Irony
In that X has shut down an ad account that could have been earning money for X...
X shuts down European Commission ad account after €120M fine announcement
X has terminated the European Commission's ad account after Brussels used it to post a video announcing the platform's €120 million Digital Services Act (DSA) fine – which was in fact just a link to the press release. Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece received the first ever DSA fine last week: a €120 million penalty for …
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 21:38 GMT Someone Else
Re: Irony
From the article:
According to Bier, this is against the rules. "X believes everyone should have an equal voice on our platform," he said, telling the European Commission's X presence that its ad account had been terminated.
So everyone should have an equal voice...unless, of course, that voice points out a flaw in the platform, and describes punishment for that flaw.
Free speech warrior much?
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 12:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The Commission should
Yeah, but being a gov pilot, it had a whiff of "Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen" about it imho (beige dullness) ... it did last 2 years but regular humans remained much more enthused by the ardent behavioral surplus harvesting algorithms implemented in private entreprise offerings that made them feel wanted, valued, shining, starry, having fun, etc ...
I think that was Bert Hubert's point when he said "The first thing is that users say, 'I must have the original, real Microsoft'" (or YouTurbed, eX, faceboot, ...). Those brands have fun, games, new-thing, in-crowd, excitement, and whathaveyounot, wormed into the colonized minds of many a EU pleb it seems. ;(
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Monday 8th December 2025 14:17 GMT Pussifer
Re: The Commission should
@ Zolko
I agree - they seem to be streams of effluent that should be drained and taken to a treatment plant. I thought Sputnik was the first artificial satellite launched into Earth's orbit. I used to like watching a bit of Al Jazerra (and RT) a decade or so ago, I've not watch either for a while, I get my entertainment elsewhere these days.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 14:37 GMT dafe
Re: The Commission should
> so what ?
So it means they have already shut down all political views that threaten what is now their safe space.
Remember that when Grok said that nobody spreads more misinformation than the owner of the company, Grok was immediately tweaked to inject an irrelevant right-extremist talking point into everything.
Of course, following the playbook of accusing the opposition of one's own actions, your comment is yet another confession. As if we needed one.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 09:00 GMT Mike Pellatt
Re: X? Why X???
"drives conversations"?? Don't make me laugh.
I've never heard a pub conversation anywhere near as bad as the shouty uninformed crap that passes for debate on Xitter.
I do have to say that Wootton posting a video of himself pretending br respectful to HMQ Elizabeth's memory was a laugh, though.
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Monday 8th December 2025 15:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The latest
Now that's not worthy of you! You're not giving the context in which it was said. Therefore implying he said it because the EU had pricked his thin skin. Actual context was he said it in response to Orban saying "The EU is drowning in corruption. Commissioners face serious charges, the Commission and the Parliament are engulfed in scandal, yet Brussels still claims the moral high ground."
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 09:08 GMT Zolko
Re: The latest
Orbán is as much Hungary as Blair is the United Kingdom. A war criminal that has blown up the middle-east causing millions of deaths with lies and corruption ... so put him behind bars before lecturing other countries about their politicians. Viktor Orbán hasn't caused the death of a single person to my knowledge.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 10:52 GMT Adrastus
Re: The latest
I don't follow current developments but arround 2000 AD the commission had failed to provide it's auditors with adequate accounts for twenty years. N.Kinnock who was a commissioner said loose financial controls were necessary for the system to work. At the time millions were being diverted from tne commission to pay for Gaulist election campaigns. Contempt for Musk and Orban, for their politics and values, should not divert us from recognizing that truth.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 17:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The latest
Errors in accounting!!! We're talking CORRUPTION on an almost industrial scale. Been going on inside EU institutions since forever. Last few years some clamping down is happening but appears to be just scratching the surface. Want to know more then get googling - MSM rarely covers it.
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Monday 8th December 2025 15:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The latest
It' still a pathetic comment. He also said that Farage should be UK prime minister, and that the EU has too much regulation.
He hates scenarios that restrict his profit making for things like human safety, wellbeing, and pleasure.
Like Trump, they hate the EU, and so that comment he made - when he's one of the most corrupt charlatans in the world is laughable cope.
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Monday 8th December 2025 21:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The latest
@AC & Casca
You're both off on a tangent avoiding answering the very fair point that was made that Musk's remark was being presented completely out of context. By all means hang a man (any man) if guilty but please do it for the right reasons, not for something that ain't right. This forum's honest & fair reputation will suffer if you don't!
