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.
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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
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.
In short, he's an oligarch. Over here we don't react kindly to that level of political corruption.
Treat everyone equally before the law.
This is the retaliation. We made the first moves. The White House’s contempt for Europe has been laid bare—trying not to anger Trump, at this point, would be superfluous.
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.
What makes you believe that? The current US administration doesn't care about laws in their own country, why would they care about laws in other countries?
I’m European and I couldn’t care less about blue checkmarks and I don’t want social networks censoring people. After all, every time the commission has publicly clashed with Musk it has been because the commission wanted more censorship and Musk doesn’t care. On what side should I be?
So basicaly lets just use some stupid law that lets us randomly take into account all of the other property of a businessowner.
And then EU people wonder why no one wants to build companies in an environment like that...
> ” 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.”
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.
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.)
It seems the EU have decided the most effective response to an oligarchy declaring trade war is to target the leading oligarchs with government influence. Expect more actions which enrage Trump and Musk and an escalation from both sides. This won’t end well for either side IMO.
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).
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.
I mean the attitude shown in Signalgate. Europe is seen as a competitor to American power. (Also, like, threatening to invade an EU member’s territory.)
- 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.
So we do not need more conspiracy theories about meddling, we need to address and deal with real things already toxic for community.
Yes as you guessed nothing in here has any relation to ExTwitter nor Youtube nor fakebook. /s
And yes, Trump is ruining America without a doubt.
The current incentive structure rewards growth more than a stable profitable state, which I think is a mistake.
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.
In any case, Musk is the last person to be able to complain about lawlessness.
P.S: Don't believe the Big Scary Mainstream Media, Elon is very happy to censor people that he disagrees with.
My point is turning up the temperature of his comments is to Brussels’ benefit.
What leverage? Musk is a useful, rich idiot who is serving as a heat shield and distraction while the GOP blows out our deficit.
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.
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?"
He’s Molotov-Ribentropping Europe with his overtures to Moscow and demands for mineral rights.
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.
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.
Until three months ago we were also strong allies. But there has been nothing but contempt from the current administration towards the EU and Europe.
That said, the EU usually prepares these cases very meticulously. As the article says, they already started in 2023 and issued a preliminary ruling last year. Also, it seems like the issue can still be settled without a fine:
The European Union and X could still reach a settlement if the company agrees to changes that satisfy regulators’ concerns, the officials said.
That said, it's likely that there have been many deliberations about this and other fines (e.g. Apple) and there were rumors that the EU was going to play softer to appease Trump. But I guess Vance's speech at the NATO conference, the disdain for Europe in the leaked Signal chats (which was completely misplaced because Houthis are attacking vessels as a revenge for Israel's attack on Palestine), and then the high tariffs on EU exports (where Trump only takes into account goods and not services) made the EU decide to show teeth instead.
IMO in the end it's the best thing to do, worst thing is to appear weak with these bullies (apparently Trump called Jean-Claude Juncker 'a brutal killer').
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.
Microsoft keeps deleting ways to install Windows without signing up for a Microsoft account.
Twice in my life I've created a Microsoft account to do something that required a Microsoft account, and then a few days later they demanded my phone number. Because they know perfectly well that if you demand a phone number during signup, it deters more people from signing up, but if you demand it after they've already started using their account, they're less likely to be willing to throw away the account. I was, though.
For some reason they haven't yet done that with my Minecraft-migrated account. Or did they? Maybe I entered my phone number there and forgot I did so.
There is no silver bullet solution since we're not in an utopia. On the one hand all private media is controlled by biased oligarchs each with their own interests. On the other hand, governments in power want to control the narrative towards their own interests hence why in many EU countries we have state media. This is how it's always been and how it's always gonna be, a constant tug of war between interest groups, but I don't want any one side to have complete control of the media as that would be even worse.
>The free marketplace of ideas has obviously not worked.
Why do you think it hasn't worked? To me it seems like it's working, that's why those in power fear it and want to control it all for themselves.
