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X Backs Down in “Free Speech” Battle in Brazil (Again)

Report from the New York Times

In Brief – Social media platform X has again reversed course and told the Brazilian Supreme Court that it would comply with court orders issued by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes to restrict certain X accounts designated by the court for propagating online disinformation and hate speech. The company, its principal owner, and the Supreme Court Justice have been engaged in a contentious and often personal back-and-forth for months, including a standoff in recent weeks in which X refused court demands to block accounts and shut down its in-country business operations claiming it was protecting employees from being arrested. The court responded by imposing daily fines on X, freezing bank accounts of X and also Space-X’s Starlink business, and ordering Brazilian ISPs to block access to the platform in the country. Although Elon Musk harshly criticized Justice de Moraes during the recent flare-up and said that they he was prepared for X to be shut down, the company has again engaged lawyers in the country who informed the court that X has taken down the required accounts, will pay the fines, and has named a new formal representative in the country as required by Brazilian law, all in hopes of having the service restored.

Context – Elon Musk is a vocal defender of “free speech” but the company says it complies with “local laws” on legal speech rather than expecting US-style standards. The pain points tend to emerge when governments impose restrictions on speakers who are popular with Musk or his online backers. In Brazil, he has intermittently raised the temperature on the conflict but then backs down. In the EU, now former Commissioner Thierry Breton, a regular Musk foil, publicly linked a live interview of former President Trump with disinformation and the EU’s Digital Services Act, eliciting a sharp rebuke from Musk and quick backtracking from other EU Commissioners. And a standoff in Australia over the country’s online safety regulator calling for X to ban a violent video globally rather than just in the country ended up going X’s way in Australian court.

Kenyan Court Rules That Meta Can Be Sued by Contracting Firm’s Workers

Report from Reuters

In Brief – The Kenya Court of Appeal has ruled that Meta can be sued in the country by almost 200 workers who had been employed by Sama, a California-based contract labor company with operations in the East African country, to engage in content moderation work for Facebook. The workers claim to have suffered mental harms on the job through the viewing of highly disturbing content, and then claimed that they were unfairly dismissed as workers when Sama ended their content moderation contract with Facebook and closed their office in Nairobi. The workers sued both US-based companies for worker exploitation and unfair termination. While Sama is defending both suits on the merits, Meta challenged the Kenyan Labor Court’s decision to name it as a co-defendant, claiming that it was never the workers’ employer, has had no employees or offices in the country, and that the Nairobi court does not have jurisdiction over its business. The appeals panel rejected Meta’s argument and ordered Kenyan domestic courts to handle both the unfair work conditions and unfair termination lawsuits.

Context – The prospect that workers employed by contractor firms could be considered direct company employees threatens to upset established business practices. Many digital companies use a variety of contract workers employed by firms like Sama, side-by-side with their own employees. A regional director of the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently determined that Amazon was a “joint employer” of drivers who worked for a small package delivery company and improperly “terminated” the drivers when the small firm’s contract was ended. Amazon is expected to challenge the decision in federal court. The NLRB has also deemed Google the co-employer of 50 contract workers employed by Cognizant Technology Solutions who voted to unionize. Google is challenging that ruling. As African tech hubs grow, more global digital platforms are tapping local workforces, including for content moderation and AI training, which is leading to unionization drives.

Meta Leads Coalition Letter Criticizing Overlapping EU Regulation of AI

Report from the Wall Street Journal

In Brief – In its latest EU broadside against regulatory uncertainty, especially regarding the training and use of AI systems, Meta has spearheaded an open letter joined by over 50 companies, including EU tech leaders SAP, Spotify, and Ericsson, calling for “clear rules, consistently applied, enabling the use of European data” to build Generative AI services for European citizens. Meta is the largest corporate backer of “open” AI models that are made available for others to build on and has used its massive trove of internal data to train “multimodal” models that encompass text, images, and speech. The letter defends both endeavors and calls out regulatory interventions by European data protection authorities as “fragmented and unpredictable” and warns that the result may be that new open-source AI models “won’t understand or reflect European knowledge, culture or languages.” A theme of the coalition is that the US, China, and India will enjoy “technological innovations” that Europe will miss out on.

Context – Although Europe’s AI Act has been celebrated by AI regulation advocates for setting up the first comprehensive AI regulatory regime, including creating a specialty EU AI Office, European privacy regulators are stepping in and proposing to use the GDPR to regulate AI model training and services. The European Data Protection Board recently issued a report on Chat-GPT claiming that AI companies need a valid legal basis for all stages of personal data processing, including the collection and use of training data, as well as raising the concern that chatbot hallucinations could violate the GDPR’s “principle of data accuracy”. The Irish DPC, the oft-criticized lead GDPR regulator for many top US tech firms, is taking aggressive positions on AI training, leading Meta and X to stop training their LLM chatbots on data from European users and investigating Google as well. The Draghi Report on “The future of European competitiveness” only reinforces concerns with inconsistent and restrictive regulations. Meta will restart AI training in the UK after reaching an understanding with its data authority.

X Likely Too Small to be Classified a Digital Markets Act Gatekeeper

Report from Bloomberg

In Brief – The European Commission probe initiated in May to determine if X qualified as a “gatekeeper” under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is set to conclude that the social media platform does not meet the required thresholds. DMA gatekeepers are companies operating very large digital platforms that provide certain digital services, including search engines, browsers, app stores, and marketplaces, hold a strong economic position, link large consumer user bases to many businesses, and have an entrenched and durable position in the market. The “core platform services” of designated gatekeepers face the regime’s 18 regulatory duties. The Commission initially designated six digital giants – Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Google, Meta, and Microsoft – in mid-2023, and they recently added Booking, the first European-based digital company added to the DMA. The investigation of X reportedly found that the platform is not a powerful enough service for business users and doesn’t meet certain revenue thresholds.

