

blibble3• 7 months ago

SWIFT is belgian...

saubeidl4• 7 months ago

The digital Euro and dedollarization can't come quickly enough.

vixen992• 7 months ago

- for you.

jeroenhd3• 7 months ago

Europe is struggling with an energy crisis because of its sanctions against Russia. I'm sure those Iranian and Venezuelan oil fields willook awfully enticing after the Americans break down more and more American-European trade ties. Who knows, maybe a sizable oil investment might convince the Iranians to stop contributing to the Ukrainian invasion.

azalemeth• 7 months ago

This just isn't really true any more. The Scandinavian countries have become net green energy exporters including over winter (lots of wind power and biogas in municipal heating networks) and the block as a whole is banning Russian gas imports from next year. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IP...)

The price per kWh has dropped sharply in recent years compared to the invasion peak, though they are about double what they were before COVID (not inflation adjusted) - see https://skilky-skilky.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Househ.... It's the UK that's up the shitter but that's far from uncommon....

derelicta4• 7 months ago

Our Overlords in America will never allow it

intended4• 7 months ago

The US is essentially demolishing itself.

At the level it existed before the 2nd Trump admin, it had supply chains of intelligence, capability, and the ability to project actual force and support.

It has deleted institutional knowledge.

The degree of self own here, is historic.

jadbox• 7 months ago

From the thread, "If you want an explainer on why the EU’s DSA Fine Against X is Not About Speech or Censorship read this article:" https://www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-fine-against-x-is-not-a...

dotandgtfo• 7 months ago

Really abhorrent how the current US government is spinning this into their tried and true "free speech" crusade despite it being mostly irrelevant. The DSA's core goal is transparency, shown clearly in the X ruling.

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. [...] As the Commission put it, the DSA “clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.”
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
The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.

It's clear why the tech monopolies want to keep their secrets in the dark. There is a democratic consensus that what they're pulling either is illegal - or should be illegal. E.g. Scam advertisements, overt editorial practices by selective (de)amplification and/or monetization and looking the other way about bots and third-parties leveraging their systems for spreading political propaganda.

Transparency is their enemy. Free speech is their irrelevant but emotion-laden argument. Europeans see straight through it - the questions is, do the Americans?

johnthewise• 7 months ago

https://x.com/ThierryBreton/status/1823033048109367549 Are we supposed to think these prior public threats are unrelated and X is really fined for changing a design on their website?

stuffoverflow• 7 months ago

Sanctions in this context mean visa restrictions (travel ban to US). So not financial sanctions. Just thought it would be a good thing to clarify.

CrossVR9• 7 months ago

I find it deeply cynical that representatives of a federalized union call upon another union to disband in favor of national identity. It is a transparent ploy to sow division within another competing union for geopolitical gain.

throw-the-towel3• 7 months ago

The world hegemon caught doing cynical thing, news at 11.

throwaway8943452• 7 months ago

Is the idea here to normalize what the Trump administration is doing as “what any hegemon would do”? As far as I’m aware, the US largely avoided using its power to directly prosecute one man’s personal vendettas?

saubeidl4• 7 months ago

The world hegemon is currently throwing away its hegemonial power in a series of unforced errors, that's the real news here.

fidotron11• 7 months ago

It was only this mechanism that caused the VW diesel scandal to be discovered.

Competition is necessary to keep these people remotely honest.

Edit: This comment has been flagged.

CrossVR9• 7 months ago

The EU did not call upon the US to disband because of fines levied against Volkswagen. Nor did the EU say that the Clean Air act was only enacted to attack the European car industry.

Instead the EU levied their own fines against VW and BMW including a €875 million fine in 2021. When can we expect the US to slap X with a multi-million dollar fine?

tw1984• 7 months ago

competing of what?

the entire EU couldn't even defect Russia that has a GDP smaller than a single state of the US.

yomismoaqui• 7 months ago

The Rusia that can't even conquer Ukraine? Yes, really scary...

roenxi• 7 months ago

Yeah, but geopolitics is a chaotic system and the US foreign policy has failed at pretty much everything for decades now - these are the people who managed to cement Taliban control of Afghanistan and appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.

If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe. If it is coming from the US State Department they are so bad at international politics that there is a pretty good chance that the path to thwarting them is following their plan. The most powerful era of Europe was literally when they had lots of small but technically and socially advanced countries competing with each other. It was literally a world-conquering combination that put them centuries ahead of everyone else. In some sense the reason the EU exists is to try and hold the Germans back; talking about breaking it up is one of those careful-what-you-wish-for requests.

general1465• 7 months ago

If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.

