23. January 2025

Three urgent measures against Musk, Zuckerberg and Trump

Dear friends!

This Tuesday, the European Parliament discussed for nearly three hours the “Need to enforce the Digital Services Act to protect democracy on social media platforms including against foreign interference and biased algorithms.” I was able to directly address the responsible EU Commission Vice President Virkkunen as first speaker for our Greens/EFA group.

I set out three urgent measures that European Commission must now take to safeguard our democracies against Trump and his cabal of Tech-Oligarchs. 

You can watch my speech here & read it below.

Please share it also on my social media accounts so that more people understand that Europe has the power to challenge the Tech-Oligarchs!

With European Greetings,

Your Alexandra Geese

My speech in the European Parliament on 21 January 2025

Dear President. Dear Executive Vice President Vikunin Colleagues, the tech oligarchs are assaulting our democracy. Elon Musk is interfering with elections in the US and in Europe, enhancing the visibility of his own account and of far right accounts, flooding everybody’s timelines with the content of his choice.

And that’s a choice of a guy who yesterday at the inauguration chose to make a Nazi salute. Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithm pushes hateful content and foreign propaganda and disinformation. And as the whistleblower Francis Haugen told us, that is not what people like, what people choose, it’s what they engage with because it makes them angry.

Executive vice president, 10 days ago you still told German media there was no proof for Elon Musk interfering with the algorithms. That is true. But that’s the great thing about Europe, about the DSA and your job. You are the one who can prove it and you’re the only one in the world who has a legal basis to build a sound court proof case.

After weeks of silence vis a vis the attacks by Musk, Zuckerberg and Trump, now you need to go strong and fast. And I have three measures that I would propose.

First, the European Commission must now take urgent investigations in all relevant very large online platforms to identify and stop the mechanisms that lead to disinformation spreading so much faster than information.

Second, we need to protect elections right now. And there’s a very easy solution to stop this manipulation. Stop the recommender systems. Let people choose the content they want without Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg imposing the content of their choice on people.

And three, we need to send a very clear signal that the EU supports better social media that cannot be controlled by tech oligarchs. For example, Mastodon or the initiative Free our feeds and many others out there. Colleagues, we have seen the tech oligarchs yesterday standing behind President Trump.

They will not stand down with their enormous power, their enormous wealth, control over information and networks, use of artificial intelligence, the willingness to ignore rules. They will never respect us if we don’t stand up to them.

You have the choice. Kneel in front of unelected tech oligarchs or use the DSA to fight for the citizens who actually elected us.

I have made my choice.

 

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