E.U. Prepares Major Penalties Against X
256 comments
·April 6, 2025dionidium
> Blue checkmarks "used to mean trustworthy sources of information," Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said.
Obviously you can write a law that says anything you want, but as an aesthetic matter, this strikes me as pretty ridiculous. A company makes up a thing called a "blue checkmark" and then, what, it has to mean the same thing for the rest of all time? It's not like the new Twitter lied about what was happening. They said plainly that they were changing the checkmark system to mean something new. Why would anybody cheer a government stepping in to say, "no, sorry, you can't do that?"
happytoexplain
As much as we would like otherwise, law is a subjective tool. We implement objectivity as much as is feasible, e.g. using careful wording and precedent, but ultimately it would be a fool's errand to attempt to make it 100% objective/deterministic.
All this to say, we tend to oversimplify in our criticisms when more objectivity would have given us a result we agree with.
We tend to agree that we want laws to stop businesses from "tricking people". The specifics vary widely, but the goal itself is unavoidably subjective, so there will always be some subjectivity in its application.
nradov
There is no credible accusation that X itself is tricking people here, so your comment is a non sequitur. If particular accounts are posting fraudulent information, then go after those through regular legal channels. The platform is not the problem here.
polygamous_bat
> There is no credible accusation that X itself is tricking people here.
That is a purely subjective opinion, since I have talked to elderly people who assumed “blue checkmark = celebrity” and was therefore confused why there are so many such interactions on trivial posts.
dionidium
In the United States we have a long, foundational legal tradition in support of Free Speech and free enterprise for this very reason.
The bar is set very high precisely because we know where things go when it's not.
This specific case wouldn't clear a low bar, much less a high one. I, too, have been turned off by Musk's behavior over the last year, but the idea that this case has nothing to do with that is risible.
ethbr1
To be fair, US free speech laws have never grappled with as concentrated publishing/social ownership as we have now.
Zigurd
There's at least a little bit of strawman-ing going on here.
The regulators are not insisting that blue checkmarks mean what they've always meant. Secondly xitter hasn't been transparent about changes to blue checkmarks. There was a long period of time when blue checkmarks were given or even forced upon credible sources at Elon's whim while he sold them to hucksters and frauds. Even if blue checkmarks had been that debased throughout their existence, there's still plenty of basis for regulators to find that they are deceptive.
prof-dr-ir
That quote is not from the article?
And in any case, the fine does not seem to be about the blue checkmarks at all.
null
pessimizer
The worst part isn't that a company makes up a designation and is forced to stick with it by regulators. A designation could have been designed from the beginning specifically to head off regulators.
The worst part is that it is simply a lie. Blue checkmark never meant "trustworthy source of information," and most people who had blue checkmarks were not trustworthy sources of information. Thierry Breton is spreading misinformation here, but that would not have ever been grounds to remove his checkmark.
Blue checkmarks were an arbitrary piece of gamified tat given by twitter when it felt like it, and now it's a paid piece of gamified tat that can be revoked whenever Musk feels like it.
Ekaros
At best checkmarks were "verified" accounts. That meant that most likely party with access to account had identifiable identity connected to it. Say celebrity or real business. For any given value of celebrity also big enough "influencer" counting.
Now would celebrities, influencer or company marketing accounts always be trustworthy sources? For more cynical almost never...
knallfrosch
[flagged]
Vinnl
If I'd hear this language coming out of my politicians' mouths, I'd really start to wonder if I'd always belong to their "we"...
gruez
>And we'll, wen can craft the law any way we like. We could even call it Twitter law.
You don't think crafting (in effect) bill of attainder is a bad idea?
Zigurd
<cough>TikTok</cough> and unlike that corrupt old world Europe, we have specific language in our constitution against bills of attainder.
pessimizer
The reason Europe is attacking X is to suppress European speech. Why be proud of that to the point of sneering?
dumbledoren
Nope, its just that the current Eu establishment doesnt like how its narrative about the Gaza genocide or the Ukraine War was challenged by including even its own press, so they want control and censorship. The countries that are pushing for this are persecuting people for protesting the Ukraine war or the Gaza genocide. Also there's the thing with the current Eu commission president's secret whatsapp chat with Pfizer lobbyists, which has become a major issue that reached the top European court recently.
rcpt
The DSA violation was news in 2024
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/eu-says-elon-mus...
