Foundation for Freedom Online:
X became the first American platform to be fined under the EU’s Digital Services Act, receiving a €120 million penalty after allegedly refusing to open up its data to “disinformation researchers.”
Disinformation researchers are critical to online censorship – they are the ones who compile databases of disfavored speech and the advertisers that fund it.
Without access to online platforms’ data, the international censorship machine is blind.
The EU’s Digital Services Act and its provisions mandating data access for researchers emerged with the full support and cooperation of the US government under the previous administration.
23 US-funded “counter-disinformation” organizations are involved in the EU’s censorship regime, representing $15,444,695 in US taxpayer funding.
Many of these organizations will receive access to X’s data if EU bureaucrats successfully pressure the platform.
Documents reviewed by FFO also expose the central role of the US Trade Representative and the US International Trade Administration at the Department of Commerce.
Both collaborated with the EU under the previous administration, through the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, which developed a shared list of policy priorities that were later enshrined in the Digital Services Act.
These include the DSA’s provisions on data access for researchers that are now being used to target X.