My parents lived under communism. The speech control the EU is pushing resembles very well what communism had but with a better PR spin on it. Communism got defeated in part by total freedom of speech winning in the free market place of ideas versus government controlled speech. The Arab Spring revolutions could not have happened without the free media circulating on the internet. So to see the EU trying to lock down on free speech the same way totalitarian regime did, is incredibly suspicious to me like their afraid of their own people revolting against them.
I don't want unelected elites in Brussels deciding for me what content and opinions I should be allowed to view. If you want to win in the free marketplace of ideas, then come up with arguments for the people on why you consider each piece of information to be misinformation and debate it in public, not just ban it outright.
If they complain, it's a very serious crime, he's basically stealing, but if they are don't, than it's not.
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?
> 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.
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.
If you're unhappy with the current situation then do something positive by working to improve critical thinking education in your own country's schools.
Somewhat. Right now Twitter and IG are the least censored major social media.
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.
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.
The way to go about it so to start mandating that all cars have rain sensors, or dashboard instruments or HUD, or radar if they do TACC or parking sensors - things that most other cars have, but would be a pain for Tesla to add back in for just one region
And in any case, the fine does not seem to be about the blue checkmarks at all.
Just for context, which I think is important here: The foreign minister said Poland is paying for Starlink for Ukraine ($50m/year) and that they will be forced to look at other suppliers if they prove to be unreliable.
Elon responded back claiming that $50m is a small fraction of the cost, there's no substitute and said "Be quiet, little man".
> the topics include freedom of speech and immigration
Most of EU citizens are pro freedom of speech and anti immigration btw.
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.
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.
In that case, what about the CSAM problem on the Meta-owned platforms? How many billions should that be?
Worth nothing that russian gas is a lot cheaper than any alternative. Slovakia is not a rich country. It could be that people just want to pay less for their energy.
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.
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?
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.
Even under previous Twitter management, there were a lot of verified accounts who weren't celebrities by any reasonable definition. So only a moron would have ever believed that "blue checkmark = celebrity". We can't protect morons from themselves and it's pointless to even try.
Social media with private intelligence is the cause.
Social media is a private and state intelligence goldmine. Those with resources study what is said and craft messages to influence people's actions in real life. They then pay social media to promote these messages and then use all the data collected via rampant surveillance capitalism in order get feedback. That makes campaign successes measurable and therefore tunable. Penalties alone won't be enough to stop right wing or oligarchic movements in Europe or to protect western liberalism. A fine to an oligarch is only a declaration of war, not a meaningful check on power.
China set up the GFW because they realized that they could not subject illiterate subsistence farmer who have never left their home town to foreign interference, so they created a digital border. Yes, it also serves to put down dissent and that is bad, but it also keeps china more stable than it would be otherwise. Even Americans came around and voted to put the first brick in America's own great firewall by voting to ban TikTok. If the founders didn't bend to the current administration, then it would be banned right now for exactly the risk China saw when they implemented their own digital border.
It is not enough to fine when you have no border. Peter Thiel and his Palantir will actively work against European governments with the aid of X and Facebook by offering aid to those who can afford it with money or loyalty, which gives material power to those with selfish goals, who can use them to craft governments more amenable to their goals: Weak, divided, angry, gridlocked, and most importantly de-regulated.
Europe needs a digital border.
US senators are threatening to withdraw the US from NATO if the EU pushes through with this obvious lawfare.
https://x.com/ianjaeger29/status/1908113116774244838?s=46
Nicely done, Ursula. You’ll get the war you crave so badly.
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.
This is not about the blue check marks at all. It's about X not censoring information to the EU's tastes, and them finding something... anything, to punish Elon for it.
We know that Twitter used to comply with far fewer government censorship requests in countries like Turkey and India before Musk took over, so actual data would be great.
Did you reply to the correct post? My post was about what trustworthy information was removed, not about my assessment of worth or interpretation of a law in a nation where I’m not a citizen or a lawyer…
I am talking in regards to censorship by the platform, not from the government/legally required.
It is a personal observation, but one I think it's clearly observeable by anyone that looks at them. I don't need a study to tell me that Tokyo is cleaner than SF, or that 4chan has less censorship than reddit.
