In what could be a major win for social platforms, the White House has signaled that it’s planning to take a stronger stand against the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which has cost Meta, in particular, billions in fines in recent years, and which the Trump Administration says seeks to penalize U.S. businesses.
As reported by Reuters:
“President Donald Trump's administration is considering imposing sanctions on European Union or member state officials responsible for implementing the bloc's landmark Digital Services Act, two sources familiar with the matter said, over U.S. complaints that the law censors Americans and imposes costs on U.S. tech companies.”
Reuters reports that Senior State Department officials haven’t yet decided on whether to go ahead with the measures, which would likely come in the form of visa restrictions. But it’s another escalation in the White House’s stated opposition to the DSA, which could see Zuck and Co. rewarded for their allegiance to the president.
Many have criticized Zuckerberg for bending the knee to Trump, after past opposition to Trump’s policies. Since the election last year, Meta has made a range of changes that seem to align with the Trump Administration’s preferences, including switching to a Community Notes model, and appointing Republicans into key roles.
But the benefits of such could end up being worth the PR pain, as Meta stands to avoid billions in fines each year as a result of pushing back against the DSA.
“The Trump administration has instructed U.S. diplomats in Europe to launch a lobbying campaign to build opposition to the Digital Services Act in an effort to have it amended or repealed.”
The main focus for the Trump team is seemingly censorship, and the use of the DSA to force American social media providers to comply with EU regulations around speech. But the broader pushback could see all social platforms derive significant benefit, both in terms of reduced oversight, and lessened financial penalties.
U.S. officials have been voicing their opposition to the DSA for some time, with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) publicly criticizing the Act back in March, noting that it’s “incompatible with America’s free speech tradition.” Trump himself has also threatened European imports with tariffs, in penalty for tech regulations that harm U.S. companies.
And again, the financial penalties for DSA violations are significant.
Over the past few years, Meta has been fined over a billion U.S. dollars every year by EU authorities, for issues related to data breaches, the linking of Facebook Marketplace to Facebook, alleged tax fraud, and more.
And some of these penalties do seem like a tax on Meta’s success, as opposed to addressing actual market violations.
For example, several nations have sought to tax Meta for the use of local publisher content in its apps. That’s despite Meta stepping back from news content entirely, and repeatedly noting (correctly) that publishers gain far more from its apps than it gains from their material.
Penalties like this seem designed to claw back local money from Meta, which benefits from its dominant market position. But that’s more a reflection of Meta’s success as a business, and the changing of the global advertising market, not an action that should be penalized by such measures.
So there is logic to opposing such fines, in some cases at least, while it also gives the Trump team a means to pushback against foreign government’s on ideological grounds.
The Trump team hasn’t committed to a way forward as yet. But it does seem like Zuckerberg will be rewarded for working with Trump and Co.