And the EU is right. Elons blue check boosting logic absolutely violated those laws. Other companies played by the rules and made their systems DSA compliant. Elon did not, now he needs to pay.
tacticalturtle
Am I misremembering history?
> Blue checkmarks "used to mean trustworthy sources of information," Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said
I thought the blue check mark always indicated that account name on Twitter matched the person behind the account. That’s it. They eventually expanded that to include non-famous people.
Kyrie Irving (an NBA player known for conspiracies like flat earthism) had a blue check - no one would ever mistake him for a trustworthy source of information.
TiredOfLife
The only thing blue checkmark meant was that you knew somebody at twitter
marris
I am not familiar with the DSA.
1. Are companies permitted to charge for badges under DSA?
2. Is there an example of another social media that EU officials have identified as being compliant with DSA?
immibis
You can read the text: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/oj/eng
If English isn't your native language, that's okay - these are translated into every European language and you can select a translation here.
Article 25, clause 1:
> Providers of online platforms shall not design, organise or operate their online interfaces in a way that deceives or manipulates the recipients of their service or in a way that otherwise materially distorts or impairs the ability of the recipients of their service to make free and informed decisions.
These EU regulations tend to specify policies, not mechanisms to achieve them. Mechanisms to enforce the policy, however, are specified.
They are written like that precisely so you won't try to weasel your way around a requirement. If they had said "verified badges may not be sold" then you would try to say "this isn't a verified badge but a they-paid-us badge." By wording it vaguely, it cannot be weaseled.
And indeed, it is a they-paid-us badge... but it's designed to look identical to the verified badge, on purpose, because Elon knew verified badges were something people wanted, and people wanted them because they were a status symbol, and they were a status symbol because they indicated your account was in some sense more trustworthy than average. And Elon knew that.
I don't know whether people still see the badges that way today. Probably not, because all the sane people deleted their accounts and don't care. But it was the case, when the badges were introduced, that they were designed to trick people who didn't know they were now pay badges. You might think everyone knew that, but that's just because everyone in your bubble knew that because they're very online people. Would your grandmother know it?
gruez
>They are written like that precisely so you won't try to weasel your way around a requirement. If they had said "verified badges may not be sold" then you would try to say "this isn't a verified badge but a they-paid-us badge." By wording it vaguely, it cannot be weaseled.
It also means enterprising prosecutors and regulators can use it as a cudgel against their opponents. As others have mentioned, the checkmark already meant very little when it came to whether the poster was trustworthy or not. It's like fining Chrome and Firefox for accepting letsencrypt certificates, because previously there was a $10 cost to having a lock appear on your site, and letsencrypt making it free misleads users.
nradov
The DSA ruling was wrong. The blue checkmark never indicated trustworthy sources of information. Even under previous Twitter management, verified accounts routinely posted misinformation and disinformation. Thierry Breton is either an idiot or lying to push a political narrative.
addaon
The trustworthy information that blue check marks indicated was not that the /contents of the message/ were objectively trustworthy, but that /a specific person was willing to be associated with the contents of the message/. That’s what was lost.
josteink
Are you saying you think the semantics of that is anywhere near worth a billion dollar fine? When the changes were clearly communicated, and reported on by the press!
In that case, what about the CSAM problem on the Meta-owned platforms? How many billions should that be?
philwelch
> Thierry Breton is either an idiot or lying to push a political narrative.
But then again this has always been true.
seivan
[dead]
jdminhbg
> Unlike Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon, which are publicly traded, X is owned solely by Mr. Musk. EU regulators are considering using a piece of the law that lets them calculate a fine based on revenue that also includes other companies Mr. Musk privately controls, like his rocket maker, SpaceX. That increases the potential penalty to well over $1 billion, one person said.
Is the NYT wrong here or is the EU? It's private but it's not "solely owned" by a longshot. Either way, this is some pretty amazing Calvinball even by EC standards.
miltonlost
Neither NYT nor the EU is wrong. Elon's companies are, to him, fungible, with employees able to be used in any company, like when Elon borrowed engineers employed at Tesla and SpaceX to work on Twitter when he bought it. These are all separate companies on paper, but Elon treats the workers as interchangeable. He acts as if they are all owned by him, so the EU is treating them as he treats them.
root_axis
And not just the workers, Elon threatened to take all of Tesla's AI stack to xAI if they didn't give him the 55B pay package.
immibis
Most countries' company law has a clause that says if you violate company boundaries like this, they're effectively one company. Otherwise you could use this sort of thing to limit your liability well in excess of intended (the primary purpose of company law is to establish carve-outs in which you can perform business with limited liability).
jdminhbg
That’s a good explanation of how Elon is also wrong, I guess, but the NYT or EU is still wrong too.
marcosdumay
If the other shareholder are ok with this behavior, than there's nothing wrong with it.