The European Union thinks that it is an actual problem though, one that governments or media companies need to fix.
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.
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...
Yes, this is clearly true. It also is clearly true that many if not most of EU political parties see freedom of speech as an obstacle and for some unclear reason are reticent to act on their (potential) voter's mandate to radically limit immigration, especially 'culturally incompatible' immigration. They still seem to consider being 'called racist' a threat even though the term 'racist' has lost most of its meaning - when everyone and his dog is a racist it is hardly surprising to be called one.
The EU has a long way to go before it can be considered a paragon of democracy. The commission is not democratically elected, the parliament is but has only limited power. To me - living in Sweden, being a Dutch native - the EU looks like the result of a metastasised bureaucratic infection of the former EEC (the European Economic Community) and I'd much prefer for the moloch of Brussels to be brought to heel and reduced to its former size and glory. That means a much smaller size and a larger glory since a group of countries which voluntarily cooperate economically while retaining their sovereignty is a better model than the current one which mostly seems to be designed to provide hooks for lobbyists and opportunities for grift while providing endless cushy 'jobs' for those who are willing to swallow their integrity.
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.
If the US withdraws from NATO for this, Article 5 was never gonna be respected.
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.
The EU, rather famously, managed with Microsoft. It's mostly the US that's beholden to large corporations over people, rather than it being an intractible problem.
> Meta hardly has anything approaching a monopoly for either advertisers or consumers
Meta does not command the lions share of the time spent on social media, but claiming >20% of revenue is oligopoly territory [0,1]
> Consumers frequently post pictures on X, LinkedIn, Google Photos, Strava, Snapchat
Do you really belive LinkedIn and Google Photos compete with SnapChat and Facebook for "Sharing photos with friends on social media"? If so, you might as well throw Flikr and Imgur on your list, though I wouldn't count them in the same market either.
[0] https://www.emarketer.com/content/meta-s-ad-revenue-share-va...
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/242549/digital-ad-market...
Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid. Government regulation can never change that reality.
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.
"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.
Now would celebrities, influencer or company marketing accounts always be trustworthy sources? For more cynical almost never...
Or are you asking why I made my last comment? I thought it was more polite than just not replying.
That is a symptom, not a cause. That means education system is bad and has failed people, OR, that people are so desperate with their living standards that they're not disinformed but they just want to take revenge on the establishment that has failed them by voting extremes.
Either way, those are symptoms, not the cause so I don't believe government enforced censorship is the solution because that's exactly what totalitarian regimes did when people were unhappy. The solution is for the establishment to accept they have failed the people and start to do good for the people or step down.
This means the democratic system IS working as intended, as if you were to censor speech and take away peoples' only legal way of protesting (voting), then their next alternatives is violence and uprising.
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.
What if the education system can't fix this? Not just the current one - any education system.
> that people are so desperate with their living standards
What if people's propensity to believe utter bullshit is independent of their financial situation?
> Either way, those are symptoms, not the cause
What if the tendency to believe bullshit is the cause? You have failed to prove it isn't, so your proposed solutions probably won't work and indeed may make matters much worse.
> I don't believe [X] is the solution because that's exactly what totalitarian regimes did
Hitler also ate sugar. Ban sugar!
> The solution is for the establishment to accept they have failed the people and start to do good for the people or step down.
This contradicts your stated position, because preventing disinformation is good for the people, but you don't think the establishment should do it.
> This means the democratic system IS working as intended, as if you were to censor speech and take away peoples' only legal way of protesting (voting)
Very obvious non-sequitur. What do penalties against the app formerly known as Twitter have to do with taking away voting rights?
If your nation's education is so bad that 51% of the population buys into disinformation with no way of convincing them otherwise, then you'll have to accept you're doomed as a country and deserve that fate. Might as well give up on democracy and anoint an emperor or king to rule over you, because there's no point in cosplaying as a democracy if you're not planning to respect the will of the majority at the elections.
>Not just the current one - any education system.
Switzerland and nordic countries like Denmark seem to be quite well educated, highly transparent, low corruption and a decent democracy. So it is possible.
>What if people's propensity to believe utter bullshit is independent of their financial situation?
