The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has become a major voice in American politics.
Brussels:
The EU's top digital official wrote a letter to Elon Musk on Monday reminding him of his legal duty to stop the spread of “harmful content” on X, just hours before the tech billionaire interviewed Donald Trump live on the platform.
“With a larger audience comes greater responsibility,” Thierry Breton, the bloc’s internal market commissioner, posted on X, along with the letter in which Musk outlined his obligations to combat illegal content and disinformation under EU law.
The European Union is conducting an ongoing investigation into X, formerly Twitter, under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This law requires digital companies to effectively monitor online content to protect users from harm.
“The DSA obligations apply to the moderation of X’s entire user community and content without exception or discrimination (including you as a user with over 190 million followers),” Breton wrote to Musk.
Breton said the warning was prompted by the “risk of spreading potentially harmful content in the EU,” citing Musk's upcoming interview with Trump and his recent inflammatory comments about far-right riots in the UK.
“We are closely monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hatred and racism in conjunction with significant political or social events around the world,” he wrote.
“My services and I will be extremely vigilant regarding any evidence pointing to violations of the DSA and will not hesitate to use our tools to the fullest extent, including by taking interim measures, where this is justified to protect EU citizens from serious harm,” Breton wrote.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has become a major voice in US politics but has been accused of turning the platform formerly known as Twitter into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories since its 2022 acquisition.
A new analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate finds that Musk's false or misleading claims about the US election have been viewed nearly 1.2 billion times on X.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published via a syndicated feed.)