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 09:28 GMT Zolko
Re: The latest
Like Trump, they hate the EU
no, WE hate what the EU has BECOME, mostly since the Lisabon treaty from 2008. Before that and the 1/2 yearly rotating presidency, the EU was the biggest anarchist organisation in the world. Since then, it has become a corrupt centralised bureaucratic self-serving gang of warmonger banksters. Read your history books, we Europeans have never accepted such dictatorships for very long ... and those dictators had often quite a painful end of rule
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Monday 8th December 2025 15:11 GMT Steve Davies 3
re : It's amazing how thin this arsehole's skin is
He's trying to out thin, the cry baby in the White House when it comes to skin thickness.
Just stop using Twatter.
Don't buy a Tesla or a Powerwall
Don't use Starlink.
I know that one or two doing that won't make even a slight dent in his Muskiness's obscene pile of money but if enough do it then eventually he might take notice.
His master, the Trumpster will use it in his anti-NATO, anti-Europe campaign on behalf of his own master, Putin.
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Monday 8th December 2025 14:10 GMT Jellied Eel
Huh?
The exploit, which sounds like it's potentailly by design or perhaps the result of sloppy coding, involves crafting an ad with a link that previews as a video.
Sounds like this is an exploit worth closing, if it allowed posting or spoofing message types, ie exploit code rather than just a fake ad. Also more huh from the idea that this was a dormant account, so presumably didn't have a lot of (real) followers, so don't get how this was supposed to boost engagement. Also a rather boring bit of retaliation, if a previously unused account got banned. I think it'll be much more entertaining if X 'solves' the verification issue so users can click on a tick and get more info about who is actually posting messages. It may have trialled this with the geolocation feature recently.
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Monday 8th December 2025 17:13 GMT mark l 2
Well considering the Musky smells ideal of how 'good' the Twitter developers were was by measureing how many lines of code they had written in the last week and if you hadn't done enough you got fired. Im sure any devs who remain are all probably vibe coding using Grok just to keep the number of lines up, so now Twitter has probably got more holes than a tramps underpants at this point, let hope someone is able to take over Space Karens account at some point due to the consequence of his staff cuts.
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Monday 8th December 2025 17:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Tour de farce
That'll be another exciting sweaty cage match imho, especially after the fizzle of Musk v. Zuck. Not sure who the EU'll send out to squish Bier into prone supine submission, Kaja Kallas would do just fine in this ... no real need for von der Leyen imho.
Same difference with Musk ... he'll ask his mamma to substitute for him again, owing to his "bad back", making both Kallas and von der Leyen even more of an overkill ... maybe Greta Thunberg could step in, if available ... ;)
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 11:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Brazil survived
As soon as Twitter was blocked, a few hundred voices raised in anger: right-wing politicians complaining about being
unable to keep spreading hate and liescensored by the evil Supreme Court.Other users just browsed whatever glop-emitting social waste-of-time of the day.
Honestly? It was blocked, and nothing happened. No big loss. Society didn't collapse, the masses didn't occupy the streets demanding its unblockage. That should be the lesson.
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Monday 8th December 2025 21:09 GMT tip pc
EU X alternatives
Given the number of alternatives to X & the popularity of hatred & ill feeling towards X here and in the guardian, you'd expect that people would have just dropped X and it'd disappear into obscurity, relegated to a 4chan competitor.
Why has that not happened?
Why have people not abandoned X?
Why is X billed as a popular app for news?
lots of fake and ghastly info on X, so why is it so popular with the wider public?
do people get paid to read x?
why do people trust X more than the BBC or Guardian?
I suspect a rival service that can out X X would be popular too.
I've heard of people ditching X for bluesy & mastodon but they then go back to X.
Is there something wrong with the conversations people have on the alternatives other or the content there?
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Monday 8th December 2025 21:44 GMT Dan 55
Re: EU X alternatives
why do people trust X more than the BBC or Guardian?
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Monday 8th December 2025 21:51 GMT Goodwin Sands
Re: EU X alternatives
>Why have people not abandoned X?
Because there are tens of thousands of serious people posting on X, with millions of followers. It's because of them that X remains the go to place. I fancy all the ghastly trashy stuff on X is something most X users would be happy to see swept away.
