Evidence since late 2023 shows that the large tech and social media firms largely chose to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) rather than exit or mount existential resistance, matching the core of Sacks’s prediction.

• VLOPs implementing DSA obligations rather than leaving the EU. The European Commission designated very large online platforms and search engines (VLOPs/VLOSEs) such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, etc., and required them to file regular transparency reports and adopt extensive content‑moderation and risk‑management systems. These companies have continued to operate in the EU and have been submitting the mandated reports rather than withdrawing from the market.(digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu)
• TikTok’s behavior is typical: rapid compliance infrastructure and faster responses to government orders. TikTok is now on its fifth DSA transparency report, describing how it removed tens of millions of policy‑violating posts and highlighting that it cut median response time to government orders from six hours to three, even as such orders increased. That is precisely the kind of fast, systematic takedown and transparency behavior the DSA demands.(newsroom.tiktok.com)
• Platforms are inside the DSA enforcement regime, not defying it. The Commission has opened formal proceedings and issued preliminary findings that X, Meta, TikTok, AliExpress, and others breached various DSA obligations (e.g., data access for researchers, dark patterns, inadequate reporting tools). But these are enforcement disputes inside a framework the companies have accepted—they remain in the EU, are subject to investigations and fines, and continue adjusting their systems instead of simply refusing the rules or pulling out.(digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu)
• X as the most defiant case still commits to DSA compliance. Even X (Twitter), which withdrew from the voluntary disinformation code and has been the most openly hostile to EU content‑moderation politics, has not exited the EU. It created a DSA portal for illegal‑content reports and has stated it “remains committed to complying with the Digital Services Act,” while fighting specific findings via the regulatory process.(cybersecforum.eu)
• Some narrow legal pushback, but no broad refusal. Companies like Zalando and Amazon have taken the Commission to court to contest their designation as “very large online platforms” and related supervisory fees, yet the EU General Court has upheld these designations and the firms remain subject to the stricter DSA regime. These targeted legal challenges show normal regulatory friction, not a strategy of rejecting or fleeing the DSA framework.(euronews.com)
• Voluntary codes vs. binding law. Around the DSA‑linked disinformation code of practice, most major players (Google, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft, etc.) signed on or treated it as a benchmark for compliance; X is a notable hold‑out. Even where some firms later scaled back on voluntary code commitments, they still must—and do—show equivalent measures under the binding DSA rules.(disa.org)

Taken together, major platforms have overwhelmingly opted to stay in the EU and build substantial compliance machinery that implements the EU’s content and data‑access demands, including rapid takedown and transparency workflows. While they do litigate details and occasionally resist on the margins (especially X), the broad pattern is accommodation rather than principled refusal or exit. That makes Sacks’s main empirical claim—that tech companies would “fold” to EU regulators instead of standing up to or leaving them—substantively right, even if his language about doing “whatever” commissioners want overstates the lack of pushback at the edges.