Seems like this would be beneficial for Twitter since it exempts them from the extra regulation that being a DMA "gatekeeper" entails. It seems like the main target of the DMA is front-page of the web/device interaction type entities like search results pages or app stores. Being designated seems to mean you're subject to more requirements around fairness, self-promotion, and access rights.
X also submitted rebuttal arguments, explaining why its online social networking service should not, in its view, qualify as an important gateway between businesses and consumers
The Commission is just agreeing with X’s own arguments.
It's a joke; in reality, X/Twitter got the outcome they wanted here, which is for the commission to rule they do not need to follow DMA supplemental guidelines which apply to gatekeeper businesses. The language in this announcement is completely pro forma, but taken out of context, sounds a bit like they're saying X/Twitter is bad at their advertising line of business.
This is lazy argument. Commission is nominated like any other ministry from elected coalitions in particular countries.
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.
>> Commission is nominated like any other ministry from elected coalitions in particular countries.
> 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.
The owner of Twitter is much richer than the CEO of Facebook.
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.
The extent to which poor people can appropriate a portion of that governmental "monopoly on violence" through democracy is the only real check on violence by the wealthy.
Otherwise, wealth always wins. And uses those wins to ensure it remains wealthy.
I don’t have to deal with any one private company except the ones that have a “natural monopoly” like utilities and they are already regulated and should be.
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.
And rule by billionaires or hedge funds is preferable? They don't need physical violence to enshittify societies, especially since so much of government already responds only to that class. They ARE the ruling minority and what's left of democratic government is the only (dying) check against them. Soon there won't be any checks left and you'll get your wish of direct rule by the rich.
This Twitter situation is one example. Many agencies/governments in the US use it as their primary or sole source of realtime public communications, even when they have email, texts, websites, etc. at their disposal. I would like that to be regulated (i.e. agencies required to post on public channels that don't require a proprietary login/account).
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.
The argument isn't that they're free from corruption and ideology, but that they're the only real check the public has against powerful monopolies and duopolies, etc. At a certain scale, competition breaks down and entrenched enshittification happens.*
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.
> 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.
Unfortunately in the US many important agencies chose to use it to publish announcements, even for important public safety things. I don't have an account and am thus prevented from seeing what the agencies are saying. I would like to see regulations preventing governments from doing this.
I can not use it as I do, the same with Facebook, but there are countless others taking disinformation spread on these platforms without bating an eye. Those countless others impact my life, they will vote, they will hate; stochastically it will affect me in some way even if I try to be as far away as I can from these platforms.
The bus company I use only publishes real-time status updates (e.g. delayed/cancelled busses) on X (formally known as Twitter), there are no other bus companies in the area and without logging in X forces timelines to be out of order or hidden.
Try to write them. Our national train company moved from Twitter to Mastodon. Barely anyone is using Mastodon but anyone can read the posts without restrictions. That was not the case with the Twitter.
I don't get why so many organizations do this. Wouldn't you just want some kind of news feed on your website? The whole social aspect of Twitter doesn't matter for this, they just want to push out timestamped messages in a queue. Is it so hard to host something that does this?
If you told someone at that organization (besides a programmer/developer) exactly that, they wouldn't even understand the words "feed", "push out", "timestamped", "queue" and "host", so no wonder people opt for the simplest possible solution, especially when they might have a underpaid and overworked IT department that barely have programmers in it, if any.
Is there anyone who used to use Twitter that doesn't now already know that it's called "X?" How many years will it take before we just accept its new name?
Original link is to a press release feed which includes material unrelated to headline; the URL for the specific press release related to the headline of the OP is:
Is that true in the EU? In the US, there are certainly agencies and local governments who primarily or only communicate real time news through Twitter. Even other tech companies do this instead of posting on their own blogs or forums. It's annoying as heck, especially since Musk made it so that you can't see the latest posts without an account.
> Is that true in the EU? In the US, there are certainly agencies and local governments who primarily or only communicate real time news through Twitter.
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.
Yeah, and in the US, governments are typically pretty poorly resourced and IT starved. The average local gov can barely use MS Office, much less manage a proper blog site.