If they complain, it's a very serious crime, he's basically stealing, but if they are don't, than it's not.
lambda
While others certainly have a financial interest in it, it is not publicly traded and Musk solely controls it. For instance, he just unilaterally sold it to another of his privately held companies, xAI, for a valuation he made up.
Musk's privately held companies, and to a large degree Tesla as well, are all things he treats as effectively one big company that he controls; he'll take employees from one to another at will, he sells them to each other or spins them out at will in all stock transactions, etc.
The EU regulations allow seeing through such sham company boundaries that are all controlled by a single entity, and treating them as a single company.
arandomusername
How do you know that the shareholders of X did not have a voice in acquisition by xAI?
lambda
In this article: https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/musks-xai-buys-social-...
"Musk did not ask investors for approval but told them that the two companies had been collaborating closely and the deal would drive deeper integration with Grok, the investor said."
Now, he may have only been talking about xAI investors here, but it seems pretty clear from his actions that Musk pretty much demands full control of his companies, and if he does involve the other investor's they're likely rubber-stamping without much opportunity to push back.
JumpCrisscross
> It's private but it's not "solely owned"
You’re right. Controlled would be correct, as it invokes the legal concept of common control. (No idea if it’s a thing in the EU.)
josteink
> Either way, this is some pretty amazing Calvinball even by EC standards.
Call it by its name. It’s lawfare.
The EU is trying to coerce X to limit freedom of speech for everyone worldwide, including Americans.
Talk about a nice NATO ally eh, trying to lawfare your constitutionally granted freedoms away?
jeltz
It is much more likely that the NYT journalist misunderstood something. The question is what.
twalkz
I guess at some point the EU has to do something if they want companies to keep implementing these regulations under the calculus of “cost of implementation vs. cost of fines that arise from non-compliance”.
I would love to believe that some companies would follow these regulations even without severe threat, because they’re the right thing to do for users, but I know in a lot of cases it can take significant time, effort, and money to keep up with every regulation coming out of the EU
onlyrealcuzzo
Companies don't really care about "the right thing to do for users."
They care about maximizing profits from you.
If you're hoping companies are going to "do the right thing for you" on their own, you're probably going to be disappointed.
fullshark
Once upon a time these companies valued their user base, afraid they would leave and find another way to use their time. I guess they’ve got the data that their users are all addicted and will never do that. At least until they push too hard.
mentalgear
Unfair business practices and quasi monopolies (Microsoft), waled gardens (apple), and in the past 15 years advanced data analysis let's those companies exactly calculate how far they can make their users "suffer/bleed/annoy" and stop just right before the breaking point.
Also, if real competition arises, it's just bought and merged (Facebook buying instagram) since anti-trust laws have not been properly applied, especially in the digital sector.
Zak
When there's a significant opportunity for growth in userbase, corporate social media is good to users. Once that plateaus, they look to grow something else, usually advertising revenue.
The current incentive structure rewards growth more than a stable profitable state, which I think is a mistake.
exe34
that's because of the network effect: while you're a small part of people's network, you can be replaced easily. once you've connected 60-90% of their network (including the sort of people they follow online, not necessary people they meet in meatspace), you don't need to worry too much about getting replaced.
palata
> Once upon a time these companies valued their user base
Because that's what was bringing profit then. We should never forget, that's the whole point of capitalism: companies maximize profit. Companies are not human beings with emotions, they are profit-maximizing entities.
They evolve in a framework set by regulations. The society, made of human beings with emotions, is supposed to define that framework in such a way that what makes companies profitable is also good for the people.
waltercool
[dead]
jahewson
Censorship is not the “right thing to do” though. Just look at how it’s been abused in recent years.
FirmwareBurner
Indeed. I'm European and I also see the EU's "banning of disinformation" as a form of censorship in gift wrapping. What about the government disinformation during covid? Did they punish anyone for that?
