Under Trump 2.0, EU’s Big Tech Enforcement Becomes a Sovereignty Issue
The EU wants everyone to know it has no intention of genuflecting toward a new Trump administration and won’t stop doling out Big Tech fines.
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The EU wants everyone to know it has no intention of genuflecting toward a new Trump administration and won’t stop doling out Big Tech fines.
European regulators on Friday ordered X-née-Twitter to hand over documentation regarding recent changes to its recommendation algorithms. It’s part of an expanding probe into the company, and comes as the EU is trying to assure the world that it won’t go easy on Big Tech just because the new Trump administration is a touch friendlier with the tech industry than it was the last time around.
Fine With Me
Last week, an FT report claimed that the EU was planning to ease its foot off the “rein-in-Big-Tech pedal” by reassessing various ongoing probes into US tech companies, and one anonymous EU diplomat implied to the FT that Trump’s return to the White House was a factor. “It’s going to be a whole new ball game with these tech oligarchs so close to Trump and using that to pressurise us,” the diplomat said.
The EU pushed back against the report publicly. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera told journalists there would be “no freezing, no reassessment” of probes ordered under the bloc’s wide-ranging Digital Markets Act:
- Ribera has taken the place of Margrethe Vestager, a commissioner who oversaw probes that led to multi-billion dollar fines of US tech companies, some of which are just starting to be enforced as tech companies exhaust the appeals process.
- The EU also sent its newly minted commissioner for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy to address the report. Commissioner Henna Virkkunen told CNBC on Thursday: “We are continuing the work, so there are not any new decisions made. So we are doing the investigations [to see] if they are complying with our rules.”
The EU’s expanded probe into X doesn’t just want to take a close look at its recommendation algorithms, but also the technical nuts and bolts that “allow direct fact-finding on content moderation and virality of accounts.”
Stiff Upper Lip: The EU isn’t the only US ally making a show about tech policy and sovereignty. Following Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that his platforms would change their moderation and fact-checking policies, UK tech minister Peter Kyle said in an interview with the Observer newspaper that the country won’t compromise around its own laws on user safety online. “The threshold for these laws allows responsible free speech to a very, very high degree […] But I just make this basic point: Access to British society and our economy is a privilege — it’s not a right. And none of our basic protections for children and vulnerable people are up for negotiation,” said Kyle.