German court orders X to hand over election data in legal blow to Musk’s platform

Even 1000x that fine would just be a rounding error to him. What gives with the low-ball punishment?

You misundertand. Legal fees are not there as punishment, they are only there to prevent poor people for looking for justice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.