Summary
A German court ruled that Elon Musk’s X must immediately provide researchers with data on politically related content ahead of Germany’s Feb. 23 election.
The lawsuit, filed by Democracy Reporting International and the Society for Civil Rights, accused X of blocking efforts to track election interference.
The ruling enforces the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), requiring major platforms to grant researcher access. It also orders X to pay legal costs and imposes a €6,000 procedural fine.
The decision sets a legal precedent, but it remains unclear if X will appeal.
Just block all Musk products in EU. Don’t need his crap. Let him go broke.
Me: *tries to read source*
Source: “No, you don’t.” *blocks*
Just works from Germany. Greetings! The following is the body of the article copy-pasted:
February 7, 2025 6:08 pm CET By Chris Lunday and Eliza Gkritsi
BERLIN — A German court handed Elon Musk’s X a legal defeat, ruling that the platform must immediately provide researchers with access to data on politically related content ahead of the country’s Feb. 23 election.
The court decision, seen by POLITICO, was issued Thursday and marks one of the first major judicial tests of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), raising fresh questions about X’s compliance with European regulations ahead of Germany’s federal election.
The lawsuit, brought earlier this week by Democracy Reporting International (DRI) and the Society for Civil Rights (GFF), accused X of blocking efforts to track potential election interference by not granting them access to key engagement data — including likes, shares and visibility metrics — that other platforms made available to researchers.
Social media platforms, including X, are already getting European Commission scrutiny over alleged failures to mitigate risks around election interference. Russia was accused of interfering in Romania’s annulled presidential election late last year, via a TikTok campaign that boosted a pro-Kremlin candidate.
The case adds to mounting tensions between European regulators and Musk’s social media platform over its rolling back of content moderation and refusal to accede to data access demands.
The DSA, which came into force in 2022, requires large platforms to grant researchers access to data to study systemic risks. The Commission already accused X in July last year of breaching the DSA for not meeting requirements around researcher data access. It also quizzed Meta last year over its decision to shut down research tool CrowdTangle.
The Berlin Regional Court sided with the plaintiffs, issuing an urgent injunction that forces X to provide real-time access to the requested data via its online interface until Feb. 25. The ruling also orders X to pay legal costs and imposes a €6,000 procedural fine, setting a precedent for how European courts may enforce transparency obligations under the DSA.
X did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.
The digital space is not a lawless zone, and I trust that X will now quickly comply,” said Michael Meyer-Resende, executive director of DRI, adding that the platform’s refusal to cooperate had “forced” legal action.
The Berlin ruling is one of the first major tests of the DSA’s research access provision (Article 40), which was designed to enable research on social media and support the regulation’s implementation.
TikTok and Meta provided DRI with access to data based on a very similar application, the nonprofit told POLITICO earlier this week.
“The decision is a huge success for research freedom and democracy,” said Simone Ruf, deputy director of GFF’s Center for User Rights. “We have fought for access to vital research data and are now blocking attempts to manipulate elections.”
With just over two weeks to go before election day, the question now is whether X will comply with the ruling or attempt to delay through legal appeals.
Get ready for more anti-EU / anti-regulation / pro-AfD propaganda.
It’s not like the EU can’t look at Brazil and see how to handle Musk. His platform doesn’t matter if people can’t use it.
Brazil’s dictator-judge Alexandre de Moraes only had free reign last year to do what he did because the US used to have a living corpse as the president. Now, with Orange-Man-Bad as president, I don’t know if the same judge would have the guts to block X nationwide again. Especially with Trump showing he’s not afraid to impose tariffs on a whim. And it’s also apparent that Trump hears what Elon has to say, and Elon is hungry for revenge. The judge only needs to step out of the line for Elon to retaliate.
Nobody cares about Trump’s tariffs, it’s the US import companies that have to pay, not the foreign companies selling the imports, and they just pass those costs on to the American consumer.
… if the foreign companies want to keep selling to the U.S. market, yeah. Sure, they can choose not to, but that way the company loses global market share and customers. I think it hurts both U.S. consumers and foreign companies who’d like to make a profit in exports.
Humm. This is very ‘tread on me harder, daddy’ of you to say.
Which flavor of shoe polish do you like most?
Any flavor that would send Alexandre de Moraes to the jail cell, his rightful place.
That has the same chances of happening as Trump going to jail for his lengthy list of crimes, ya know?