Vague and ambiguous laws like these against disinformation enable selective enforcement for the governments to make sure their PoVs go though the media and everything they deem inappropriate or a threat to their authority gets shut down.
Those in power in Brussels are afraid of communication channels they can't control as people become more and more dissatisfied and irate with their leaders, policies and QoL reductions, so they push laws like these plus the ones trying to backdoor encrypted communications in order to gain control over the narrative, monitor and crush any potential uprisings before they even occur.
immibis
I'd love to hear your better idea to deal with disinformation. The free marketplace of ideas has obviously not worked. Maybe even better public education could work, and then they wouldn't need to censor it because nobody would believe it anyway?
MoonGhost
EU isn't the only entity with regulations and interests. Which creates a lot of conflicts. Like free speech is limited in EU and less so in USA. Should company in USA implement EU restrictions on USA users? What if both EU and USA users are in the same chat. EU is going to go after Mask's other companies. In other words EU plays dirty as usual, just like with Russian's money. Same story with Telegram. At some point it will backfire.
mentalgear
That's also been the issue for decades with the financial industry: the fines and probability of getting caught are far less (and already 'priced' in) vs the big profits.
And if the shit really hits the fan, they know that the government is going to pay to rescue them with taxpayer money (just one example: financial crisis of 2008).
dotcoma
To the mods: Why was my link to arstechnica hijacked and transformed into a link to the NYTimes? This is creepy.
StackRanker3000
I’m guessing this is the article you submitted: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/04/eu-may-make-an-e...
This is the first sentence in it, which links to the New York Times article the submission was changed to:
> European Union regulators are preparing major penalties against X, including a fine that could exceed $1 billion, according to a New York Times report yesterday.
These are the Hacker News guidelines (you’ve been on here for 18 years, perhaps time to give them a read): https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
This isn’t creepy, this is in line with the rules.
jdenning
This is a valid question -- any response from mods?
xracy
There is another comment that answers "why" I assume dang doesn't have the time to answer all of these individually. But tl;dr it's in the guidelines for posting on the site why this happened.
93po
if i had to guess: NYT was the original source of the news and Ars is just reporting on NYT reporting. Or alternatively, Ars is frequently really slanted and disingenuous to the point of dishonesty fairly often
jrepinc
Good, it is a start. And much better would be for those EU politicians, journalists and other people to move to Mastodon, Pixelfed, and similar independent platforms. That would make a much better example.
pimeys
I can't understand why government offices for many countries are still on Twitter. At least Germany has their own mastodon service, but my home country Finland still uses Twitter.
abdullahkhalids
I understand why everyone is one Twitter - because people and important people/orgs are there. What I don't understand is, why not also publish the posts on a Mastodon account. You don't have to engage there, but at least don't force people to use Twitter.
MiguelX413
> I understand why everyone is one Twitter
False premise, most people are not on Twitter. Outside of Japan and the US, comparatively few people use Twitter.
qingcharles
I don't have a problem with public bodies being on Twitter, but they should definitely be on somewhere else too. They need to be where the people are, and people are going other places.
SoftTalker
Because most ordinary people are on Twitter and not Mastodon
jeltz
Ordinary people are on neither. The group which is on Twitter are politicians and they can decide to move to Mastodon if they want.
lm28469
Most ordinary people are on neither
JoshTriplett
That's circular, though: the more services become available elsewhere, the easier it is for people to switch.
andrepd
That's a pretty bad argument. For one the majority of people are on neither. For two, it's almost always about reading, and twitter doesn't let you read posts without an account.
dtquad
Twitter was never really big in most European countries. I only have an account to follow AI hype and drama.
timeon
That maybe true for Meta services but Twitter was never really a thing in EU.
distracted_boy
No one is truly independent when it comes to politics. Everyone belongs to a political tribe, and if you don't, you are against whatever tribe you are currently engaging with.
danieldk
I am not sure how that is a reaction to the grandparent, but we also don't fall into the same us-versus-them trap that divides the US. I think most people in the EU agree on several basic principles regardless of their political preferences:
- If you get sick, costs should be covered by universal health insurance.
- If you lose your job, there should be a safety net.
- When you retire, there should be a decent pension.
- Everybody should have access to good education.
- We don't want war.
- We don't want to be powerless against megacorps.
