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Madrid – The Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence of the Government of Spain, María González Veracruz, believes that Europe must ensure the application of the Digital Services Act (DSA) “bravely,” following the warnings of the Trump administration, which has recently indicated that it will defend the interests of its big tech companies against the European Union’s regulatory “protectionism”.
Specifically, the chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, stated this past week, during the Mobile World Congress (MWC), that with the implementation of the DSA “there is a risk that excessive rules will be imposed” in Europe, something that, from his point of view, is a “concern” for the American big tech companies operating in the Old Continent.
All of this in a context where the European Commission considered that X (formerly Twitter) — owned by the magnate Elon Musk, close to Donald Trump, — violates the aforementioned regulations in “areas related to dark patterns, advertising transparency, and access to data for researchers”.
In an interview with Europa Press, González Veracruz has assured that for those who want social media to return “to the Middle Ages, to every man for himself, or anything for the money,” the Spanish Government will be “the resistance” so that Europe protects its citizens “against the purely economic interests”.
“What we are being proposed today is unacceptable in the 21st century, and Europe must be the barrier against this past approach being proposed to us,” stated the Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence.
Indeed, González Veracruz argued that the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has “sufficient credibility” to set that “resistance,” just as he did in the Davos Forum by asking countries, companies, and the European Commission to deepen algorithm transparency, anonymity, and the responsibility of company CEOs.
“European countries have to guarantee the application of the DSA bravely (…) Spain will have no doubt in applying it to the maximum nor in working within the European framework to improve those aspects that may need to be changed,” emphasized González Veracruz in her interview.
In this regard, Carr even hinted that the application of the DSA might border on censorship: “The censorship that is potentially stepping out of free dialogue is something that is incompatible with our free dialogue tradition — referring to the United States — and the commitments these tech companies have made to the diversity of opinions”.
In response, González Veracruz described it as “absolutely perverse and false” to talk about censorship when, from her point of view, what is being discussed are “basic rights”.
“That is why Spain advocates for a great global agreement on what should be the basis of basic coexistence in artificial technology, in the networks… we are talking about not allowing actions that are illegal. We cannot return to the Wild West. We cannot now return to the Middle Ages in the middle of the 21st century because of the interests of a few,” she elaborated.
In this vein, she emphasized that Europe must lead the humanistic and rights-based approach to new technologies that are coming into the daily life of citizens and expressed confidence that, “in not too distant a time,” people will look at what is being done in the European Union in this regard. (March 10)