Temu's €200M safety fine is a bit geopolitical

Now, that's not technically true because the DSA doesn't actually regulate what people can and cannot say online in the European Union, but it does tell big platforms what they must do to take down illegal content, and it so happens that things like hate speech are illegal across much of the EU.

Some countries also ban Holocaust denial, some countries don't, and so on.

And the basic gist of the DSA is if it's illegal content online, here's what you must do to take it down.

Here's the processes that you need to have in place.

The biggest DSA fine has just been announced, and its very nature should demonstrate that we're not talking about anti-free speech law, and we're not talking about an anti-American law like the Trump administration tends to say.

And that's because the recipient of the biggest ever DSA fine is Temu, the Chinese online retail company.

The fine is for two hundred million euros, which is not chump change, and it's basically for Temu's failure to conduct a proper risk analysis of its platform's operation in the EU under the DSA.

And the European Commission, announcing the fine yesterday, said Temu seriously underestimated how often EU consumers are likely to encounter illegal items.

Evidence from a mystery shopping exercise included in the Commission's investigation shows that a very high percentage of the selected chargers failed basic safety tests, while a high percentage of tested baby toys posed safety risks of medium to high severity as they contained chemicals exceeding legal safety limits or posed suffocation hazards due to detachable parts.

And Temu also didn't properly assess how the design of its service, including recommender systems and product promotion programs by affiliated influencers, could amplify dissemination risks of illegal products.

So basically, Temu's been selling a whole bunch of stuff that's illegal to sell in the European Union because of basic consumer protection and safety and stuff like that, and it is being cracked down on via tech rules.