Context – A big DMA question was how many digital companies would be regulated. Analysts identified around a dozen prospects. The Commission’s first tranche was six and followed the recommendation of leading EU Parliamentarian Andreas Schwab who said, “Let’s focus first on the biggest problems, on the biggest bottlenecks. Let’s go down the line — one, two, three, four, five — and maybe six with Alibaba.” ByteDance was the Chinese entry instead. Booking is a top hotel reservation intermediation platform with many run-ins with antitrust regulators over “price parity” policies. As to company market caps, the five US giants all exceed $1 trillion, with three beyond $2T. ByteDance is estimated to be worth around $230 billion. Booking around $125 billion. The idea that X is a “gatekeeper” holding market power when it can’t seem to even stabilize its revenue and is worth less than $10 billion would redefine the whole regulatory scheme. On the other hand, X is clearly a Very Large Online Platform under the EU Digital Services Act with the Commission regulating its content moderation and other practices.

Top EU Court Finds Booking’s Price Parity Rules Anticompetitive

Report from Reuters

In Brief – The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled against Booking who was defending its price-parity clauses requiring hotels to not offer better rates on other online platforms. The court determined that Booking failed to prove that its price parity policies were either “objectively necessary” or “proportionate” and said they instead “are liable to reduce competition between the various hotel reservation platforms [and also] carry the risk of ousting small platforms and new entrants.” The judges went further and found Booking’s “narrow” clauses, that only apply to rates on a hotel’s own website, also likely failed the test of being objectively necessary. The case dates to 2015-2016 when German hotels challenged Booking’s “wide” price parity policies, Germany’s competition regulator sided with the hotels, and Netherlands’ based Booking challenged the ruling. The Amsterdam District Court requested a ruling on the price parity question from the CJEU. While the court’s decision sets a high bar to justify price parity policies, it did not rule that they were always anticompetitive. Booking responded with disappointment, saying, “We maintain that parity clauses that historically existed in Germany were necessary and proportionate to the relationship between accommodation partners and Booking.”

Context – The use of price parity (or “MFN”) clauses by dominant digital platforms has been a regulatory concern for years, especially when applied to sales on competing platforms with lower fees. Their use by hotel booking platforms has brought regulatory action in many global markets. Online food-delivery platforms have also faced scrutiny. Amazon has an aggressive price parity track record. The German FCO is investigating Amazon’s practice of downranking sellers who sell for lower prices on platforms with lower fees, and similar allegations against Amazon are gaining traction in US courts. Booking is now a regulated “gatekeeper” under the EU’s Digital Markets Act and price parity policies are a regulated practice, so its policies will need to be approved by the European Commission’s DMA officials.

EU Commission Initiates New DMA Proceedings to “Guide” Apple Compliance

Report from Bloomberg

In Brief – The European Commission has opened two “specification proceedings” to assist Apple in developing and implementing policies that will comply with the interoperability obligations of the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’). The proceedings, which are scheduled to run for six months, are not findings of non-compliance but instead formalize the regulatory dialogue to explain to Apple the measures the regulator believes will meet its legal obligations. The first proceeding is intended to address how connected devices, such as smartwatches, headphones and virtual reality headsets, operate with iPhones and the iOS operating system, including pairing and notifications. The second proceeding focuses on the process Apple sets up to address interoperability requests submitted by third-party app developers for iOS and IPadOS so that they have an effective and predictable path to work with the iPhone giant to resolve interoperability concerns. The two specification proceedings will be undertaken without prejudice to the powers of the Commission to adopt a decision establishing non-compliance with any of the gatekeeper obligations laid down in the DMA, including the possibility to impose fines or penalty payments.

Context – There are currently 7 DMA gatekeepers, and they operate 24 “core platform services” that are required to comply with the law’s regulatory mandates, including interoperability. Apple has four covered platforms – the App Store, iOS, iPadOS, and Safari browser. The DMA challenges Apple’s core user proposition more than the other “gatekeepers”. Rather than using technical or non-transparent practices to shape its platforms, Apple built an openly restrictive “walled garden” with a value proposition that the platform was better at promoting privacy, security, and a consistent user experience. And their devices have been very popular with users. In March, the Commission opened a DMA compliance investigation of Apple’s App Store rules and fees and made a preliminary finding of non-compliance in June. Apple has continued make changes to its App Store rules in the face of ongoing criticism from big app developers. The new proceedings are months behind that in the queue.

Google Earns an AdTech Antitrust Win in Europe’s Second Highest Court

Report from the Wall Street Journal

In Brief – The European General Court, the EU’s second highest, has ruled in favor of Google in an antitrust case involving its digital advertising business by overturning a 2019 European Commission decision to fine the digital giant 1.49 billion euros. The Commission found that Google had abused its dominance as a search engine and an advertising broker by imposing a combination of restrictive contract terms on third-party websites that placed a Google search bar on their web page and shared in related revenue from Google text ads through its AdSense program. Sites were limited in how they could also place ads from other advertising providers via various contract terms used over more than 10 years ending in 2016. While the General Court upheld many commission findings, they cancelled the fine saying that the Commission had failed to prove that the range of contract clauses amounted to a single and continuous infringement warranting the penalty. In their response praising the decision, Google’s spokesperson noted that the case involved “a very narrow subset of text only search ads” and contract provisions that the company changed years ago, while a Commission spokesperson said that it “will carefully study the judgment and reflect on possible next steps.” The case could be appealed to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Context – Between 2017 and 2019, the European Commission, led by Margrethe Vestager, found Google guilty of anticompetitive conduct in three major cases – “Shopping” involving self-preferencing in search “verticals”, “Android” involving preferential placement of Google apps on Android-branded phones, and this “AdSense” case. The ECJ recently confirmed the Commission’s decision and fine in the Shopping case. The nearly twenty-year saga, which critics argued still left Google a dominant provider in multiple digital markets, was a driving force behind the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that now regulates digital “gatekeeper” platforms including Google’s ad business. Whether and how traditional antitrust investigations, including one targeting Google’s ad business, are relevant for a regulated platform is a top policy question going forward.

California Enacts “AI Bills” Targeting Political Deceptions

Report from the New York Times

In Brief – Three laws have been enacted by the State of California to deter election-related content that uses digital tools to misrepresent political candidates, election processes, or election outcomes. AB 2839 goes into effect immediately and bans knowingly sharing certain deceptive election-related deepfakes 120 days before an election as well as 60 days after. The other two election-related measures go into effect in January. One requires labeling deceptive audio, video or images in political advertisements, while the other requires large social media platforms to label or remove an AI deepfake within 72 hours after being notified of its presence. These laws are expected to face legal challenges from social media companies and free speech advocates who are likely to argue that they infringe on the First Amendment rights of digital platforms to determine when they label or restrict content, as well as limiting expression that some might argue is deceptive but is legal regardless. A broader AI regulation bill requiring that AI developers study and report on the “safety” of their AI tools, which is opposed by many leaders of the California technology community, is also on Governor Gavin Newsome’s desk. He has expressed concerns about its potential negative impact on the AI innovation climate in the state.

