Maximilian Schäfer

Competition, Digitization, Economics of Data.

[Marc Botenga MEP @BotengaM]

Incomprehensible statement.

Unable/unwilling to condemn direct US threats against EU Member States. Reads like the EU High Rep is looking for ways to hand over Greenland.

This subservience is a disaster. We need to act: reduce dependency from the US, diversify our relations.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

A return to spheres of influence could make sense if you are a great power. If you aren't one, cheering it seems foolhardy. Once again, too many people are living mentally like Americans, not realising they are citizens of the periphery.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

This is what I worry Europe will get negatively polarized into: an ideology taking pride in a neat, sanitized online environment free of evil corporate and fascist pathogens.

I hope European govs do not go this way, and instead take a Pirate Party approach of user empowerment.

First, what's wrong with the tweet I'm quoting:

The idea that there should be "no space" for something you dislike is fundamentally a totalitarian and anti-pluralistic impulse. It's incompatible with being in an environment that you do not fully control.

This is especially true for categories that are subjective and controversial, because you end up trying to fully remove things you think are pathogens, when other people have good faith disagreements, and because you give yourself the maximalist goal of not even giving them breathing room, you create conflict and end up building the machinery of technocratic authoritarianism to impose your victory in the conflict.

So sorry, if you want to be a free society, you have to bite the bullet that some people, somewhere, will be selling things that you consider dangerous and saying things you consider disinformation and vicious lies.

What is the goal to shoot for?

You want to create an environment where those things don't dominate. This is the problem with twitter today: not that it's a safe space where 1000 people talk to each other in a corner about how heritage americans are the master race and putin is good or whatever, but that that crap gets shoved in our face on a mass scale, and the algorithms actively favor it.

The right metaphor is not castles and walls, but biological - think, why European forests don't have tropical lizards.

Having incentives for social media platforms to have less of those things instead of more is fundamentally reasonable, @audreyt has talked about how Taiwan has done something similar.

You also want to do this in a way where it's clear what the underlying principle is, so it's not a vehicle for imposing arbitrary and frequently changing expert-consensus agendas.

You also want to empower users, rather than working against them. People want to see and buy good things instead of bad things. Often the problem is that competition is too difficult in the current market. I actually supported the USB-C standardization mandate; it created more interoperability and thus improved competition and convenience. I would support incentivizing social platforms to be more open, and to be more transparent (eg. my proposal to require algorithms to be continuously published with a 1-2 year delay, with zk-proofs to ensure that the algorithm being used in real time exactly equals the one that gets published later)

Being able to better identify what messages are coming from what communities is also good, though I don't support the direction of banning anonymity of individual posters, rather I would want to see more macro-scale analytics, eg. seeing what communities are most strongly saying and amplifying content that semantically matches a particular idea; this can be done in privacy-preserving ways.

There is a real opportunity to reaffirm freedom of speech in a unique and different way, that emphasizes pluralism and pushes against unbalanced attempts to manipulate the discourse by individual powerful actors. We want to do this, not go down the dark path of having something that claims to support fundamental rights but actually is not trusted by anyone to be anything other than the fundamental right to follow the footsteps of a few technocratic experts.

[Martin Konečný @MartinKonecny]

Yet to see such response for other EU citizens sanctioned by the US this year (more seriously - also financially, not just travel):

1) ICC judge Beti Hohler (Slovenia)

2) ICC judge Nicolas Guillou (France)

3) UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese (Italy)

[Maximilian Schäfer @maxPschaefer]

@Jordan_W_Taylor This is obviously true. But a change in regulations should aim at a different set of rules for small vs large companies. Dufferent types of power asymetries between employer and employees should matter. It should be easy for small businesses to lay off but harder for larger ones

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

You realize now that the media could have been saying this the whole time, and editorial boards at papers like @nytimes and @washingtonpost can publish the same thing right now. It’s a choice.

They haven’t been “neutral” through 19 months of genocide, they’ve been complicit.

[Fabio De Masi 🦩 @FabioDeMasi]

Man kann die AfD für gefährlich halten und das Vorgehen des Verfassungsschutzes und der Ministerin ebenso.

Es ist erstaunlich wie schnell vermeintlich aufgeklärte Zeitgenossen, die sich gerne als Verteidiger der liberalen Demokratie inszenieren, darüber hinweggehen, dass der Verfassungsschutz über Jahrzehnte linke Politiker bespitzelt hat (darunter einen ehem. Ministerpräsidenten)und wie sich unter dem Mantel der Behörde Altnazis austobten und der NSU eine Blutspur durchs Land zog (schon vergessen wie ein hessischer Verfassungsschützer mit rechter Gesinnung sich „zufällig“ in einem Internetcafe befand in dem ein NSU-Mord stattfand, dies nicht mitbekommen haben will und anschließend der Verfassungsschutz die polizeilichen Ermittlungen behinderte?) Schon vergessen, dass auch HG Maaßen an der Spitze der Behörde stand, dem viele selbst AfD-Nähe unterstellen.

