The notice that the European Union gave to Elon Musk about the management they were doing on the social network Twitter, now known as have had a lot of effect. Due, The EU has announced the opening of a formal investigation into the social network for spreading illegal content and disinformation. Including hate speech and violent content.
This is the first investigation opened after the entry into force of the Digital Services Law in the European Union, which means that X, being considered a «very large online platform«, you need to mitigate the risks of misinformation, and act when you are informed that you are spreading illegal content.
Since the Hamas attacks, messages identified as false by entities dedicated to fact-checking, and even by individuals, have circulated on X. Also others with videos of other events, and even generated with video games. This comes after most of its content moderation staff, and even its human rights monitoring team, were laid off during last year’s cuts at X.
Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner, in view of what was happening on this occasion in terms of the spread of misinformation on X, wrote a few hours ago a letter to Elon Musk, which he made public on networks, warning the owner of the network that spread illegal content, as well as disinformation, in the EU. He also reminded Musk of his obligation to moderate content on the network.
Thus, when the company has notices that it is spreading illegal content in the European Union, it has to be «precise, diligent and objective» and delete said content. The EU had receivedfrom qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite notices from relevant authorities«.
The EU asked Musk to contact law enforcement authorities and Europol, in addition to giving him a 24-hour limit to respond to requests for management and removal of potentially illegal content about the situation in the area. One of the requests, in fact, was a formal one related to compliance with the Digital Services Law.
Breton warned in the letter that if they did not comply with the requests and eliminated the content, the EU could open an investigation and sanction X. And it did so, because it considered that Musk’s response, published in of the Company CEO, Linda Yaccarinohave not been satisfactory.
Yaccarino assured that a leadership group had been created to assess X’s response, and that they had removed tens of thousands of pieces of content, as well as thousands of publications and hundreds of accounts related to terrorist groups, violence or extremism. He also noted that the company was responding to requests to comply with the law, but had not received any requests from Interpol until then.
Meanwhile, in his security account, of the scope of the activity management task related to the situation.
All this has not freed X from an investigation in the EU, and now those responsible have until October 18 to deliver information to their authorities about «the activation and operation of the X crisis response protocol«, and until October 31 to respond to other requests related to it.
If the EU decides to take further action following the investigation, X may receive various penalties. If those in charge of it establish that you violated the Digital Services Law, they can impose a fine of up to 6% of your annual global income.
But before that, the EU will examine the social network’s policies related to illegal content warnings, complaint management and risk assessment. Also the measures they take to mitigate identified risks, such as misinformation. If
x It is not the only social network that has received a notice from the EU about misinformation related to what is happening in the area. Meta and TikTok have also received themalthough X is the first network against which the EU has opened an investigation for not reacting satisfactorily to its requests.