Context – The headline risks for “deepfakes” are election interference and non-consensual pornography. Although the biggest AI developers have agreed to identify and label AI-generated images created by their services, the Director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency believes that federal legislation will be needed to have rules with “real teeth”. She skims over the massive political and constitutional hurdles. On deepfake nudes, the US Senate recently passed a bill that would allow victims of nonconsensual sexually explicit images to sue people who create, share or receive them. And in the UK, without a First Amendment hurdle, the Starmer Government’s AI plans include “banning the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes.”

Von der Leyen Pushes Thierry Breton Out as French Commissioner

Report from Politico

In Brief – Thierry Breton will not be part of the new European Commission of President Ursula Von der Leyen. The surprise move came after Von der Leyen reportedly decided that she did not want the flamboyant former business executive on her team of commissioners after an increasingly tense and confrontational relationship that included Breton directly criticizing the German’s leadership. Von der Leyen informed French President Emmanuel Macron that if Breton was replaced as the French commissioner that the new nominee would receive a post with significantly greater responsibilities and duties, while sticking with Breton would mean France’s representative would have scaled back duties. Macron accepted the offer to change the French nominee, proposing current French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne, who is considered a close ally of Macron. Learning of the change instigated by Von der Leyen, Breton took to social media to announce his immediate resignation and harshly criticize her and her government.

Context – The relationship between Von der Leyen and Breton had been deteriorating for years, combining personal and stylistic friction as well as underlying French – German tension over EU leadership. When Breton recently used his role as lead enforcer of the Digital Services Act (DSA) to publicly challenge Elon Musk about misinformation and dangerous content as the owner of X was about to host a one-on-one interview with US presidential candidate Donald Trump, numerous commission officials went to the press with harsh criticism, including one saying, “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.” The new Von der Leyen Commission will now not include both high-profile commissioners, Margrethe Vestager and Breton, most associated with the aggressive EU push back on tech giants. With the DSA, Digital Markets Act, and AI Act enacted into law, the governance regime is now fundamentally changed and the big question will be the enforcement style of Finnish commissioner Henna Virkkunen, tapped for the top digital role.

EU Court Advisor Believes Google Likely Breached Antitrust Rules with Android Auto

Report from Courthouse News

In Brief – An EU Court Advocate has informed the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that she believes Google likely violated competition rules when it refused to do work needed to integrate JuicePass, an app from developer Enel-X, with its Android Auto platform. The opinion from Advocate General Laila Medina sided with the Italian Competition Authority which fined Google 102 million euros in 2021. The app from Enel permits drivers to navigate to electric vehicle charging stations using a map on their car dashboard and send messages while behind the wheel. Medina said that a dominant enterprise abuses its position if its conduct excludes, obstructs or delays access to a third-party app developer if there are anti-competitive effects impacting consumers and the conduct is not objectively justified. Google had cited security concerns with JuicePass as well as the fact that there was no existing Android App template that would allow the navigation app to operate, but the Italian antitrust regulator argued that Google allowed its own Maps and Waze apps to operate over Android Auto. Google noted that they’ve since added the template Enel asked for, as well as facilitating other similar apps. ECJ judges are not required to adhere to the opinions of court advocates but follow their recommendations in most cases.

Context – The key issue in this case involves how much development work a dominant digital platform must do to facilitate a third-party’s ability to access the platform. Medina argues that if the ECJ determines that access obligations require dominant platforms to engage in “active behaviour” such as the development of necessary software to allow interoperability, then the court will also have to “define the limits to those obligations”. While Android Auto is not a top tier Google platform for antitrust attention, the Italian intervention was not a one-off. The German national competition authority is investigating Android Auto and Google’s policies to bundle its top apps for vehicle infotainment systems. Apple’s auto CarPlay policies were also included in the US Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against the iPhone giant.

Senate Democrats See AI-Generated Summaries as Likely Antitrust Violations

Report from TechCrunch

In Brief – Eight progressive Democrat Senators are calling on the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to examine whether new Generative AI services such as AI-generated content summaries of materials found on third-party websites violate antitrust laws in regard to content creators and small media enterprises. The Senators argue that AI summaries on search results pages often keep users engaged on the search service rather than going to read the article the AI service summarized. They contend that this negatively impacts the online advertising revenues of the content creators, many of whom are traditional media enterprises that are already suffering advertising revenue reductions, while benefiting the same digital platforms with growing ad revenues. Their letter takes particular note of choice given to websites wishing to keep their content from being integrated into the AI data pools is to shield their site from search indexing, which is likely to significantly harm the site’s general traffic and revenue. The Senators believe this likely represents illegal exclusionary conduct.

Context – Progressives are clear about not wanting governments to make the “same mistakes” with AI that they believe were made with social media. A more activist competition policy is high on the list. It can be pursued without major federal AI legislation, which seems a longshot at this point. The two federal antitrust agencies recently agreed to divide up lead authority on two big potential AI-related targets, with the Department of Justice (DoJ) taking Nvidia and the FTC looking into Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI and other AI startups. That leaves out Google, which may have inspired this letter. The presumption that massive size is key to AI success is strong with many regulators, such as the DoJ’s antitrust chief and the head of the German Competition Authority, but some experts see the largest Generative AI models hitting a point of diminishing returns. Smaller specialized systems may prove more efficient. Besides, some of the biggest AI leaps have come from small startups like OpenAI and Clearview AI.

New York Times Tech Workers Union Authorize a Strike

Report from the Washington Times

In Brief – The New York Times Tech Guild, a labor union representing more than 600 highly skilled software engineers, product managers, designers and data analysts across the New York Times Company’s many digital services, has voted to authorize a strike. The union, formed in 2022, which is the largest in the country made up of true digital workers, has been engaged in two years of unsuccessful bargaining to establish a new collective pay and benefits agreement. The Guild said 89% of its members participated in the strike authorization vote and that it passed with 95% backing. The union’s main demands include pay increases, workplace protections, and most notably, remote work guarantees.  A spokesman for the Times said, “We look forward to working with the group to reach a fair contract, that takes into account that they are already among the highest paid in the Company and journalism is our top priority,” noting that Tech Guild employees average about $190,000 in annual salary, which is $40,000 more than Times journalists, and that talks involve many non-traditional bargaining issues like AI policies.

