Now: Director @A__W______O/ VUB. Then: EU Parliament + UN @mathver@bsky.social

Brussels
Joined May 2010
Find me on Bluesky: @mathver.bsky.social
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
👋 VPN guy
The EU is clearly coordinating with the UK to BAN X concurrently in the EU and UK. 👇
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
X is banned in Russia. Kirill Dmitriev has to use a VPN to access X. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_…
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
The IISS has produced the most comprehensive open-source database currently available on Russian sabotage operations across Europe and its periphery. It captures the full spectrum of activity with physical effects: from sabotage on undersea cables to GPS blocking across multiple domains and geographies. Find out more from Charlie Edwards and Nate Seidenstein: ➡️ go.iiss.org/3HlncHT
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
X didn’t liberate speech. It monetized disinformation.
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"Digital gulag" 😂 😂 😂 He really called EU that while being from a country where almost all Western social media platforms are banned, including the one he posts on 😁
The sanctioned architect of the EU’s censorship law is a close ally and appointee of Macron. Facing ultralow approval ratings, Macron is trying to silence online critics by turning the entire EU into a digital gulag — through censorship (DSA) and mass surveillance (Chat Control).
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This is yet another chilling example of how far the Trump administration will go in service of his billionaire enablers. Hate speech and harm to kids online have exploded, and now the administration is targeting those working to combat it. Their greed knows no bounds.
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
Elon Musk on the Digital Services Act (2022): "I think it's exactly aligned with my thinking. I very much agree with (...) I really think, I agree with everything you (@ThierryBreton) said, really. We are very much of the same mind"
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
There is a something deeply hilarious when a senior official from Russia — where X, Instagram and most other American platforms are banned, and where even googling for information about items undesirable to the regime is a criminal offense — postures as a defender of free speech.
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
The US criticises Europe for lack of free speech - the same US where this week the most famous news programme on CBS, now owned by a Trump supporter, pulls a report critical about Trump's key policy
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
🚨BREAKING: EU tyrant Thierry Breton has just been BANNED from the United States after censoring free speech across Europe and threatening Elon Musk & X Donald Trump isn't playing anymore.
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Unglaublich. Die USA verhängen Sanktionen gegen Deutsche, die sich gegen Desinformation einsetzen. Damit landet die Trump-Regierung auf russischem Niveau, wo ebenfalls deutsche Medien als extremistische Organisationen sanktioniert und verboten werden.
Replying to @UnderSecPD
WE'VE SANCTIONED: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the leader and founder of HateAid, a German organization founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups. HateAid is an official “trusted flagger” (a censor) under the EU’s anti-speech Digital Services Act (DSA) and routinely demands access to propriety social media platform data to help it censor more. Hodenberg cited threat of “disinformation” from “right-wing extremists” online in upcoming U.S. and EU elections when circulating a petition for the DSA to become more strongly enforced to allow data access for “researchers".
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Mathias Vermeulen retweeted
Just to be clear -- Marco Rubio is banning the leaders of an organization called the Center for Countering Digital Hate for the "crime" of publishing a top-12 list of anti-vaxxers online. The Center also flags content that is antisemitic or harmful to children.
For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship. Today, @StateDept will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.
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This is not the end of the road. X can still change some of these things to end the infringements. If it doesn't, periodic penalty payments are up.
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Last but not least, X can go and challenge any EC decision at the Court of Justice. It probably will. And it probably will lose.
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