Well.....if his plan goes forward, and I'm guessing right now.....a fair number of German political figures are huddled around and discussing the 'mess' approaching....Elon is probably going to be confronted.
The suggestion of this meeting? The Germans will tell Elon that his control of Twitter will lead to right-wing extremism, and they intend to punish him if he doesn't conform to the standard Twitter theme of the past.
Elon will grin, and then ask if they'd like all of the past correspondence between German authorities and the old Twitter management to be released to the general public. The 'room' will become quiet, and then some people will exit the discussion.
The threat of fines? That will come, but Elon will suggest that he'll require each member to pay in some fashion (maybe a monthly fee, to participate)....so he'll turn to the German authorities and ask how they intend to pay for their 'powers'? You know.....a service fee to have control over something....like free speech.
He'll call it 'censorship powers' or 'prohibitive speech buttons'.
He'll then give them a figure of 1-billion-odd Euro a year....to be their fee for service.
The Germans will turn back to him and respond that they don't pay for free-speech-powers.....to which Elon will respond....well, now you do.
So the Germans will go....probably six months later to a demonstration of turning off Twitter access to the German public. Then, overnight....everyone will get a VPN, and demonstrate that German 'power' is remarkably 'light' and not worth much discussion.
The worry about misinformation from the Germans? Maybe it's legit....but where does this control start and stop? If you started to actively watch and measure misinformation on a daily basis.....a typical German probably gets twenty 'bits' of misinformation (from ultra-right to ultra-left, and from the government itself) per day. I'd even be skeptical of public TV news, the German soccer league, and the Bahn folks.
Elon might even add a button where people can note their skeptical view of the news from some source (1-Very Skeptical, 2-Somewhat Skeptical, 3- Neutral, 4-Somewhat Trusting, and 5-Very Trusting). The ARD and ZDF folks might be shocked how they'd rate on a hour-by-hour basis.
Just prepare yourself....this Elon-misinformation discussion is going to be thrust into the mainstream of German discussions within the next month.
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