The EU can ban X and Facebook, and Poland should strive for it

Banning X would be a good start to an anti-Musk counteroffensive. As Thierry Breton, former Internal Market Commissioner at the European Commission, said in January, this is “legally possible.”

As we watched the spectacle set up by the U.S. administration for the Ukrainian president at the White House last week, there were some lucid voices saying that our - i.e., Europe's - priority is not necessarily to choose the friendliest patron from the trio of the U.S., China or Russia. Instead, we should work out a way to curb Facebook and X's arbitrariness in the European Union.

This was more precisely put by Jacek K. Sokołowski, author of last year's book Transnation. Poles in Search of Political Form, who wrote (on X): “The current state of Facebook and Twitter is such that all this shit would be best straight up banned in Europe.”

And it's not about “censorship,” the declaration of which Bogdan Rymanowski tried to force Magdalena Biejat to declare, nor about restoring standards, or tough, protracted negotiations. Rather, it's about immediately curbing the activities of foreign agents - and this, as is well known, is a position that unites across divisions.

Tango with the Falanga[1] (and challah-horse[2])

As a user of both services, I can add some observations to Sokolowski's statement. X seemed to be a platform dominated by porn-bots and FSB-funded accounts long before Elon Musk actively joined the campaign for the AfD, and each successive performance by J.D. Vance wiping his mouth with freedom of speech only accelerated the site's transformation into a dysfunctional, gnarly base for anti-Ukrainian propaganda.

It's a little funnier on Facebook - artificial intelligence-generated, touching photos of non-existent centenarians baking bread, farmers with challah-horse and elderly men waiting for a dinner on hold garner thousands of likes and supportive comments. The graphics, often hiding behind religious fanpages captured by political staffers or “independent” troll farms and pensioner groupies whose role in the site was strengthened a few years ago, are just a prelude to the propaganda brainwashing that awaits us in the months leading up to the presidential election.

So X caters to the young angry, Facebook to the autumn of life, grooming users with content not yet (and only seemingly) related to politics. But - and here again to quote Sokolowski - it's not that every vote matters: “You guys are stupid even without it. Social media are there to stupefy the political elite and decision-makers, so that they believe that what they see in the socials are their voters and that there is no other world outside the socials.”

For policymakers to believe that the world exists only in social media, they cannot be marginalized by it. If Musk were to cut Tusk's reach overnight, the whole scam behind the former Twitter would become transparent and make one look at the mechanisms of its system. That's why, for the time being, the prime minister enjoys the relative sympathy of the American algorithm, records popular, funny shorts on X and TikTok, and scolds his subordinates for not too readily garnering discussion on a service of a modern-day Joseph Goebbels.

“It's unacceptable for a politician not to have his social media today,” KO politicians heard from their boss, who lives in an illusion similar to the protagonist of an old joke who stands in front of a vending machine, drops in more coins and can't walk away from the machine, shouting to the people hurrying him along in line: “Are you guys crazy? After all, I'm still winning!” The feeling that Tusk, Myrcha and Sikorski can “cheat” the algorithm, however, is completely narcissistic and naive.

Nonetheless, it persists and drives Polish politicians, who are convening press conferences less and less frequently and are not overly concerned about media coverage - even if it is funded by the Treasury. It is unclear why we have to learn about the actions of the Polish authorities through a private American company managed by a fascist car salesman. Looking at the current state of diplomatic relations - I might as well look for reports about the Polish rule of law on Weibo.

An act of disobedience to the Act

While almost everyone has figured out that the recent announcement of Facebook's moderation changes is Mark Zuckerberg's tribute to the new American ruler, news reports have rarely mentioned his actual denunciation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which took effect in the European Union just a year ago, on February 17, 2024.

The document was adopted, among other things, in response to well-known examples since at least the Cambridge Analytica scandal of polarizing users, influencing the results of democratic elections, exploiting children and inciting lynching. It was no small matter that the European Council voted to adopt the DSA in October 2022 - that is, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The purpose of the provisions in the DSA was, among other things, to address social risks, strengthen oversight, combat illegal content, identify businesses and implement transparency measures. It only takes 10 minutes or so on any social media outlet to find evidence that “deregulation” in this regard on any U.S.-based site has gotten completely out of hand.

American podcaster Jim Stewartson argues that Europe should block all Musk's companies operating on our continent. This would probably mean a legislative and diplomatic ordeal, but banning X could be a good start to a beautiful adventure. As Thierry Breton, former internal market commissioner at the European Commission, said in January, blocking X is “legally possible.”

The Brazilian Supreme Court, by the way, used a similar option when it imposed a block on X last year, after months of tension between the country's authorities and the platform, triggered by, among other things, X's role in fomenting unrest after Jair Bolsonaro's loss in the presidential election. Unfortunately, the ban only lasted a little over a month - but the platform paid a $5.2 million fine for its attempts to circumvent it alone. Seemingly not much, but still more than Google will shell out to fund Poles to learn artificial intelligence over the next five years.

Will the Poles love it?

Of course, the decision to go to war with Musk and his platform won't just draw enthusiastic millions sympathetic to ban, who will unite and start playing to the EU's goal instead of walking on the leash of the richest man in the world. Resistance would be enormous - and backed by the propaganda machine of the platforms themselves.

Mentzen, Fogiel and Giertych, like Tusk, are convinced that they have the upper hand in this race by virtue of their perspicacity, charisma and brilliant strategies, and their voters will gladly gulp down the spin about “freedom of speech,” “censorship” and “Euro-kolkhoz”. [3] However, slightly less unhinged politicians should start paying attention to the fact that this is a fixed-sum game, where the vending machine is wielded and programmed by businessmen close to a US president hostile to Europe.

Perhaps it is worth thanking Jaroslaw Kaczynski for anointing as his presidential candidate a beautiful mind, which even algorithms may not help, and waiting to build an anti-Musk coalition with Germany, France or Sweden until after the presidential elections, which a possible offensive would undoubtedly influence.

However, avoiding discussion of the issue would deprive Poland of one of its best opportunities to deepen integration at the European level in the new situation in international politics. Both candidate Trzaskowski, the former minister of administration and digitization, and the current head of the ministry responsible for digitization surely understand that this is a solution that does not require monstrous costs, as in the case of turbocharging in the arms race, but protects us from the fascist cyber-dystopia that would otherwise undoubtedly come.

[1] falanga, a polish nazi org with outsized facebook presence and russian secret service connections. splinter of ONR

[2] an instance of ai-generated bread horse that made rounds a couple of weeks ago

[3] rabid cry of fervent anticommunists/libertarians, mostly born after 2000, clustered around antivaxxer-libertarian-monarchist-nationalist-prorussian party