Context – When reviewing news of the topic of unions organizing inside Big Tech, which often generates cheerleading from media sources, it is important to filter first for “tech” or “not tech” workers. Among the occasional labor organizing successes within giant tech conglomerates, have been Apple retail store employees, Tesla “image analysts” who label video to help train AI vision systems, and game-testers in several studios in the Microsoft video game enterprise. These workers all tend to be hourly employees earning around $20 per hour, not highly skilled and highly paid programmers or developers. Amazon’s ongoing labor strife in their fulfillment centers, as well as their recent announcement to pay more to their so-called “Delivery Service Partners” in the hopes that it will mean more pay for their drivers, are similar. The New York Times Company’s journalist-focused workforce was heavily unionized before the Tech Guild was formed. How a strike by true high-tech workers would work will be interesting to watch.

The European Court of Justice Reaffirms the Google Shopping Decision

Report from Bloomberg

In Brief – The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled in favor of the European Commission in their 2017 ruling that Google violated EU antitrust laws by giving its online shopping recommendation service an advantage over rivals in its search results and fined the company 2.4 billion euros. Widely known as the Google Shopping case, the Commission found that the online search and advertising giant engaged in unfair self-preferencing on its dominant general search service by directing users to its specialized Google Shopping “vertical” search service rather than to the sites of comparison-shopping competitors. Google claims to have made changes to their general search engine and its verticals in the years since while also appealing the fine. The EU General Court, Europe’s second highest, rejected Google’s appeal in 2021.

Context – In 2010, the EU Competition Authority began investigating allegations that Google was self-preferencing on its dominant “horizontal” search service, including downgrading vertical search competitors. The antitrust regulator eventually focused on Google Shopping and the comparison-shopping vertical. The Shopping decision and fine was the first of three antitrust decisions adverse to Google in the EU, followed by the Android decision in 2018 and the AdSense decision in 2019. The Shopping decision and Google’s remedies never quelled criticism from companies that compete in verticals such as travel, jobs, and local reviews. Many called for the Commission to address Google conduct in other verticals, and that Google’s “remedy”, to replace free search results with an ad-based system, was unfair to competitors. The length of time involved in the Google antitrust cases was a driving force behind the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that proactively regulates digital “gatekeeper” platforms like Google to achieve competition policy results without multiyear enforcement cases. In that context, the European Commission’s DMA regulators have been holding workshops in Brussels to get the views of sometimes conflicting stakeholders in online search markets on Google’s search compliance plan as the ECJ ruling was released.

Federal Judge Halts Enforcement of Utah’s Social Media Teen Protection Law

Report from AP

In Brief – US District Court Judge Robert Shelby has halted enforcement of the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act that he argues is likely to be found in violation of the First Amendment. The law requires that social media companies engage in age verification to determine if users are under 18 and then limit how their platforms operate for those users, including restricting algorithmic features that some allege harm teens. In his order, Shelby argued that the law’s attempt to divide online platforms into social media services and other internet platforms is likely content based, that decisions social media companies make about how to operate their platforms is protected speech, and that the state has failed to show that the law satisfies strict scrutiny under First Amendment jurisprudence. He also said the state did not show a clear, causal relationship between minors’ social media use and negative mental health impacts, nor that existing parental controls on social media are not adequate. Utah’s Governor, Attorney General, and legislators who crafted the law, all expressed disappointment in the decision and a commitment to protecting young people from the harms of social media.

Context – The Utah outcome comes on the heels of setbacks for Texas and California laws. Judge Shelby’s order is noteworthy for detailing more than most that there is no clear evidence of a causal link between social media use and negative mental health outcomes and more evidence of balanced and individualized effects. As more state laws hit First Amendment shoals, expect public officials looking to show commitment to the cause to file lawsuits, like the recent one from New Mexico’s AG against Snap Inc., hoping to circumvent Section 230 by claiming company use of algorithms is not protected by the federal law. Although federal bills regulating social media for teens are not moving before the election, they are primed for a “Lame Duck” push despite ongoing concerns on the left, right, and with the First Amendment. Lastly, online regulation in the name of protecting “kids” is gaining traction outside the US, such as Australia considering a 16-year-old age limit for social media.

The Department of Justice and TikTok Face Off in the Federal DC Court of Appeals

Report from the New York Times

In Brief – A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia grilled both sides in the oral arguments phase of TikTok’s legal challenge to the federal law enacted in April requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its US TikTok business by January 19, 2025, or face a ban on its operation the country. (Case documents and briefs here). TikTok, as well as a group of US-based online creators, sued to block the law from going into effect arguing that it is an unconstitutional restriction of speech. The litigants and the Department of Justice asked for an expedited review and a ruling by December 6 so that a likely review by the US Supreme Court can occur in a timely manner.

Context – The US Government attempting to ban TikTok, whether through CFIUS or federal legislation, was always setting up a historic battle in federal court. A showdown was averted in 2021 when President Biden abandoned President Trump’s initial executive order to ban TikTok. However, the Biden Administration never dropped the CFIUS review, never accepted TikTok’s efforts to resolve the Chinese-influence concerns and backed the legislation currently at issue. Classified briefings to Congress by US security agencies reportedly detailed risks of China using TikTok to gather intelligence on users as well as malignly influence US society by directing the company to manipulate its algorithms sending news content to millions of Americans. Security concerns remain central to the government’s legal case and have been filed with the court under seal. The First Amendment has traditionally protected even adversarial speech, including receiving anti-American propaganda, and back in 2020 a federal judge blocked the Trump Administration’s effort to ban the WeChat app, which is clearly part of the Chinese online control regime. TikTok argues they are not. But there has never been a digital service like TikTok, which claims 170 million US users, can non-transparently control the public affairs messaging they see, and is based in an authoritarian country under the sway of a government seen as the US’s top global security rival.

