MAGGIE PAGANO: The European Commission’s digital enforcer makes a fool of himself

At 5:25pm on Monday this week, Thierry Breton, the European Commission’s top digital security official, published his extraordinary letter to Elon Musk on X ahead of his Spaces conversation with Donald Trump, warning him not to include any “harmful content.”

Breton said Musk should inform Brussels about what he is doing to ensure that no damaging speech reaches his European audience.

He added that if Musk allowed the spread of any “negative impact of illegal content on X” – alluding to his posts about the UK riots – he would be violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) and would be punished by having “our full toolbox used”.

That’s code for fines. The DSA has the power to fine up to 6 percent of turnover.

Unsurprisingly, the letter, sent to Musk and his CEO, Linda Yaccarino, went viral with 93.5 million views.

Musk acted provocatively as usual and posted an extremely rude meme to his 200 million followers, basically giving Breton two fingers.

It was not long before Breton’s threat provoked the most surprising reaction from free speech advocates around the world, who argued that the EU had no business interfering in the US presidential election.

But perhaps the most brutal reaction came from Breton’s boss, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who threw him under a Brussels bus. She made it clear that the EU had not approved Musk’s letter and did not want to interfere in America’s internal affairs. In short, she told Breton to go back to his post.

Musk is not the only Big Tech mogul laughing at how Breton’s misguided attempt to restrict free speech on an American platform between two American citizens, which attracted around 91 million listeners, has failed so spectacularly.

If Breton’s threat had any merit, he would have had to prove that X, which has around 45 million users in the EU, was spreading disinformation on topics such as the recent elections in France or, indeed, its regular riots. In other words, the content would have to be deemed “harmful” to European citizens.

As one technology regulator told me privately, what Breton did was extremely arrogant and very Gallic.

What is more worrying is that the unelected Breton is seen by the tech community as having made a fool of himself and endangered the EU’s reputation as the world’s digital policeman. And perhaps his own as well. He was due to be appointed for another five-year term, but that is now in doubt.

Musk and his Big Tech peers are celebrating the spat because the EU, through the Digital Services Act of 2022, has so far been the main global regulator in trying to rein in the power of tech giants like X, Google and Meta, and in fact has emergency powers to shut down online sites.

They suggest that Breton’s excesses demonstrated the fallibility of the DSA, as its leader was able to subjectively manipulate the law rather than take an objective view.

Why do we care about this US-France dispute? We are not in the EU and we have the Internet Security Act of 2023 which, while different from the DSA, in some ways has more teeth. However, we are faced with the same highly sensitive issues. First, there is the issue of allowing maximum freedom of expression and protecting citizens from dangerous disinformation. Then, at the same time, there is the challenge of curbing the excessive public power of blocs like the EU over companies and the media. And third, there is the issue of preventing the power of the media and companies from extending too far into the realms of politics and policymaking. It is a complicated issue.

What is also interesting is that Musk and Breton have history.

They have met often. The Frenchman has visited Tesla’s headquarters in Texas, but that has not prevented him from launching an investigation into X in July for failing to respect the bloc’s social media laws, the first such investigation under the DSA.

They are looking at X’s policy of selling “blue checks” or “ticks” and also how groups buy online advertising.

They could also challenge Musk for getting rid of moderators or allowing content that is harmful to children on the site, for example.

If Breton really wanted to clip Musk’s wings, there were more ingenious ways to do it without causing such a stir. Maybe he just wanted more followers of X.