Warum hat die Ministerin eine so schwerwiegende Entscheidung nicht ihrem Amtsnachfolger überlassen? War das vielleicht sogar abgesprochen und ist es kein Interessenkonflikt, dass der Behördenchef für die CDU in dem Bundestag wollte (und übrigens scheiterte)?

Und nun wo die rechte AfD in Umfragen zeitweilig führt, wird kurz vor Dienstende ein Gutachten - wie Faeser betont ohne rechtliche Prüfung - lanciert, das aber nicht veröffentlicht werden soll? Warum hat man es nicht veröffentlicht und die Passagen mit nachrichtendienstlichen Erkenntnissen geschwärzt?

Warum traut man dem Gutachten dann nicht ein Verbotsverfahren erfolgreich abzustützen, aber wir sollen einer Behörde trauen, die keiner echten öffentlichen Kontrolle unterworfen ist?

Zuletzt: Der Vorwurf gegen die AfD stützt sich auf den Staatsangehörigkeitsbegriff einiger AfD-Politiker für die nur Deutscher sein kann wer deutscher Abstammung ist.

Ich halte diesen Blut-und Abstammungsbegriff für grundfalsch und finde es richtig, dass jede/r Deutscher werden kann, die oder der hier über fünf Jahre Zeitraum straffrei lebt, die Sprache lernt und eine Bindung zu unserem Land hat! Ich glaube insbesondere dass Millionen türkischstämmige, die dieses Land mit aufgebaut haben, zu Deutschland gehören - so wie ich es richtig finde, dass schwarze Deutsche im DFB-Trikot auflaufen und es in einem begrenzen Umfang immer Einwanderung geben wird!

Aber dieser völkische Staatsangehörigkeitsbegriff - den ich ablehne - war noch bis vor wenigen Jahren Grundlage des deutschen Staatsbürgerschaftsrechts.

Richtig ist: Die AfD ist eine gefährliche Partei, die für Hochrüstung, Sozialabbau und Ressentiments steht. Aber ihren Erfolg bezieht sie aus einer Politik, die soziale Spaltung vertieft, Integration überfordert, den Wohlstand dem Rüstungswahn opfert. Die AfD wurde unter der Ampel so stark! Wer also unsere Demokratie und unsere Verfassung schützen will muss sich gegen diese Politik und die autoritäre Überdehnung der Mächtigen stellen.

Auch daher ist es übrigens so wichtig, dass die Wahlprüfungsbeschwerde des BSW Erfolg hat!

[Jacob Mchangama @JMchangama]

One of the things I appreciate about America is that when the federal government attacks free speech there's instant pushback by civil society. People take to the streets. In Europe free speech has been in steep decline for years, but there's no real public outcry, no mainstream concern about democratic backsliding. In fact, the Old World is in a state of delusional "Censorship Denial".
https://t.co/cZt9u1iS3l

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

A political movement can spend a decade demanding no more wars in the Middle East -- so resources can be used at home instead for Americans -- but the minute you show them video of 30 Arabs blown up and dubiously claim they're terrorists, many will say: "hell yeah! kill more!"

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

The issue isn’t whether Le Pen is guilty of the charges — which, to be clear, don’t involve “embezzlement” in the traditional sense of stealing money for personal gain, but rather that some of her aides in the European Parliament also worked for the party outside of parliamentary duties.

The real point is that, even if she is (baring in mind that she still hasn’t gone through all the degrees of judgement), barring her from the upcoming election is a blatantly disproportionate and unmistakably political punishment. This should be evident to anyone not blinded by ideological tribalism — and I say this as someone who has frequently criticised Le Pen in the past.

Once this precedent is established, it can — and will — be used against any candidate who is perceived (emphasis on the latter) to be a threat to the establishment.

It’s therefore not surprising that even someone like Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the left-wing La France Insoumise — who himself was unjustly excluded from government after the last elections — has criticised the judge’s decision, saying: “The choice to dismiss an elected official should only belong to the people”.

Those on the left applauding this move are unwittingly paving the way for similar measures to be turned against them in the future.

This article explains all this pretty well:
https://t.co/eVxMPkCESq

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I'm seeing many terrible takes on Le Pen by people who obviously don't know the first thing about what happened, so here's a summary that's as neutral as I could make it.

Consider reading it first before arguing one way or another.