You never know what the political world has in store. Before Alexandre de Moraes, doing blatant preventive censorship was unthinkable. When he made this practice into the “new normal”, he radicalized the right even more, and they might turn to dirty tricks to get to him.
Especially with Trump showing he’s not afraid to impose tariffs on a whim.
Yeah I dunno 100% what comes imported from Brasil off the top of my head…Oh, my favorite coffee beans come from there!
But boy oh boy are we U.S folk excited , thrilled even, to (checks papers) have handbag-baby-man frivolously attempt to bully other countries by threatening to (paper flip)…
Punish us with even higher prices on goods and more foreign disdain. . .?
Bros…I think we’re hostages but the hostage taker doesn’t understand countries or economics. Plz help I think it’s pretty clear this guy has a hate-boner for Americans. :(
€6,000 is peanuts to the worlds richest man, they should shut down access to the site until X comply.
You misundertand. Legal fees are not there as punishment, they are only there to prevent poor people for looking for justice.
A fine does not mean you get to keep doing it. Initially it just proves that tasking 4 people to just get the data would have been cheaper. Now he needs to do that and still task the people.
Next step is escalating if they do not comply. They did the same in Brazil escalating all the way to turning off Twitter.
I guess what I’m saying is “patience grasshopper”
Even 1000x that fine would just be a rounding error to him. What gives with the low-ball punishment?
Legal penalties are often (mostly?) a set monetary amount. We need percentage penalties.
As of now it’s just a small thing. If X keeps denying the requested information the penalty can increase quickly by for example by setting a daily late fee of several million Euro. If X still doesn’t comply they can raid their German offices for the requested information. If X still doesn’t comply they can shut X down in Germany, maybe even in all of EU to force compliance.
But usually you don’t need the extreme stuff.
propably just doing things by the book without thinking or their legal system doesnt have a way to fine billionaires so they just let the bastard go without punishment.
This is a precursor to kicking X out of the country
Can’t find any proper information anywhere (someone link me the judgement) but that sounds like “you were supposed to file stuff in triplicate now we have to copy shit, here’s a fine” territory.
Here’s the press release of DRI itself, they don’t even mention it.
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The fact that it hasn’t been banned outright in the EU is cowardice. This is such a horrible timeline we are living in. How in the world did the biggest governments in the entire world and legal systems just get cucked to the point where a literal hate platform ran by a Nazi sympathizer throwing sig heils all over the place is even allowed in Europe?
How in the world did the biggest governments in the entire world and legal systems just get cucked to the point where a literal hate platform ran by a Nazi sympathizer throwing sig heils all over the place is even allowed in Europe?
Can’t help but chuckle in despair at that sentence. Well put.
Most governments are designed, intentionally, to move at a snails pace.
Historically this is a good thing. You don’t want waves of populism leading to super powerful leaders that turn the government on its head their first week in charge.
But our society is advancing way faster than we did historically. My kids world is a totally different one than mine…my world is totally different than my parents…their world is totally different from their parents. Before that, the world didn’t change that much in a generation or two.
As a species, we have to figure out a better way to work together than nation-states while also being able to smooth out the wild emotions of the general public. We have real-time information and communication now. We have the entire sum of human knowledge in a pocket-sized device. We need an overhaul…but not like this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the politicians over there don’t realize there are alternatives. I have yet to meet a politician that I would consider tech literate, much less tech savvy, and I am including Bernie in that. He may be an awesome politician, but he really doesn’t understand computers. The nice part is that he knows that, and listens to his IT guys.
Me-first politics is so convincing to so many people. And so easy to manipulate to benefit the powerful.
In America, Republicans I know would call Trump’s tax a great achievement because they got $50 a month in tax breaks. Meanwhile corporations and the mega wealthy were the only ones really benefiting from it.
Uhhh 6k he must be shitting his pants, stop being a fucking joke EU
All public social media data including the algorithm should be openly accessible to every government the network operates in.
Wow that’s fucked. The German government is mad that a private company won’t help them spy on their population. Europe is rapidly descending into barbarism.
Wtf arr you talking about
No, nevermind, I don’t care what your weird-ass spin is
Their comment history is literally just Fox News. Covers the full gamut from trans athletes to Hunter Biden conspiracies. I didn’t know these people existed on Lemmy
What is your definition of barbarism?
Sarcasm