The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.

Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!

YY498374392872• 7 months ago

appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.

Not surprising at all considering that socialism and centrally planned economies are inherently more efficient than liberal free markets - by removing the constant pressure for quarterly profit and removing or severely limiting the bourgeoise who only exist to take the value generated by companies for themselves, you have a system that does a much better job of allocating labour and resources. For example, imagine how much better Windows 11 would be if Satya Nadella wasn't taking home a $100m salary and that money was spent hiring or paying developers.

Frankly, American capitalists got so high on their own supply after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they thought they didn't need to keep the boot on the necks of the communists any longer. As soon as the pressure came off the superiority of the Chinese communist system became evident and is virtually impossible to stop now.

jeroenhd3• 7 months ago

Imagine the response to the EU calling for Texas leaving the US via that weird defunct line in their constitution.

Maybe breaking up the US would be a good idea. The blue states are funding the American government which is led by the people mostly popular in the red states. But you won't see EU politicians set up a well-funded plan to actually do it.

America has turned into a ridiculous cartoon of itself in such a short time frame.

bayindirh• 7 months ago

Reminds me of this comic: https://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html

See the fourth row.

josefritzishere• 7 months ago

You are really on to something. Imagine if the EU ran ads in the US encouraging US states to join the EU. Advertise the benefits of membership: NATO protection, socialized medicine, less gun violence, worker protections, a higher average standard of living...

stogot• 7 months ago

Red/blue is a cynical and false division. One can live in a blue state and vote red, and vice versa. In fact, some localities are nearly 50/50 or 45/55 when you dig into the data. Breaking up the union over statistical ignorance and false divisions is not a good idea.

venturecruelty• 7 months ago

I guarantee you half of America would support this, and the other half would also support this.

halJordan• 7 months ago

Lol what? This site gets off so hard on reminding everyone that the north won and we're no longer a federal union or anything other than a unitary state controlled by the northeast

geoka9• 7 months ago

Small correction: for another adversary's clear geopolitical gain. While dissolving the EU has been Russia's wet dream for decades, there's not much to be gained from it by the US and very much to lose. In fact, the speed with which the US is giving up its influence over Europe of its own accord is bewildering.

exasperaited5• 7 months ago

The day will come when we ban Steve Bannon, Elon Musk and JD Vance from the UK, and I think for the first two at least, the day is getting closer.

(I personally expect Vance to be banned from the UK - along with Denmark and Greenland - as soon as he is no longer VP. But then I suspect his days of international travel will end then more generally.)

But since diplomacy requires proportionality, maybe we start with Bannon, or Nick Fuentes, or Andrew Auernheimer. (They really should be banned from travel here like Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Don Black and Mark Weber already are.)

vixen992• 7 months ago

Your suggestion should it materialize would certainly be in line with the general atmosphere which has been developing in the UK.

TheOtherHobbes3• 7 months ago

Overreach in some areas does not conflict with proportional and appropriate action in others.

exasperaited5• 7 months ago

A general atmosphere that we sometimes ban white nationalists and neo-nazis when they actively provoke violence or hatred or illegally interfere in our politics to destabilise the country?

Oh no, I'm sorry if this is upsetting or surprising to anyone!

Seriously: Vance will be persona non grata when this is over. The list of countries that should ban him is longer than the one I made (Germany should, for example). The list of countries he won't risk visiting is probably longer still. But then I think he won't risk leaving the USA at all after this is all over. And nor should he.

And as others have observed, Musk has actively attempted to foment violence in the UK; people get banned from other countries (including the USA) for that all the time.

netsharc2• 7 months ago

I don't think Dubya has been in Europe since his presidency, in 2011 he famously cancelled a speech in Switzerland because a human right groups called for his arrest for war crimes..

rwmj• 7 months ago

It'd be awkward to ban Vance as he's the Vice President so covered by the Vienna Convention. The others, I'm quite surprised they haven't been banned already, especially after Elon Musk quite literally attempted to incite violence on the streets of the UK.

ndsipa_pomu2• 7 months ago

I don't understand how Trump was ever allowed back into the UK on the basis of his criminality (e.g. a persistent offender who shows particular disregard for the law).

seydor• 7 months ago

It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically. Brusselocrats are career politicians caring more about their CV than the spirit of their actions. They do populist flashy things, it's not like they'd lose an election or anything. Ban them all you want, you re just buttering their bread , it's another bullet in their CV, a badge of honor.