In other words, there is much more that is binding us than what is dividing us (in my country, pretty much every party from extreme left to populist right agrees on these things). For those things that we don't agree on, we should find compromises.
arandomusername
Those aren't that universally agreed upon (except war/megacorps/education) in working class/middle class. It's just that EU has high amount of people depending on those safety nets/pensions that any politician not for it is committing political suicide.
luckylion
> most people in the EU agree on several basic principles regardless of their political preferences
Most in the US will, too. The nuances are where is falls apart, both in the US and in Europe.
- Should all costs be covered, for everything, no matter the cost? How would that work / How do we disband the laws of nature?
- How long should that net carry you? Does it only break the fall, or does it replace your job for eternity? Who pays for it? Do you have any obligations when losing your job?
- How high should that pension be? Who should pay for it? Should it (in part or in full) depend on you ever having worked? Can you choose when to retire?
- What is "good education", and what is "access"? I'm not all that bright, do I have a right to be taught at university? For how long? Who pays for it? Is anything expected in return?
- Are we pacifists who refuse to acknowledge that war might find us, even if we're not looking for it? Or are we preparing for war because we don't want it and believe that an aggressive imperial force will pounce unless it believe us to be capable of defending ourselves?
I don't believe that everyone in your country, much less in Europe, agrees. Once you remove the vague language and put concrete things in, you'll see people disagreeing on each point.
If it was that simple, we'll have peace on earth because everyone will be able to agree on those core things - as long as you promise them that it's their interpretation that counts.
tempo3565
[dead]
sunshine-o
I left Twitter 10 years ago because I believe it is toxic.
Now to everyone applauding those kind of things with a "the enemies of my enemies are my friends" logic:
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years HN will be inaccessible from the EU because it promotes non compliant and dangerous software. If you don't believe me, read the EU Cyber resilience act. It is slowly paving the way to this.
HN is already blocked in China.
owebmaster
> I left Twitter 10 years ago because I believe it is toxic.
So everyone should leave, or the people with the mandate to protect EU should solve the issue with the platform in place of putting the responsibility in the users?
StanislavPetrov
It's amazing more people don't understand this. In a free society people have the right to say things that are stupid, wrong, toxic and just plain false. If you live in a society where the government assumes the power to control what you are allowed to say you no longer live in a free society, period. This holds true whether you're talking about the EU's assault on free speech or the Trump administration's assault on free speech when it comes to criticizing Israel. It's amazing so many are willing (and eager!) to surrender their freedoms to what they perceive as benevolent overlords with their best interest at heart. What they fail to understand is that once you have lost the ability to speak freely, you inevitably lose all of the other freedoms that go along with it. Your benevolent overlords now possess the power to arbitrarily classify anything they don't like (especially that which threatens their power) as "misinformation" or "dangerous speech" or whatever other euphemism they invent to silence you. Just because you may today happen to agree with the people who decide what you are allowed to say doesn't mean you will agree with them tomorrow. And tomorrow you won't be able to object, because your ability to speak freely will be gone.
gls2ro
I think you are confusing the right to say things with a right to not be subjected to consequences for what you say.
I think in US as in EU if you say something that is breaking a law you have to pay the consequence. The difference may be in EU having more laws and US less that are concerned with consequences.
kreetx
And it's these laws that seep into the area of free speech.
AlchemistCamp
This was the particularly notable part:
> ” The Digital Services Act allows fines of up to 6 percent of a company's total worldwide annual turnover. EU regulators suggested last year that they could calculate fines by including revenue from Musk's other companies, including SpaceX.”
762236
It would be interesting to see SpaceX retaliate against the EU, such as by charging a fee for all EU launches to cover the EU's lawfare.
owebmaster
SpaceX (and Elon) likes government funding, not tariffs.
rich_sasha
While it's nice to see EU hitting where it hurts, and $1bn is a lot of money by most scales, it isn't, insanely, that much to Musk. If I believe Google, his net worth is still over $300bn, so such fine would be less than 0.5% of his net worth.
Given his pattern of behaviour, he may well try to turn it all into a joke and be emboldened for more.
That said, I don't know how much cash Twitter and SpaceX have. Possibly not a lot. Tesla does have more, but it's publicly owned and much harder for Musk to raid for cash.
josephcsible
If such a law existed in the US, it wouldn't matter that you violated it, since it would be found invalid under the First Amendment. Does the EU not have any equivalent to protect freedom of speech from unjust laws?
arandomusername
It's EU. Our favourite pasttime is to regulate.
alextingle
Why? Companies are regulated all the time. Is deceptive advertising allowed in the US? Didn't think so.[1] Does that violate your First Amendment too?