Irish Data Protection Authority Investigating Google’s AI Training

Report from Euractiv

In Brief – The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has launched an inquiry into whether Google violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in its use of EU citizens’ data in the training of its AI Large Language Model PaLM2. The DPC is investigating whether Google should have conducted a Data Protection Impact Assessment, which is required by the GDPR for any new project likely to involve a high risk to other people’s personal information. The Irish regulator said in a statement that the new inquiry “forms part of the wider efforts of the DPC, working in conjunction with its EU/EEA peer regulators, in regulating the processing of the personal data of EU/EEA data subjects in the development of AI models”. A Google spokesperson responded to the announcement saying, “We take seriously our obligations under the GDPR and will work constructively with the DPC to answer their questions.”

Context – Europe’s AI Act has been celebrated by AI regulation advocates for setting up the first comprehensive AI regulatory regime, including creating a specialty EU AI Office. The AI Act’s treatment of large foundation models, including training, was a compromise leading to a final deal. Now, despite the regulatory regime not going fully into effect for two years, privacy regulators are already stepping in and proposing to use the GDPR to regulate AI model training and services. The European Data Protection Board recently issued a report on Chat-GPT claiming that AI companies need a valid legal basis for all stages of personal data processing, including the collection and use of training data, as well as raising the concern that chatbot hallucinations could violate the GDPR’s “principle of data accuracy”. Many of the largest US digital companies have the EU Headquarters in Ireland. The DPC, which has been their lead regulator for the GDPR and has been consistently criticized for not quickly imposing major fines on platforms like Facebook and Google, has taken an aggressive position on AI training. Under DPC scrutiny, Meta and X have both agreed to stop training their LLM chatbots on data from European users.

EU High Court Sides with Commission in €13bn Tax Ruling Against Apple & Ireland

Report from the Irish Times

In Brief – The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has sided with the European Commission and ruled that Ireland provided illegal corporate tax benefits to Apple, restoring an order that the tech giant pay more than 13 billion euros in back taxes to the Irish Government. The initial decision was imposed in 2016 by the European Commission Competition Authority led by Margrethe Vestager, who argued that corporate tax preferences used by Member States like Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands to encourage investments by multinational giants amounted to illegal state aid. Apple and Ireland together appealed the Commission’s decision arguing that the tax arrangement was within the sovereign authority of the Irish Government. The EU General Court overturned the Commission’s ruling in 2020. But the High Court has doubled back, sided with the Commission and restored the order to pay the taxes. Apple has argued that they paid taxes on the earnings in question to the US Government and that changing their tax agreements with Ireland after the fact was double taxation. Margrethe Vestager called the ruling “tax justice”.

Context – The European Commission decision ruling against Ireland’s tax deal with Apple has often been conflated with efforts by France and other countries to increase taxes on giant digital companies. They were not the same. But in 2021 the Biden Administration united the two in a global corporate tax reform plan combining an agreement on national corporate minimum taxes, basically the Apple-Ireland issue, and taxation of digital giants. Implementation of that deal has been stalled, especially in the US Congress. In other ECJ “reversal” news, the contrivance used by the European Commission, again under Commissioner Vestager, to block the acquisition of cancer blood test startup Grail by Illumina, despite the deal size falling below the thresholds for review in the EU, was rejected by the High Court. However, the deal has long been cancelled. And the Commission is reviewing other strategies to gain authority to review acquisitions they are interested in regardless of size.

The Russia Government Is Finally Blocking YouTube

Report from the Washington Post

In Brief – The Russian Government is cracking down on the ability of Russians to access YouTube, the last major Western social media platform openly available in the country. The big question is why now? Russia blocked platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. YouTube has grown into an incredibly popular video service in Russia, with roughly 80 percent of the population estimated to use the platform every month. Unlike the traditional television services, which are strictly controlled by the state, YouTube has consistently included many alternative and dissident viewpoints, including direct criticism of President Putin and the war in Ukraine. However, it has also been a very popular source for non-political video entertainment, and cutting off that service for apolitical Russians was suspected to be risky for the Putin regime. One component of the multiyear Russian Government effort to remove western digital platforms from their internet ecosystem has been to develop Russia-based platform alternatives. RuTube in the case of YouTube. Despite its lack of traction, as YouTube is throttled, it will be the online video alternative, and there is no doubt that open political commentary and dissident voices will not be available on that platform.

Context – China’s Great Firewall is clearly the aspirational technology goal for authoritarian governments around the world. Putin’s Russia, Erdogan’s Turkey, Modi’s India, each intermittently make news for their latest efforts restricting online speech. But the trendline is up almost everywhere. Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore in Asia. Africa is a hotbed, with a 2021 report claiming that 31 of 54 African countries had blocked social media platforms in some manner since 2015. But the EU’s Digital Services is also used to pressure platforms on sensitive political issues. Again, the big question is why Russia has finally acted against YouTube. This video from super-smart Danish military analyst Anders Puck Neilsen, posted six months ago, sheds keen light on how the platform was hosting the only truly open news for Russians.

Dutch DPA Fines Clearview AI and Orders It to Comply with the GDPR

Report from Euractiv

In Brief – In the latest run-in between a European privacy regulator and facial recognition company Clearview AI, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) has fined the US-based company €30.5 million for illegally building and operating its service in violation of the EU’s General Data Protections Regulation (GDPR) and clearly warned any potential customer in the Netherlands not to use it. Clearview AI, which says it offers its facial recognition services exclusively to intelligence and police agencies in select countries, and none at all in the EU, responded to the DPA decision stating that it is “unlawful, devoid of due process and is unenforceable” because the company has no operations that make it subject to the GDPR. In what may prove the most impactful and controversial element of the DPA’s announcement considering the recent arrest in France of Telegram’s CEO for not complying with French digital platform obligations, the Dutch regulator said that they are also “investigating if the directors of the company can be held personally responsible for” Clearview AI’s violations.

Context – Clearview AI was probably the most notorious AI start-up prior to OpenAI releasing ChatGPT. The New York Times produced its expose of the firm when it had a handful of employees and limited financing but still had built a “search engine for faces” that outperformed tech giants like IBM and Microsoft. Privacy regulators in many countries, including five in Europe, challenged the company, as did a few US states. Eventually, the company agreed to drastically pare back its business, only offering its face search service to government authorities in select countries, including the US, where the GAO reports many federal agencies access it. While the company defends its US legal compliance and claims to have no EU customers at all, the EU AI Act does allow EU law enforcement to use facial recognition for investigative purposes. And last fall the company won an appeal overturning the fine levied by the UK’s data authority with the court ruling that the GDPR does not cover data uses by foreign law enforcement.