People's political biases are ALWAYS tied to their wealth, education and social class. Just compare a map with wealth/income distribution with a map with blue/red voters.
>What if the tendency to believe bullshit is the cause?
Look in the mirror.
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?
Is this your most honest reaction to his act? Have in mind that he did it twice to be sure everyone got it.
Why? What did I miss?
>your comparisons between EU clampdown on disinformation and hate speech (however effective or justified it is) to communism propaganda and to persecutions against its opponents - it is pretty offensive
That's how boiling the frog works. Where do you think you'll end up if you give the government authority to decide what information is right or wrong for you to have access to?
What happens when Ursula v.d Leyen decides that her scandal involving the deleted email is "disinformation" and has a friendly judge call for it to be scrubbed from media and search engines?
You can't and should never blindly trust governments with them having your well being at heart. The main goal of a government is to stay in power, by any mean necessary in order to help those who finance their careers and campaigns.
If you can't see the slope between this speech police path and becoming an USSR-Light minus the gulags and executions, then maybe you're the offensive one.
Or, you know, you try to limit the spreading of disinfo, simply to protect the weak. We could for example have a talk about how the people most prone to fall for disinfo are the old and farthest removed from the reach of the education system.
> if you're not planning to respect the will of the majority
You are the one who is not respecting the will of the majority. The government is formed by majority coalition coming from the elections, and the government is doing this. The will of the majority is respected by fighting the disinformation.
> Switzerland and nordic countries seem to be quite well educated and a decent democracy. So it is possible.
Nordic countries are part of the EU and on board with these policies, so no idea what are you on about here.
> People's political biases are always tied to their wealth and social class. Just compare a map with wealth/income distribution with a map with blue/red voter.
It would be nice if you tried to engage with what I wrote and not something completely different.
Ah yes.
But hey. Are you really curious or just cosplaying?
They could have chosen to only show the lock for EV certificates, and show something else, or no icon, for DV certificates, but instead they made a choice that was misleading. Google probably should have been fined for that, but not very much, because it wasn't foreseen. I think Mozilla was still a non-profit at the time.
Any extreme powers you give the government to "keep you safe", they will eventually be abused, first against foreigners, political dissidents and whistleblowers, then against you.
History doesn't necessarily repat itself, but it definitely rhymes.
False premise, most people are not on Twitter. Outside of Japan and the US, comparatively few people use Twitter.
Yet, all the politicians (both government and non-government), media personalities, and many state run institutions actively run Twitter accounts. So it is one of the primary ways to understand what they are saying.
russian gas is cheaper is russian propagandist lie. or it is true but in sense that there are bribes prized in.
slovakia pays market price but percentage of that price is diverted to bank accounts in russia and turkey (or atleast was ,there is chatter that they moved some money to east asia because of sanctions) as a payment for slovak gov signing deal with russia until i think 2030 or 2035 or something like that. for example similar contract with ukraine was signed only for 10 years (i have no info about bribes in UA). and it ended last december...
russia is paying hungary and slovak governments to transport fossils, so governments do not have reason to do reverse adria flow, bring fossils from other pipelines etc etc.
( irony is that someone hacked czech premier Fialas ExTwitter account instead of Filip Turek nazi .... account )
as i understood it, LCOE for battery + renewables is on par with nuclear for years, and similar price of gas peaking... + EU is doing all sorts of programs to lower energy needs of buildings...
"funny" thing is that future chinese battery manufacturing capacity IN EUROPE will displace russian gas in long term...
Since giving up on democracy in this situation is a good thing, according to you, will you finally stop complaining about it?
That's not true. It is cheaper. Logically it makes absolute sense, as it is cheaper to transport through a pipeline than tankers and there is no other pipeline in Europe that can cover what russia used to provide. That's why countries that import Russian gas have significantly cheaper household natural gas prices [1].
I'm not going to get into the bribe tangent. As long as russian gas is cheaper, that will be the biggest reason to buy it IMO.
Switching energy source takes years and huge investment. The big problem is that a lot of households rely on natural natural gas for heating, and a lot of them can't afford to switch.
1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