After a legal saga that dragged on since 2015, a French court finally delivered its verdict in what's known as the "European Parliament Assistants Case" against Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National colleagues.

They found Le Pen guilty of misappropriation of public funds and handed her what can only be described as a political death sentence: 4 years prison (2 years suspended, 2 years at home under electronic monitoring), a €100,000 fine, and most devastatingly, 5 years of ineligibility for public office with immediate execution.

That last part is absolutely crucial because it means she can't run for president in 2027, appeal or no appeal.

The whole case centers on the fact that between 2004 and 2016, FN members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were using their EU parliamentary assistant allowances to pay people who were actually working for the party rather than on EU business.

At the European parliament, each MEP gets around €23,392 monthly to hire assistants, and the FN/RN created a system to funnel that money into party operations, which is illegal.

Tellingly, many of these "assistants" were on both the European Parliament payroll AND the party's organizational chart, and some never even met the MEPs they supposedly worked for.

The court determined the amount diverted totaled €2.9 million.

The investigation began all the way back in 2015 when European Parliament president Martin Schulz referred the matter to the European Anti-Fraud Office after noticing that 20 of the 24 FN parliamentary assistants appeared on the party's organizational chart.

The French justice system opened their formal investigation in 2016, and the case involved 27 defendants - nine former FN/RN MEPs including Le Pen herself, twelve parliamentary assistants, four other FN/RN officials, and the party itself as a legal entity.

Le Pen wasn't the only one who got convicted. The Rassemblement National party itself got hit with a €2 million fine. Eight other former MEPs were all convicted, alongside twelve parliamentary assistants and three RN officials.

The prosecution's case was pretty straightforward: the party created a systematic scheme to divest EU funds for party benefit. They had mountains of evidence showing assistants working primarily or exclusively for the party while being paid by the European Parliament.

The operation wasn't just a one-off - it was a years-long scheme that was centrally managed by the party leadership.

On the defense side, they insist all assistants performed "real work" (which is true, just not the work they were paid for, which is the whole point), claim political persecution and argue there was no personal enrichment (which is correct).

They also compare the way they're treated to that of the MoDem party—the party of current Prime Minister François Bayrou—which faced similar charges. They argue their case demonstrates a double standard in French justice, since MoDem officials received much lighter sentences for similar offenses.

This is somewhat correct given that members of both parties were found guilty of essentially the same crime—using European Parliament funds to pay for party work.

However, the scale and nature of the operations were quite different. The RN operation involved €2.9 million compared to MoDem's €204,000. The RN maintained their system for 12 years across 46 contracts, while MoDem's operation lasted for a shorter period with 10 contracts. Perhaps most importantly, MoDem officials stopped the practice voluntarily without legal intervention, while the RN only ceased when the European Parliament started investigating.

Still, the stark difference in sentencing, particularly regarding immediate ineligibility, has become a big controversy, with many questioning whether the punishment truly fits the crime or reflects political considerations about keeping Le Pen out of the 2027 presidential race.

Because that's what the sentence means: Le Pen can't run for office during 5 years, which blocks her from the 2027 presidential election unless her appeal succeeds - and French appeals can take years.

Worth mentioning, according to French law, for the offense of misappropriation of public funds, ineligibility is actually mandatory. Judges only have discretion to make exceptions with a specially motivated decision.

However, whether to make that ineligibility immediately enforceable during appeals is a separate decision, and judges have complete discretion on this. This is the truly controversial part, the judges in Le Pen's case could have decided to not apply the ineligibility immediately and wait for the appeal process to conclude before enforcing it.

The timing of this verdict, coming after Le Pen's strong showing in recent elections and just two years before a presidential contest she was widely favored to win, inevitably raises questions about political motivation.

Yet we shouldn't ignore the substance either: a systematic scheme to divert public funds did occur. The French justice system has determined that such actions render someone unfit for public office, at least temporarily.

Whether voters would have reached the same conclusion if Le Pen had been allowed to run in 2027 is a question we'll probably never get an answer for—and therein lies perhaps the most profound controversy of all.

At heart this case is a question of who's sovereign in France: judges interpreting laws, or voters who may be willing to overlook certain transgressions.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

If you proclaim yourself the True and Sole Guardian of Democracy, but you can't win elections, everyone knows what democracy requires:

You just ban your most popular opponents from running, strike them from the ballot, and guarantee the establishment's "electoral" victory:

[Arpit Gupta @arpitrage]

The flip side is that if business class passengers depart standard airplanes for supersonic craft; the economics of normal aviation fall apart.