This case is all about forbidding deceptive practices. Did Twitter's redefinition of blue checkmarks amount to deception? Maybe. There'll be a court case where Twitter get to make their case, if they lose them have to pay the fine. Lay off the pearl clutching.
Snild
Aren't libel laws such laws?
josephcsible
No, because the US has those, and X isn't violating them.
AlecSchueler
The equivalent is in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Title II - Freedoms, Article 11). But I'm not sure why you think freedom of expression permits a business to publish things in a mis-leading manner?
josephcsible
That says "The exercise of these freedoms [...] may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law", which seems to basically be saying that laws can override freedom of speech in the EU.
AlecSchueler
Yes, of course. That's why when I buy some food I know that the list of ingredients is the actual list of ingredients and not someone's free expression. That helps me feel safer as a consumer. Same in this Twitter case. Does it really work differently in the US?
nikanj
This would turn out very interestingly, because Elon Musk enjoys a level of access to the US executive branch that other companies only dream of. The fury and retribution from POTUS would be terrible, if the company of his close friend was fined by his mortal enemies
wat10000
Yeah, if they’re not careful, he might slap them with tariffs and threaten to take some of their territory.
dotcoma
We're ready for a fight.
arandomusername
No we're not. Our military and our economy is a shadow of US.
We could be ready to fight if we got rid of dumb politicians and endless bureaucracy, but in current state without US we are nothing.
renewiltord
[flagged]
bigyabai
> An actual fight showed up at their doorstep and they were too addicted to their fossil fuels
As an American that doesn't sound too unfamiliar to me either. Remember "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq?
oezi
Germany/Europe are just the same kind of capitalist societies as anywhere else. If somebody is offering to sell you stuff for cheaper than another you most likely will buy unless other aspects override the advantage.
Germany enjoyed at least 10 years of cheap Gas. Politicians believed it would help Russia become integrated and dependent on the money flowing.
Putin was more crazy than we thought.
Which makes it so weird to watch Trump being so subservient to Putin.
wordofx
Spreading Russian conspiracy theories now?
voidfunc
That's cute.
huhtenberg
Musk is not Trump's "close friend". He is someone who holds him by the balls with some iron-clad leverage.
JumpCrisscross
> He is someone who holds him by the balls with some iron-clad leverage
What leverage? Musk is a useful, rich idiot who is serving as a heat shield and distraction while the GOP blows out our deficit.
henry2023
Trump doesn’t strike me as loyal to anyone. Including Musk, he could just stop taking his calls one day and he would just be fine.
huhtenberg
With Musk upstaging Trump in White House interviews, you'd expect him to be ejected long time ago. Hence the existence of the leverage. Something on the level of helping Trump rig the election. That sort of leverage that would completely destroy Trump if it ever goes public.
mentalgear
[flagged]
throw_a_grenade
> Elon Musk enjoys a level of access to the US executive branch that other companies only dream of
In short, he's an oligarch. Over here we don't react kindly to that level of political corruption.
pessimizer
Europe is full of oligarchs, and has less class mobility than the US. The history of Europe is a history of oligarchs throwing peasants at each other.
A middle-class lifestyle when one doesn't have to spend on the military might fool you into thinking that Europe is egalitarian (everybody looks healthy), and looking egalitarian can look like a lack of corruption if your glasses are dirty. Meanwhile, there are families that have been controlling that continent for hundreds of years.
The funny thing about the European rearmament bluff is that any weapons bought by Europe are eventually going to be aimed at other Europeans. It isn't that Europe needs to defend itself from the outside, it's that Europeans need to be protected from each other.
rsynnott
> and has less class mobility than the US.
So, interestingly, this is something that Americans tend to believe, and that Europeans tend to believe, but it is empirically not true.
Americans in the bottom income quintile are less likely to make it to the top quintile than people in the major European economies, but they are more likely to _believe_ that they can: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/02/14/american...
guerrilla
Mortal enemies? That's a bit dramatic. Whether Trump understands it or not, the EU is his ally and Russia his an example of an "enemy" (i.e. geopolitical competitor).
https://archive.ph/y7Yah