The German FCO is Surveying Online Sellers on Amazon Pricing Practices

Report from Onlinehandler News

In Brief – Germany’s competition authority, the Federal Cartel Office (FCO), has announced that it is surveying 2,000 third-party retailers who operate on Amazon’s marketplace in Germany to gather information on the effects of Amazon’s practice of checking how third-party sellers price their products on other online sites and allegedly reduce the visibility of products on Amazon that are made available on other platforms for lower prices. The survey is being undertaken as part of an FCO investigation of Amazon initiated in November of 2022 under Section 19a of the German Competition Act (GWB) that gives the FCO the power to prohibit anti-competitive practices by the largest digital companies, which includes Amazon.

Context – The German FCO is ahead of most European antitrust officials in focusing on charges that Amazon is engaged in anticompetitive “price fixing” by punishing third-party sellers who sells their goods for lower prices off Amazon on platforms that charges lower seller fees. Similar allegations are gaining traction in US courts. Amazon argues that they are simply pressing third party sellers to lower their prices on Amazon. But many critics argue that Amazon is actually protecting its seller fees, which often reach 50% of the price of a product, from competition by lower-fee platforms where sellers could profitably sell products at lower prices. However, if a seller does that, they lose their sales on Amazon, which has an 80% share of marketplace sales in the US. Instead, many sellers allegedly raise prices elsewhere to meet Amazon’s demands. A three-judge panel of the DC Court of Appeals recently reinstated an antitrust complaint by the DC Attorney General focused on this Amazon policy of policing seller pricing off Amazon, a similar consumer class action complaint has survived Amazon’s motion to dismiss in US federal court in Washington State, a complaint brought by the California AG survived Amazon’s motion to dismiss in California state court, and the same set of Amazon policies are a part of the FTC’s major antitrust complaint scheduled to go to trial in October 2026.

X Wins Pause in California Social Media Content Moderation Law

Report from Bloomberg

In Brief – A panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with X and placed a preliminary injunction on California law AB 587, ruling that it was likely unconstitutional because it requires social media companies to explain how they apply their moderation policies to types of content the state finds objectionable. The decision overturned a lower court ruling that argued the “transparency” requirements requiring social media platforms to explain their content moderation practices was permissible because it informed consumers about company business practices. The appeals panel rejected that argument and said that the law’s mandatory Content Category Reports forced companies to explain how they defined controversial topics such as hate speech, extremism, and disinformation, which amounted to compelled speech that required the state to meet the highest legal burden under the First Amendment, and that the state would likely fail that test. The judges sent the law back to the lower court to determine the constitutionality of other provisions of the law.

Context – California enacted its social media transparency law following social media regulation laws being passed in Florida, Texas, and New York. Republican-led Florida and Texas acted first, motivated by arguments that Big Tech content moderation was stifling conservatives. New York and California followed up with laws pushing platforms to better police hate speech and harassment. Trade groups representing the largest digital platforms challenged the Florida and Texas laws and the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the lower courts did not appropriately investigate whether the “facial challenges” met the standard that the laws were likely unconstitutional for all platforms and sent them back for that review, although a six-justice majority agreed that the laws likely violated the First Amendment when applied to content moderation by traditional social media platforms. The Ninth Circuit likewise found the core provision on content moderation in the California law unconstitutional but called for more thorough review of the rest of the law.

EU Asking Squabbling Search Stakeholders for Views on Google’s DMA Plan

Report from Reuters

In Brief – The European Commission is holding workshops September 9 to 11 to get the views of stakeholders in online search markets on Google’s compliance plan for the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). After receiving DMA compliance plans from the six initial “gatekeepers” to address the law’s 18 mandates, the Commission opened investigations challenging aspects of the Google, Apple, and Meta plans. The Commission questioned whether Google’s plan used its general search service to unfairly favor its “vertical search engines” such as Google Shopping, Google Flights and Google Hotels. That is a long-time criticism of Google and continues to be leveled by some vertical search companies who offer services like Google’s. At the same time, Google’s DMA changes were also criticized by many direct suppliers of goods and services sold online, such as airlines, hotels and retailers, who said that their visibility on Google search would be diminished, and more consumers would be pushed to vertical services that often charge fees. Google anticipated those criticisms when they released their DMA plan. The search giant, who is not invited to the stakeholder sessions, said, “We have engaged with the European Commission and industry stakeholders over the past year, receiving and responding to feedback in an effort to balance a wide spectrum of views across the ecosystem. We will continue to engage over the coming months.”

Context – Google emerged as the top search engine by offering “blue links” and an innovative side-bar of text ads. How it handled “vertical search” services in the years since has been an ongoing controversy. In 2010, the EU began investigating Google for abusing its dominant general search service by downgrading vertical search providers and preferencing its own verticals. The result was the “Google Shopping” decision in 2017 and a fine that is still being appealed. That time lag and the fact that it was never extended to other search “verticals” contributed to the DMA being enacted to put regulators into the mix. Parties on all sides will continue to argue that they are not treated fairly and EU officials will now make the calls.

Federal Antitrust Trial Alleging a Google AdTech Monopoly Underway

Report from the Washington Post

In Brief – The trial in the US Department of Justice (DoJ) antitrust complaint accusing Google of monopolizing the AdTech market has begun in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia. Although originally scheduled for a jury, a format that saw Google lose two recent antitrust decisions, the company prevailed in having Judge Leonie Brinkema switch to a bench trial over DoJ opposition. A top issue, like in most antitrust cases, will be defining the relevant markets and determining the share and dominance of the alleged monopolist. According to eMarketer, while Google tops the US digital ads space with a 25.6% share of the $303 billion market, Meta holds 21.3% and Amazon is third with 13.9 percent. Earlier this summer Google moved for Brinkema to dismiss the case, arguing that federal antitrust law generally requires that a monopolist holds a 70% share, but the judge rejected Google’s motion and prosecutors are certain to focus on Google’s market share is various online advertising subsectors. In other operational matters impacting the trial, Google’s internal policy of allegedly not retaining all internal messaging texts, which harmed their standing with the judges in their two recent antitrust losses, is again an issue.