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.
> 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),
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.
I'm jealous! The EU in general seems much more livable, at least the parts I've visited. The US is a pretty gilded but otherwise relatively dysfunctional society.
`curl -v https://twitter.com` returns HTTP 302 for me, which is kind of funny. If the redirect was permanent, they'd use HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) but instead they use HTTP 302 is amounts to "Moved Temporarily".
I wonder if there is still a chance it'll move back to Twitter so people can start to recognize it again.
I mean, it's fair. I don't really use social media bar forums (HN and P&P RPG), and always had minimal presence on them, but nowadays, especially in France, it seems nothing of importance is on twitter.
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.
That's an old decision to open an investigation into X. Presumably, that investigation has now concluded producing the finding being announced today.
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.
Seems like this would be beneficial for Twitter since it exempts them from the extra regulation that being a DMA "gatekeeper" entails. It seems like the main target of the DMA is front-page of the web/device interaction type entities like search results pages or app stores. Being designated seems to mean you're subject to more requirements around fairness, self-promotion, and access rights.
All this gleaned from this official summary article from the EU: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/about-dma_en
"...given that the investigation revealed that X is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users"
EU commission bringing the sick burns
X also submitted rebuttal arguments, explaining why its online social networking service should not, in its view, qualify as an important gateway between businesses and consumers
The Commission is just agreeing with X’s own arguments.
Why would we want powerful unelected government bureaucrats engaged in "sick burns?"
It's a joke; in reality, X/Twitter got the outcome they wanted here, which is for the commission to rule they do not need to follow DMA supplemental guidelines which apply to gatekeeper businesses. The language in this announcement is completely pro forma, but taken out of context, sounds a bit like they're saying X/Twitter is bad at their advertising line of business.
This is lazy argument. Commission is nominated like any other ministry from elected coalitions in particular countries.
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
>> Commission is nominated like any other ministry from elected coalitions in particular countries.
> 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.
The powerful unelected government bureaucrats are the only people protecting users from powerful unelected billionaire bureaucrats.
The owner of Twitter is much richer than the CEO of Facebook.
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.
The extent to which poor people can appropriate a portion of that governmental "monopoly on violence" through democracy is the only real check on violence by the wealthy.
Otherwise, wealth always wins. And uses those wins to ensure it remains wealthy.
I don’t have to deal with any one private company except the ones that have a “natural monopoly” like utilities and they are already regulated and should be.
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.
> But who needs “protection” from any social media company? Just don’t use social media.
Anyone in a failing democracy. No one gets to opt out of the collective effects of social media
There is nothing stopping you from not going to any social media. How do you propose the government regulate them?
And rule by billionaires or hedge funds is preferable? They don't need physical violence to enshittify societies, especially since so much of government already responds only to that class. They ARE the ruling minority and what's left of democratic government is the only (dying) check against them. Soon there won't be any checks left and you'll get your wish of direct rule by the rich.
Name one billionaire whose products you are forced to use - outside of “natural monopolies” that are already regulated
This Twitter situation is one example. Many agencies/governments in the US use it as their primary or sole source of realtime public communications, even when they have email, texts, websites, etc. at their disposal. I would like that to be regulated (i.e. agencies required to post on public channels that don't require a proprietary login/account).
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.
I agree with that completely. If school systems have ways to contact people either individually or blast emails and texts, governments can too
Or are they? Somehow I doubt powerful unelected government bureaucrats are immune to bribery or zealotry
The argument isn't that they're free from corruption and ideology, but that they're the only real check the public has against powerful monopolies and duopolies, etc. At a certain scale, competition breaks down and entrenched enshittification happens.*
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!
Users don't need protections from online services the majority of the planet neither use nor need to use.
Multinational governments should scare people far more than whatever Twitter is doing these days.
> 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.
What did the EU do that's so terrifying? MicroUSB?
You need protection from X? You can just not use it.
Unfortunately in the US many important agencies chose to use it to publish announcements, even for important public safety things. I don't have an account and am thus prevented from seeing what the agencies are saying. I would like to see regulations preventing governments from doing this.
