europoooooor
For the mids and the world leaders in regulation.
@moo
The US sanctions Thierry Breton, the mastermind of the 🇪🇺 EU's Digital Services Act, and a bunch of other compliance people pushing for digital censorship regimes.
This sets back the EU's and UK's hope for extraterritorial laws and makes the US companies comply with their government requests.
If you do censorship, it's better to censor local citizens and service providers, not to resort to lawfare against other countries. I blogged about this earlier here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maga-europe-mikko-ohtamaa-klmpe/?trackingId=wi4wb2goRViVeKZF9XMo0A%3D%3D
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@bfg
I will probably start EuroOptimism channel 😁
https://x.com/merlijntrader/status/2003375025890689217?s=46&t=vGdL6gMJv0qcvymUV8209g
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@bfg
This is more of a heads up for Europeans
- most of my American friends actually know and understand that China is way ahead on the robotics train because they’ve been there 🙌
https://x.com/rohanpaul_ai/status/2002710874457530880?s=46&t=vGdL6gMJv0qcvymUV8209g
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@baseddesigner.eth
ordered anti stress toy from ono on black friday for 25 EUR
12 EUR shipping, fine
arrived into customs
14 EUR VAT (23%)
14 EUR “Customs clearing process”
man I love europoooor
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@baseddesigner.eth
you can't make this up
Portugal was named economy of the year lmao by economist paywalled article
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/12/07/which-economy-did-best-in-2025?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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@bfg
omg 😱 nearly 10% of EU residents say they have no close friends, according to an OECD report.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/11/10/nearly-10-of-europeans-say-they-have-no-close-friends-where-do-people-feel-loneliest
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@fourvork
Eastern europe taught me that friendship is the most important thing in the world, that's why the president's friends always end up becoming the richest people in the country
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@baseddesigner.eth
this is a bigger thing than you would've though actually
most flights to and from Lisbon airport tomorrow are cancelled now
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@baseddesigner.eth
missed transportation worker strikes during my trip to south america
lisbon is practicing those way too often lol
didn’t make it to my training today due to this
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@moo
The new National Security Strategy in the US is a bomb for Europe
https://youtu.be/YAh-xEteBz4?si=pIeeu0MkY69Heklb
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@lajos
Strong agree with this, I've been saying for a while that we need a federal EU
https://x.com/levelsio/status/1998278375543128442?t=hHx4A-VPouk1J_PxZAwhlg&s=19
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@moo
HOW THE EU'S TWITTER SAGA IS LIKELY TO PLAY OUT
The controversy over the EU's EUR 150M fine on Twitter (now known as X). The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) has many good elements which would make the world a better place. Unfortunately, in its fight against Twitter, the EU makes itself look a bit foolish again, giving more ammunition to those who blame the EU for being the root of all evil, further strengthening far-right views of the EU.
While the actual fine was about "blue checkmark", the actual story is that the EU wants to control social media giants, and it is flexing its DSA muscles to do so. They started with Twitter, because it's an easy target as everyone and their dog hates Elon Musk.
Also, let's forget about all "EU must be abolished" nonsense, though, for a reason, you will see how we end up here in the end.
On the blue checkmark itself: There isn't a single person on this planet who would have been confused about the blue checkmark on the account. It is mostly a made-up "dark pattern." There are thousands of worse dark patterns the EU commission could have addressed instead. And how can X fix it? Change the word "verified" to "premium" like LinkedIn? Change the colour of blue to red? A bit of micromanagement here, and not a very good opening if you want to join, you have a credible regulation and someone who understands tech as the regulator. There were 100s of ways the EU could have handled this better, and this was one of the worst ones.
So what will happen next? Either Twitter pays the fine, or it doesn't. My bet is on the latter, that it doesn't - my guess is that Twitter's income from the EU area is significantly less than EUR 150M, likely close to zero, so it just doesn't make sense.
What happens next? The EU may or may not try to collect the fine. And here is when the rubber hits the road. Twitter is a US company. It uses American banks. It uses American payment processors. It uses American servers. There isn't any nexus Twitter has in the EU. It is European users who go to the US to use Twitter over the Internet; it is not Twitter exporting its services to the EU. Someone from the EU would need to get a US court order to collect money from Twitter.
The current US government does not like the current direction of the EU, as it explicitly spells out in its National Security Strategy (NSS), as there seem to be still some EU diplomats who have somehow missed this message. The US will say, "You are censoring the US companies; we do not like it." The EU will say neneneenenenne. Then the tariffs go up, and all the EU companies are worse off.
Then, the EU, if it wants to stick to its guns, will need to block Twitter. There is not yet an EU-wide Internet censorship regime, so I do not see how this will play out. But it is a self-fulfilling promise. All those EU MEPs, German chancellors and whoever shouts on Twitter "But WE are the ones who have free speech" have been wrong, and suddenly there is no free speech.
The users, like me, who like Twitter will keep using it over VPN. Because currently, that is the only alternative I have for meaningful public discourse with global professionals. But those who do not use VPN... they will see another unnecessary Directive from Brussels. Some will like censorship (East Germany boomers), but the young generation won't, and it will likely decrease the popularity of any pro-EU movements.
But you can always go to Bluesky, no? Newsflash: It's just another US company.
The only way for the EU to have a social media platform it can control is to be domestic. The EU has underinvested in software for the last two decades, so it's time to roll up our sleeves and start building.
Ps. Read this excellent post from @shanaka86 on the same theme, different words https://x.com/shanaka86/status/1997480117459894468
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