Context – Google emerged as the leading AdTech company following its 2007 acquisition of DoubleClick, but online advertising was then seen as a small part of the overall advertising business. However, by 2020 a group of State AGs led by Texas filed an antitrust complaint against Google’s ad business (set for trial in 2025), followed by the DoJ and the European Commission in 2023. In all these cases, defining the relevant markets, measuring shares, and trying to prove market power will be at the heart of the cases. In addition, the complaints involve conduct stretching back years to when Google’s market shares were much higher, but new entrants have since been joining and growing, while Google’s overall share has been falling. With it now below 30%, expect arguments about very narrow and technical online ad “markets”. In Europe, Google’s ad platform is now governed by the Digital Markets Act and they will need to appease their regulators regardless of their antitrust cases.

New Mexico’s AG Sues Snapchat for Promoting Online Sexual Content to Minors

Report from The Hill

In Brief – New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has filed a lawsuit accusing Snap Inc. of violating state law against deceptive trade practices, misleading the public about how safe the Snapchat platform was so it could continue to profit off young users who the company knows often encounter very harmful content. The complaint targets a core design feature of the application, which is the fact that uploaded pictures automatically disappear from the app. This so-called privacy feature, touted by the company as a key differentiator compared to other major social media platforms, is alleged by the state to contribute to the platform becoming the “predominant forum” where predators target children for sextortion schemes and other forms of sexual abuse, as abusers are actually able to copy and permanently save compromising images that often then traded and sold. In announcing the complaint Torres said that the state engaged in an undercover investigation that saw the company’s algorithms recommend abusive accounts to a new account identified as a 14-year-old girl as well as determining that Snap was the largest initial source of the child sexual abuse images and videos they found on the dark web.

Context – Efforts to protect teens from harmful online experiences are only gathering steam. A legislative tactic of US states trying to circumvent Section 230 liability protection and avoid strict First Amendment scrutiny is to regulate “content neutral” social media features, such as recommendation algorithms. Such laws from red and blue states are being challenged in court and federal judges have generally not been sympathetic to the states. New Mexico appears to be having slightly more luck with targeted lawsuits rather than legislation. A similar lawsuit to the Snap complaint was filed against Meta in 2023 and survived the company’s motion to dismiss in a March federal court ruling. However, the most striking flashpoint has been the arrest, detainment, and criminal charges brought by French prosecutors against Telegram’s CEO for the platform facilitating online child sexual abuse. Be careful out there.

Yelp (Finally) Files a US Antitrust Suit Against Google

Report from the New York Times

In Brief – Yelp, a platform providing local search and reviews that has been a long-time antitrust critic of Google, has filed a lawsuit alleging that the digital giant has abused its monopoly in general internet search services to illegally grow its own business in local search. The suit aims to build on the recent decision by US District Judge Amit Mehta who ruled that Google’s general internet search service was a monopoly that was built and reinforced by anticompetitive business deals with phone producers such as Apple and Samsung. As that antitrust trial is now heading to the remedies phase, which could be more controversial depending on how significantly the judge proposes to change Google’s business and operational practices, Yelp argues that Google has also abused its monopoly in general search to build its own local search service. Google responded that it has consistently improved its search service to answer user queries better and faster, that regulators have rejected Yelp’s complaints for years, and even that Judge Mehta dismissed similar search preferencing claims in the case Yelp is referencing.

Context – Google emerged as the top online search engine by 2000 offering so-called “blue links” and a sidebar of innovative text ads. It has consistently evolved since. How it handled “vertical search” services, including Yelp, has been an ongoing controversy. In 2010, the EU began investigating Google for abusing its dominant general search service to downgrade vertical search providers and preference its own verticals, basically the same charge Yelp is bringing now. That resulted in the 2017 “Google Shopping” decision and a fine that is still being appealed. The time lag for that case, and the fact that it was never extended to other search “verticals”, contributed to momentum that resulted in the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) that is now regulating Google Search in Europe. Google’s DMA compliance plan is changing how some verticals are treated, leading to complaints from parties on all sides arguing that Google is unfairly benefiting itself or others. Regulators will eventually make the calls. Will judges eventually do the same in the US?

JFTC Plans to Increase Digital Regulation Staff Citing Smartphone App Law

Report from the Japan News

In Brief – The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) is planning to use the upcoming budget to propose the creation of a new internal department to investigate digital giants and enforce digital regulations, including tripling the number of staff dedicated to those priorities. Enforcing the recently enacted law to regulate the mobile phone app stores of Apple and Google, as well as investigating rapidly emerging digital fields such as artificial intelligence, are priorities being used to justify the growth. For example, just 14 staff are currently enforcing the app store law, but the regulator intends to increase that number to 50. Given the growing international momentum to regulate digital platforms, the new department will be headed by a “director general for digital and international affairs” and intends to cooperate with regulators and antitrust officials in other major digital markets.

Context – Heretofore, Japan has pursued more moderate digital regulation than the EU and the UK. There are five digital giants in Japan – Amazon, Apple, Google, Rakuten and Yahoo Japan. Two are Japan-based. None of the original six digital “gatekeeper” companies regulated by the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is European, and it’s not clear that any companies that will be designated as having “Strategic Market Status” under the UK’s new Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC) will be UK-based. If Japan’s new law regulating app stores reflects the country joining the European trend of regulating digital markets rather than protecting competition with traditional antitrust enforcement, it is equally noteworthy that they have narrowly chosen a market with just two non-Japanese digital giants. That said, ongoing regulation of digital markets is certain to lead to growing bureaucratic departments. The EU Commission is reported to have added about 80 specialists to help enforce the DMA and instituted a supervisory fee on large digital platforms to fund enforcement of the Digital Services Act. The British Government is planning to increase the number of personnel involved in the enforcement of their new digital markets competition law to 200 next year.

Google Reaches Deal to Pay $55 Million to California News Media Companies

Report from Politico

In Brief – Google has reached an agreement with key California state legislators to contribute tens of millions of dollars to a new fund to pay media companies that operate in the state. The deal was applauded by Governor Gavin Newsome (D) and a trade group representing newspapers publishers. However, a union representing reporters was harshly critical, claiming Google was paying too little and no other tech companies were contributing. The agreement, which needs legislative backing, would create the News Transformation Fund administered by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. The first five years envision at least $125 million in funding, with $70 million from the state and $55 million from Google. At least 12% of the funding pool will go toward “locally focused” publishers and publications aimed at underrepresented groups. Bills forcing digital giants to pay media companies would be set aside.