Then again, Trump has to win the election, and the Bell curve is symmetrical. Sanctioning EU politicians is less like sanctioning elected national politicians, and more like sanctioning artists. No nation was offended

fidotron11• 7 months ago

It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically.

It's odd anyone paying attention to what Breton says could possibly think otherwise.

peterfirefly• 7 months ago

Breton is 70 so he will probably do a soft retirement now.

He has had a fantastic career in business, academia, and (French) politics. Less than 5 years of that career was spent in Bruxelles.

sebow3• 7 months ago

In the last electoral cycle I've seen firsthand censorship applied to remote acquaintances because of the newly added EU DSA (this in and of itself would not be a huge disaster [by EU standards] if it wasn't accompanied by arrests), which was used as justification over some posts on TikTok and X; therefore I don't really care who hurts the pro-censorship faction within the EU. People have been arrested in WE for speech online for more than a decade now, but now it also happens in EE, where I live, bringing back communist-era "vibes". You would excuse me if the anti-Trump or anti-US (because of the current administration) rhetoric doesn't move me regarding this.

Or let me guess, "Trump bad and therefore we should accept DSA/Chat control 2.0/3.0/etc."? Sorry, I don't care. And people who think this is only about the recent X fine are also wrong (this started last year when Thierry Breton started influencing european elections while also boasting about how he can annul such elections without repercussions; you can deduce what I'm talking about by asking an LLM). This is in part US gov. protecting private companies (and thus itself) from fines, sure, but the broader point about censorship within the west applies. Everything that hurts the people making legislation regarding the Internet (or software in general) within the EU should be welcomed with open arms.

EU apologists would rather change the subject and talk about Trump and the polarizing social environment in the US rather than acknowledge that within the EU, there's not even a chance for discourse to be had about any policy(especially the nonexistent free speech) due to the aforementioned laws. The same people will act surprised when extreme positions regarding the EU are adopted by an ever-increasing number of people "until morale improves".

TheOtherHobbes3• 7 months ago

The EU does far too little to prevent election influencing. From Cambridge Analytica, proof of foreign bribery, algorithmic promotion of bot content by X and Meta specifically intended to undermine democracies, there's plenty of election fixing happening, and the EU should be much more aggressive about preventing it.

Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.

sebow3• 7 months ago

Everybody knows about Cambridge Analytica being used in the US/UK, but, for example, little to no one knows that Cambridge Analytica was also used by political parties within the EU (I won't give specific names [for now], but parties [from Italy, Malta, CZ, and Romania], members of the euro-parliamentary groups EPP/RE/SD, in the 2014-2016 period). Why did nothing happen back then? Those mentioned parties were usually pro-EU, so it's not really surprising no such "scandal" was being discovered until later on, when Cambridge Analytica was being used by the UK/US.

And the Cambridge Analytica "phenomenon" is not really something you can realistically prevent. I'm sure it happens now with some other better firm (Palantir probably), but this is really beside the point. The point is that normal citizens, like you and me, are effectively censored upon suspicion before any burden of proof is provided. Nothing says "protecting democracy" like deleting posts from social media and then finding out the context.

Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.

Sure, nobody likes bots/paid shills. But of course, in a normal society, you have to prove those posts are made by actual bots/content farms before taking any action. Otherwise it's just censorship. Election interference always happens, without exceptions, but degrees vary. This is not to say we shouldn't point out when it happens, but to not do censorship against our own citizens because "the models indicate a pattern akin to foreign entities." Patterns are not burdens of proof, and thus employing a "crowdfunded" fact-checking system like Community Notes or the one from YouTube is at least partly the actual solution instead of directly removing content. Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.

Amezarak4• 7 months ago

"Interference" in elections, even foreign interference, is not a new problem. It has been a problem for at least 2500 years. The nice thing about a democracy, though, is you still have to convince masses of people to vote a certain way, rather than simply influencing a few bureaucrats/aristocrats. And well, if masses of people can be convinced to vote for something you don't like, in a democracy it's your responsibility to show them why they're wrong, rather than treating them like dummies without the intellectual capacity to make their own responsible decisions. If you think people are too stupid to make decisions in the face of the wrong propaganda, you are conceding that you don't believe in democracy at all - at best you believe in stage-managed popular support to make your non-democratic government appear legitimate.