Agree that there should be laws preventing public entities from using private social networks to exclusively distribute content. ("Also" is fine)
It's lazy and unconscionable from a democracy perspective.
You can just use their websites instead. But that does involve looking them up.
Unfortunately there is a lot that they either never publish on their website at all or do so very late.
I can not use it as I do, the same with Facebook, but there are countless others taking disinformation spread on these platforms without bating an eye. Those countless others impact my life, they will vote, they will hate; stochastically it will affect me in some way even if I try to be as far away as I can from these platforms.
The bus company I use only publishes real-time status updates (e.g. delayed/cancelled busses) on X (formally known as Twitter), there are no other bus companies in the area and without logging in X forces timelines to be out of order or hidden.
gatekeeper for me.
Try to write them. Our national train company moved from Twitter to Mastodon. Barely anyone is using Mastodon but anyone can read the posts without restrictions. That was not the case with the Twitter.
I'd rather it just be on the website or app with an rss feed.
I don't get why so many organizations do this. Wouldn't you just want some kind of news feed on your website? The whole social aspect of Twitter doesn't matter for this, they just want to push out timestamped messages in a queue. Is it so hard to host something that does this?
If you told someone at that organization (besides a programmer/developer) exactly that, they wouldn't even understand the words "feed", "push out", "timestamped", "queue" and "host", so no wonder people opt for the simplest possible solution, especially when they might have a underpaid and overworked IT department that barely have programmers in it, if any.
A company using only one service for something, when they could easily use another, or their own website, doesn't turn that service into a gatekeeper.
Is there anyone who used to use Twitter that doesn't now already know that it's called "X?" How many years will it take before we just accept its new name?
"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" wants a word.
I was just copying what the mainstream media currently calls it (X, formally known as Twitter) which I find funny.
Original link is to a press release feed which includes material unrelated to headline; the URL for the specific press release related to the headline of the OP is:
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-conclude...
Is that true in the EU? In the US, there are certainly agencies and local governments who primarily or only communicate real time news through Twitter. Even other tech companies do this instead of posting on their own blogs or forums. It's annoying as heck, especially since Musk made it so that you can't see the latest posts without an account.
> Is that true in the EU? In the US, there are certainly agencies and local governments who primarily or only communicate real time news through Twitter.
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.
Yeah, and in the US, governments are typically pretty poorly resourced and IT starved. The average local gov can barely use MS Office, much less manage a proper blog site.
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.
> 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),
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.
I'm jealous! The EU in general seems much more livable, at least the parts I've visited. The US is a pretty gilded but otherwise relatively dysfunctional society.
In my experience, the local governments here most often use Facebook, not Twitter
Kinda hard to do since Twitter doesn't exist any more. There's a thing called X that is basically the same thing though. /s
Many are now using Wayland instead of X.
But https://twitter.com/ still returns 200.
`curl -v https://twitter.com` returns HTTP 302 for me, which is kind of funny. If the redirect was permanent, they'd use HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) but instead they use HTTP 302 is amounts to "Moved Temporarily".
I wonder if there is still a chance it'll move back to Twitter so people can start to recognize it again.
Who knows, Elon might decide X is too long tomorrow and rename it to /
Eventually it's just going to become some invisible unicode char. Fits the "space" theme better.
I also wonder if this was an engineering troll.
They renamed Twitter? Why would they do that? Sounds like the kind of thing that a bored and stoned billionaire would do for the lulz
I feel if this was tried before Musk took over, the result could have been quite different.
Why is that?
Power
my guess is because it required blatantly lying about not being a comms channels. it would definitely give different.
Well, yes. It’s only the 16th largest social network and totally marginal, except for journalists’ inexplicable infatuation with it.
I mean, it's fair. I don't really use social media bar forums (HN and P&P RPG), and always had minimal presence on them, but nowadays, especially in France, it seems nothing of importance is on twitter.
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.
so TikTok is one, but X is not. Hmm.
In case anyone is interested in reading the actual decision:
https://ec.europa.eu/competition/digital_markets_act/cases/2...
That's an old decision to open an investigation into X. Presumably, that investigation has now concluded producing the finding being announced today.
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.
[1] https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en