>do people get paid to read x?
No. But some get paid to post.
>why do people trust X more than the BBC or Guardian?
Probably because the speaker (tweeter) is able to communicate directly to the reader with no one inbetween curating the info, deciding which stories to completely ignore and which to big up or spin, the way there is with the old media - the BBC is the supreme example of this.
>I've heard of people ditching X for bluesy & mastodon but they then go back to X.
No experience of mastadon but on bluesky one has to be bit careful what one says. I've politely challenged various users environmental misapprehensions but instead of being debated, I got reported - twice!
Now all that said, the great mystery for me is how X continues to succeed when it has such a completely appalling user interface - alternatives are available but you gotta scratch around a bit to find 'em, and 99.9999999% of X users don't.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 08:43 GMT tip pc
Re: EU X alternatives
Now all that said, the great mystery for me is how X continues to succeed when it has such a completely appalling user interface - alternatives are available but you gotta scratch around a bit to find 'em, and 99.9999999% of X users don't.
Any chance of explaining how the interface sucks & how the alternatives are better?
Any alternatives you’d recommend? You mentioned you got reported twice on bluesky for challenging ‘ environmental misapprehensions’. Don’t people report people for that on x too given it’s a large platform with lots of diverse views on topics?
I guess fundamentally, screaming into the void of hundreds of millions vs just millions should make no material difference but there is a perceived difference that I can’t articulate.
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Monday 8th December 2025 23:52 GMT Jellied Eel
Re: EU X alternatives
why do people trust X more than the BBC or Guardian?
It's a false equivalence. X doesn't publish anything themselves other than maybe status updates. The Bbc and Grauniad publish whatever journalists might be able to slip past their editors. Or, because both seem to favor recruitment from a narrow section of society, they publish what they think is important. Which might not be what their audience considers important, hence why they're both circling the drain and haemorrhaging subscribers. Also an issue in the US at the moment with the Netflix-Warner-Paramount 3-way. If that goes in Netflix's favor, Warner can finally cut the bleeding and ditch CNN. If Paramount, they might keep it but then CNN would be owned by the Ellisons, who aren't exactly lefties.. Which is also somewhat entertaining given currently media about the media is more interesting and entertaining than most of the garbage the MSM churns out.
I suspect a rival service that can out X X would be popular too.
I've heard of people ditching X for bluesy & mastodon but they then go back to X
Both are trying, both mostly failing. It's much like say, nightclubs. Drive past a popular club with queues around the block, and think "I could do this!". Then spaff a few million creating a new club for the cool kids to hang out, but nobody shows up except for a few people dancing around their handbags nursing 1 aperol spritzer for 5hrs and a couple of lurkers around the edge heavy breathing. The cool kids still hang out in X, and that still has a subscriber base that dwarfs the competitors. I don't X, or really understand the perception that it's full of nazis. If that's people's experience, then.. crazy idea, don't follow the nazis? I do use Mastodon a bit, but mainly because there's a few fun CUGs I'm part of, and rational debates to be had.
Is there something wrong with the conversations people have on the alternatives other or the content there?
Obviously. Some of the cool kids announced they were flouncing off to Bluesky. Not many people followed, so some of those celebs might have been shocked to discover they weren't actually that cool, and their followers weren't that interested in following them. But I think one problem is the basic concept of follower, or conversation. Twitter might have been great for tweeting into the ether, and loyal followers giving a like.. But those weren't conversations, they were people talking at you. To have a decent conversation, it can help to have a diversity of opinions, not just shouting into an echo chamber. And given one thing advertisers love is engagement, a system that doesn't encourage it isn't going to generate as much revenue.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 08:55 GMT tip pc
Re: EU X alternatives
why do people trust X more than the BBC or Guardian?
It's a false equivalence. X doesn't publish anything themselves other than maybe status updates. The Bbc and Grauniad publish whatever journalists might be able to slip past their editors.
X claim to be the #1 trusted news source & the bbc & guardian have laid claim to that title too so I don’t see how it’s a false equivalence.
Certainly all the major news outlets have x accounts and advertise their stories there.
I guess seeing major providers headlines in 1, alongside independents, place provides choice for people to choose who’s content to consume, I assume rival SoMe does the same so why do people stick with x?
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Monday 8th December 2025 22:32 GMT Tron
Very depressing
So many people want to censor something because they don't like it.
