The European Commission Should Not Be on X in the First Place ⇥ politico.eu

Bjarke Smith-Meyer, Politico:

The European Commission has lost access to its control panel for buying and tracking ads on Elon Musk’s X — after fining the social media platform €120 million for violating EU transparency rules.

“Your ad account has been terminated,” X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, wrote on the platform early Sunday.

Bier accused the EU executive of trying to amplify its own social media post about the fine on X by trying “to take advantage of an exploit in our Ad Composer — to post a link that deceives users into thinking it’s a video and to artificially increase its reach.”

The first thing to know about Bier’s explanation is that it is not true. The E.U. did, in fact, post a video in its tweet. You can verify that for yourself by viewing the tweet on the web, and it is visible on X mirror websites. However, tapping on the video thumbnail from the iOS app does not begin playback; instead, it takes you to the news release. The Commission provided a statement to TechCrunch saying it has not paid for advertising since October 2023 — good! — and that it used the platform’s own tools for this post.

Also, why would this “artificially increase its reach”? I thought “links are not deboosted”, and that it was “[b]est to post a text/image/video summary of what’s at the link for people to view and then decide if they want to click the link”. It is so hard to keep track of the policies of a platform run by liars and frauds.

Which, by the way, is why the European Commission should not be doing anything on X in the first place. Bier has stumbled into doing them a favour. The world’s richest man does not need anyone else’s advertising money for his incendiary website, and the Commission should be rewarding it with attention. Let it rot.

Update: I updated the title and text of this post after reading the statement made to TechCrunch noting the E.C. has not paid for advertising on X in two years.