Without their cross subsidy, we then get Spirit Airlines and other budget carriers everywhere

[Paul Graham @paulg]

If you didn't speak out against *both* woke censorship and Trump's attempts to suppress criticism of Israel at universities, you're not a genuine free speech advocate. You're just a partisan hack who pretends to care about free speech when it suits you.

[Sohrab Ahmari @SohrabAhmari]

Do progressives bashing Trump II over the stock market and consumer prices understand that. . . .

Industrial policy (which they claim they want) means:

(a) emphasizing the real economy over the financial economy; and

(b) getting the country to consume less and produce more

?

[Jacob Mchangama @JMchangama]

Is it the position of the Trump administration that it could deport Canadian citizens in the US protesting Trump's punitive tariffs and desire to include Canada in the US? Ukrainians protesting the Trump administration's policy reversal on Ukraine? Could I as a Danish citizen be deported, if I vocally urged Danes to resist a US attempt to seize Greenland?

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

No @ishaantharoor, it's not a victory: it just further highlights that there are no rules in that "rules-based" order.

When these so-called "rules" always punish some - often fundamentally for simply daring to put their country on a different geopolitical path away from the West and in order to consolidate the power grab of a Western ally (in this case Marcos Jr) - but never to others, it only serves to delegitimize the entire system and proves its fundamental failure.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

I've seen relatively little coverage on this topic but geo-strategically speaking Starlink is one of the most important developments of the 21st century so far.

Basically what we're talking about is a private American firm - whose owner is now part of the U.S. government - that could single-handedly own the world's communication infrastructure, put traditional domestic telecommunications providers out of business and render terrestrial communication infrastructure obsolete.

The implications of this are staggering, and we've started to understand some of them in Ukraine: Musk is undoubtedly right when he says that Ukraine's "entire front line would collapse if [he] turned [Starlink] off", and as a result he knows he can afford to call the Polish foreign minister a "small man" and ask him to "be quiet" when he suggested Ukraine might seek other suppliers: to date, there aren't any!

Marco Rubio added that Poland should "say thank you because without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago, and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now"... Which again is probably true (at least the part about Ukraine losing the war) and highlights both how much strategic leverage this provides the U.S., as well as how easily they threaten to use that leverage.

This is without a doubt why China, which always understands strategic implications of new developments extremely early (which I would argue is one of the primary reasons for its success), started developing its own version of Starlink since early 2020 (Starlink itself was launched in May 2019). This is when China's National Development and Reform Commission included satellite Internet in the "new infrastructure" for the first time (https://t.co/cEWvl93I0u).

China's primary goal is undoubtedly to give its own population a Starlink option so that it can maintain sovereignty over its information environment. Without its own satellite constellation, China - as all nations - would face an impossible and possibly existential choice: either accept Starlink and lose sovereignty over information flow, or reject it and fall behind technologically. Plus, it arguably wouldn't even have the option to reject it given it can't exactly stop satellites from flying over its territory or block transmissions from orbit.

And since satellites by definition orbit around the earth, China with its own satellite constellation is now in a position where it can compete outside China with Starlink, which is what this news 👇 is about.

Honestly, the world can thank China on this one because this considerably reduces the U.S.'s strategic leverage it has with Starlink: it creates competition in a domain that would have otherwise been a monopoly with all the geopolitical implications that entails. Countries can now negotiate better terms with both providers, in particular terms that better maintain their sovereignty: the leverage shifts from being with the supplier to the customer.

Still though, as a European, this is yet another domain of extreme strategic consequence where we're pretty much nowhere to be seen. There is a planned European Starlink alternative called IRIS² but it's years behind with "initial services expected to start in the 2030s" (https://t.co/45JOKe1AVn)...

As just mentioned it's great to now have competition in this domain between the U.S. and China, but it's still infinitely better to have sovereign control over your own communication infrastructure. Which is why China ensured it did just that, and which is another very painful illustration of Europe's strategic myopia and inability to execute.

[Aaron Maté @aaronjmate]

Remember when the Hillary Clinton campaign, with the help of the FBI and CIA, framed Trump, his campaign associates, and many other political opponents as Russian assets?

The Trump White House is following a similar playbook in detaining and deporting a Palestinian permanent resident. He has no ties to Hamas, and has not been charged with having any ties to Hamas. He in fact hasn't been charged with anything.

Mahmoud Khalil has simply been targeted because he holds political views that the Trump White House and its pro-Israel donors object to. And amazingly, had he been critical solely of US foreign policy, not Israel, he wouldn't be facing deportation right now. Why does MAGA have a free speech exemption for Israel?

[Jacob Mchangama @JMchangama]

For an administration that claims to be "shocked" by Europe's overly censorial approach to free speech, this seems like a very European, and very un-American policy.