You do all realise how much of a slippery slope that is. Once it starts happening, it will snowball. Eventually the stuff you use may be shut down.
You could lose the right to write and disseminate code without it being checked by the state, the right to post online without it being checked. You could (may well) lose VPNs. You could lose Linux. Your internet may not extend beyond your national boundaries.
The whole point of free speech, of a default to open, is to ensure that we do not become like China - only allowed what the state sanctions.
And yet the moment you don't like something, you want it censored or banned by government.
That is a really dumb precedent to set.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 13:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Very depressing
> So many people want to censor something because they don't like it.
Your points are good and valid but omit one thing: X amplifies the negative and extreme.
If the extremists had to work as hard as the moderates to get the same degree of coverage on X then I don't think people would be so angry at it.
(There's a certain irony, apparently lost on X, that they get upset when people are angry with them yet their whole business model is based on promoting "angry".)
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 13:49 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: Very depressing
But free speech is something that ought not be, but frequently is, abused.
The dividing line between suppressing false information and censorship is not only difficult to see, but is seen to be in different places by different people.
If people only ever posted acknowledged truth, then I would support X to the hilt. I may disagree with what is said, but I will uphold their right to say it.
But platforms like X as it is are set out to push untruths as if they are truths. And sometimes, the people posting untruths do not know that they are, because they trust where they heard it. It is this latter which is the most distressing part, and the one that generates most of the arguments. And you cannot fix it by suppressing what they say, because it is then so close to censorship as to not matter.
There is no such thing as the truth. There is my truth, and your truth, and even other's truths, and they don't always coincide. It used to be that you could choose what flavour of truth you wanted to hear by choosing which media you followed, but we're bombarded by so many different viewpoints now, and this is only getting worse because of AI slop, that it is no longer possible to do this.
I yearn for older, simpler days. I cannot see how the current situation will get any better until the Internet breaks, although it could get a lot worse if the medium becomes further controlled by the very rich and powerful!
We've lived through a golden age which lasted about 25-30 years, where the anarchic nature of the Internet allowed free speech, and while the bad-actors had not worked out how to corrupt and control it. Those days are gone, and will never return. I'm glad I saw it, but it does make me want to return to the past.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 18:33 GMT Goodwin Sands
Re: Very depressing
In the older simpler days we were less well informed - which is why they appeared simpler. My head aches somedays nowadays trying to sort through a mountain of information but I'd prefer that to the freq struggle to get any information at all just a few decades ago.
Very surprised you say there is no such thing as absolute truth - unless you're thinking only about human affairs where you are of course correct.
I yearn for the early days of the internet too, but for a diff reason. I feel the internet today has gotten too technologically complicated. I miss the relative simplicity of 20+ years ago. In those days a man could inside his head understand the whole shebang that was the internet. Can't do that now!
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 07:06 GMT neilfs
If censorship is your thing
This is a slippery slope to censorship and the great firewall of China expanding from its recent extension in the UK to every region of the world.
There is a balance here and hate it or like it, we need to step carefully.
I go onto X for a few moments, get bored and close it. Has never been my thing. But I believe I can think for myself and assess what is presented and weigh it up against other sources of information. Why can’t others? If a certain type of people want an echo chamber, let them. I mean that equally for all political and thinking extremes.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 11:05 GMT Michael Strorm
"X believes everyone should have an equal voice on our platform"
But some (*) are more equal than others,(**) right?
(*) Elon's and those of his far-right mates that he boosts.
(**) Anyone who gets penalised or kicked off Xitter for saying anything this self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" doesn't like.
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Tuesday 9th December 2025 17:10 GMT Michael Strorm
> "Doesn't X support freedom of speech?"
Claimed to? Frequently and bombastically. Ever actually did so? Never.
Any self-aggrandising manchild can spout shite about being a "free speech absolutist" or have one of his mouthpieces make the hollow claim that "X believes everyone should have an equal voice on our platform".
But when virtually the first things he does after acquiring Xitter demonstrate the exact opposite- kicking off or penalising anyone he disagrees or gets upset with and- conversely- boosting his own posts and those of the far-right he sympathises with- such claims can be dismissed with the contempt they deserve.
Musk is the epitome of the self-proclaimed-"Libertarian" hypocrite who only cares about the free speech they "champion" when it suits *them*. In other words, they're nothing of the sort.
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