The EU doesn't want to accept that millions of people don't share the EU elite consensus on several issues - usually still a minority of people, but a substantial minority. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to steer the ship of state with the winds of the times, they are simply declaring all bad political opinions to be the result of the Russians, the Americans, or the corporations, or some combination of the three. Countries in which serious conversations are had about banning one of the most popular political parties for wrongthink can only ironically be considered democratic.

touwer2• 7 months ago

You obiously have no idea hoe the EU or Europe works. Go read something other than social media

orwin• 7 months ago

The only arrest (including jail time) I've heard of over internet shit was someone named Tate, and I'm pretty sure it was over suspicion of online pimping/hustling (not sure how it ended up), so I would love to know who was arrested because of the DSA, to see if it match.

blibble3• 7 months ago

it is perfectly legitimate to want to regulate foreign (and domestic) media companies

sebow3• 7 months ago

I disagree in principle, but let's say the people decide to do so. Not only in US (under section 230) those are not media companies, but in EU too, social networks like Facebook/Instagram/etc. are treated legally as "public squares" and not media companies like BBC/etc. When you defame somebody on Instagram, you're the one being held legally responsible, not Meta. Why would social networks be responsible for DSA violations made by the users? This is beyond the fact that implementing an "instant-takedowns" censorship mechanism is draconian. DSA's Articles 16-17 do not require the person (who can also be anonymous, which is ironic) who is reporting the content to provide >legally sufficient< evidence for the takedown. Which goes directly against what I would consider "normal" in a society where you're innocent until proven guilty. The "trusted flaggers" (article 22) do need to submit more evidence, but this just becomes a problem of "partisanship" and bias. This basically means you can report someone for illegal activity, provide unnecessary evidence(in the legal sense), and the content is taken down, with the "battle" starting afterwards.

YouTube's system of DMCA takedown(the copyright issue being way more serious legally than what DSA is supposed to protect against) is not perfect and cannot be perfect (proven by the fact that content is unjustly taken down all the time). DSA is just the same, except more vague, more complicated and (imo) ultimately worse.

DSA has an appeal mechanism, with an option for out-of-court settlements, which means you can employ independent fact-checkers (certified by Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs)); the list of certified bodies is, of course, maintained by the European Commission. The problem is that these DSCs are appointed by each country's gov., which means there's potential room for conflict of interests not only at a national level(I find hard to believe appointed DSCs are completely impartial to the gov. that appointed them) but also at an EU-wide level(certified fact-checking bodies who are supposedly not influenced by EC when judging cases pertaining to EU in international cases).

chvid• 7 months ago

As far as I can tell these people are not on the SDN list (which would defacto deny them a bank account anywhere in the west plus kill their azure ad login) but merely on a travel ban.

touwer2• 7 months ago

Funny how time and time again, users of this forum mix obvious fiction and facts about Europe and the EU. I guess it's too difficult to read up on these things before posting an opinion reflecting rightwing US politicians

Kim_Bruning• 7 months ago

Presumably the US wants the EU to permit more Far-right 'conservativism'?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S-WJN3L5eo 1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan)

This is apparently representative of what that means at this moment in time.

I think it's pretty extreme too, but on searching, none of the participants' positions seem to have been disowned by their own side. One of them actually fundraised $30000 afterwards.

TrackerFF• 7 months ago

For a country that actively bans school books on "gender ideology", fires federal workers that show any support for all things "WOKE", it is absolutely hilarious that they're also seeing themselves as the last bastion of free speech.

They are not serious people. Plain and simple.

The day these clowns are kicked out can't come soon enough.

ndsipa_pomu2• 7 months ago

Unfortunately, they're very serious about their racism and dividing up the country between themselves and their billionaire pals.

apexalpha• 7 months ago

Like a petulant rich kid running to his parents after being told No for the first time in their lives.

If anyone still doubts whether the Americans are serious about going solo in geopolitics this should be nail #192873 in your Trans-Atlantic coffin.

evanjrowley• 7 months ago

Thank you EU government officials for standing up to US big tech interests.

ChrisArchitect• 7 months ago

[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46370787

penguin_booze• 7 months ago

The headline I want to see is 'nations across the world declares the US a pariah state'.

krapp• 7 months ago

We have three more years of Trump and probably at least four of JD Vance (because American leftists are utterly fucking useless) so just wait.

The century of American humiliation is just beginning.

US sanctions EU government officials behind the DSA

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