Context – The big news is that Meta is not party to the newspaper payment deal. And if it goes forward, the California bills threatening to compel Meta to pay newspapers when stories are posted on its platforms will be dead. The divergence between Meta’s and Google’s responses to forced media payments policies has become the central drama. Both companies acquiesced to Australia compelling them to pay domestic media companies in 2021. But when Canada enacted legislation last year modeled on the Aussie plan, Meta blocked news on their sites in Canada, arguing that their users did not much value news content and the media companies undervalued the free distribution. Meta’s Canada ban remains in place and its traffic did not decline. Google threatened to block news links in Canada, but they ended up agreeing to pay. Meta and Google then both threatened to block news if California moved forward. Meta was taken seriously. Google has agreed to pay. If California’s media payments fund proceeds, the next flashpoints are Australia, where the 2021 deals expire and Meta is not likely to renew payments, and then in jurisdictions trying to expand forced payments to more platforms than Google, such as X or TikTok.

US Third Circuit Panel Rules Content Curation Not Protected by Sec. 230

Report from The Verge

In Brief – A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit US Court of Appeals has reversed a lower court’s ruling that TikTok was protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act from civil liability in the death of a young user engaging in a “Blackout Challenge”. The appeals panel ruled that TikTok’s algorithmic recommendation of “Blackout Challenge” content on the For You Page of the victim constituted the platform’s speech rather than third-party content, and that Sec. 230 immunity only shields platforms from liability due to content created and posted by others. Their opinion cited the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Moody v. NetChoice involving state laws regulating content moderation by platforms, claiming that the court said online curation was first-party speech by a platform and was protected by the First Amendment, but according to the appeals panel, not Sec. 230.

Context – Social media critics have been trying for years to construct legal strategies to circumvent Sec. 230. Two of the most common avenues are to allege that the harms are not due to the dangerous third-party content itself, but instead to the design of the platforms to encourage longer and more intensive (“addictive”) use, or that the use of algorithms by the platforms to direct dangerous content to users is not an activity protected by the federal statute. The Third Circuit panel referenced the High Court’s view that content curation was platform speech facing a high regulatory bar, but not the fact that the High Court somewhat addressed liability based on content recommendations in the 2023 cases of Gonzalez v Google and Twitter v Taamneh. The justices had teed up the question of whether Google was responsible for harms related to terrorist attacks based on Google’s YouTube algorithms serving up some pro-terrorism content. Although the court passed on issuing a direct ruling on Sec. 230 and algorithms in that case, they spoke unanimously in Twitter v Taamneh and rejected the idea that the nature of provider liability should be different due to the use of content-neutral recommendation algorithms.

DoJ Sues Landlord Software Provider for Facilitating Algorithmic Price Fixing

Report from the New York Times

In Brief – The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has sued software provider RealPage for violating federal antitrust laws through its services that gather non-public rental property data from large commercial apartment landlords and then uses the aggregated data to make lease price and term recommendations to those landlord clients. The lawsuit comes as Democratic nominee Vice President Harris is arguing that corporate greed and “price gouging” is driving up prices, including rents, and alleges that the scheme allows information sharing through algorithms that would be illegal in person. The suit also alleges that RealPage has monopolized the market for software that landlords use to make pricing decisions for apartments, holding an 80% share and using its data hoard to foreclose competitors. The complaint cites many comments by company executives claiming the tools can help landlords earn more money than they otherwise would, while a top attorney for RealPage said the government’s complaint, “cherry-picks statements and documents without context” and “omits major features of the software that make it legally compliant.”

Context – Following an expose in ProPublica in 2022 describing the company’s practices and alleging it was allowing landlords to collude to raise rents, RealPage has faced multiple tenant lawsuits as well as one filed by the District of Columbia’s Attorney General. A key feature of this DoJ complaint is that it does not focus on the setting of higher rents by the landlords, but instead argues that the sharing of non-public business data and using it in a service to competitors is the key anti-competitive conduct, as well as focusing on RealPage’s own market share and alleging it is itself an illegal monopoly. Interestingly, while the previous suits have claimed that most landlords customers adopt the algorithmic recommendations, the DoJ admits that landlords only adopt them around half the time, and many times offer lower rates to renters. The level of adherence needed in cases alleging algorithmic price setting will be an important feature here.

Clash Between X and Brazilian Judge Escalates to Other Musk-Run Firms

Report from the Washington Post

In Brief – The legal and rhetorical battle pitting X and its owner Elon Musk against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has escalated with the judge ordering X to be blocked in the country, imposing fines on any Brazilians who use a VPN service to access the platform, and freezing the bank accounts of Starlink’s business in Brazil. Moraes has been leading a multi-year investigation of disinformation and hate speech in Brazil focused on conservative opposition to the 2022 election and has ordered X to block various accounts. In April, Musk announced that X would stop blocking many accounts. Moraes threatened legal action against the company and Musk personally. X reversed course and said it would comply with the judge’s orders. However, the confrontation heated up again in August, with X announcing that they were no longer fully complying with Moraes’ orders and were closing their operations in Brazil “to protect the safety of our staff” from arrest. The judge ordered X to immediately name an in-country representative, which is a legal requirement in the country, froze the Brazilian bank accounts of Starlink, which has no official relationship to X, and ordered in-country network companies to block X.

Context – Elon Musk is a vocal defender of “free speech,” but he and the platform are quite public about the company complying with “local laws” on legal speech and not expecting US-style standards everywhere. However, there are ongoing pain points and Musk is comfortable engaging in sparring matches with lawmakers. Most recently, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton linked a live interview of former President Trump by Musk to the EU’s Digital Services Act, eliciting a sharp rebuke from Musk and quick backtracking from other EU Commissioners. There was also a standoff in Australia with a judge backing an Aussie regulator who ordered X to ban a violent video on X globally, but the judge eventually walked back. While Musk and the company appear resigned to a shutdown of X in Brazil, following the arrest of Telegram’s CEO in France, and Justice de Moraes’ treating all Musk-run businesses as one, he will probably be careful about travel plans.