Are you aware that china is not in EU?

"just following the rules" is the same argument made to justify censorship in China as it is in the EU.

Yes? It’s not exactly a surprise that you are expected to follow the laws where you do business. This doesn’t mean those laws are inherently good or bad, that’s a judgement which requires analysis to make and businesses quite reasonably might choose not to stay in a market based on that decision as Google did with China.

The EU rules that X was asked to comply to were not about censorship. There are plenty of articles released at that time that explain why.

It is a story I heard way too often. Big Tech creates something which is so convenient, you don't want to miss it. Then Big Tech breaks that something, makes it more expensive or uses any other means of rent-seeking just pissing of its customers. We as consumers are by far the biggest lobbying-group, but nobody really gives an f. I'm trying my way with /e/OS but thats not for everybody. It also shows me how deeply dependencies on google services are woven into the whole ecosystem - even on open source apps.