The tech mogul’s platform is the first to get hit with charges under new EU social media law.
The European Union is calling Elon Musk to order over how he turned social media site X into a haven for disinformation and illegal content.
The EU Commission on Friday formally charged X for failing to respect EU social media law. The platform could face a sweeping multi-million euro fine in a pioneering case under the bloc’s new Digital Services Act (DSA), a law to clamp down on toxic and illegal online content and algorithms.
Musk’s X has been in Brussels’ crosshairs ever since the billionaire took over the company, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022. X has been accused of letting disinformation and illegal hate speech run wild, roll out misleading authentication features and blocking external researchers from tools to scrutinize how malicious content on the platforms spreads.
The European Commission oversees X and two dozens of the world’s largest online platforms including Facebook, YouTube and others. The EU executive’s probe into Musk’s firm opened in December 2023 and was the first formal investigation. Friday’s charges are the first-ever under the DSA.
Infringements of the DSA could lead to fines of up to 6 percent of a X’s global revenue.
Youre mixing up the accusation that twitter isnt stopping misinformation with an accusation that twitter itself is speaking misinformation. We’re talking about them being held responsible for what other people say.
If you make a deal with someone to come on your front porch every day yelling hate speech into your loudspeaker I think you’ll find it’s pretty easy to be held accountable for what other people say.
Second, if you’ll remember, Twitter makes money from showing adds on this speech. It’s not like they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. Profiting from hate speech isn’t going to be looked at kindly.
A deal with someone?
What’s confusing you?
That twitters made a deal with people to post misinformation
That’s not what I said. In neither situation does the deal enforce that the person HAS to use the loudspeaker for hate speech. I wish I could blame your reading comprehension but it’s painfully obvious you’re arguing in bad faith since this is the pedantic detail you’re stuck on instead of the rest of my argument.
Every Twitter user makes a deal with Twitter to get an account. This deal includes what’s acceptable behaviour. If Twitter’s policy allows hate speech then it’s Twitter’s fault their platform is spreading hate speech. If Twitter’s policy prohibits hate speech then it’s still their fault because they’re not enforcing their policy. This is something Twitter had no problem with before their degenerate new owner fired the enforcement team.
Now let’s see what pedantic detail you get stuck on this time instead of facing the fact Twitter is liable for enabling hate speech to spread faster than ever before!
All social media has had this problem for as long as its existed.
Musk is terrible, but he didnt buy twitter until after trumps presidency. After covid. Dont underestimate how much misinformation has occurred in the past.
“it was bad before so no point fighting now”
That’s what you sound like. Not to mention it’s undeniable that Twitter has more hate speech after apartheid emerald mine oligarch Musk bought it with Saudi money.
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-analysis-speech-significantly-twitter.html
Oh my god he brought out the thats what you sound like
Thats a really short timeframe to draw conclusions from, with how noisy the graph is and an obvious temporary spike immediately following the takeover. Heres a wider angle graph https://digitalplanet.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/MuskMonitor-02.jpg but even that is too short of a timeframe to get much use out of. I would love to see the data around 2016.