Brussels:
The European Commission said Thursday it is opening an investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to determine whether it allowed the spread of disinformation about the Middle East conflict.
The Commission said it had sent a formal request for information to X in what is a first procedure launched under Brussels’ new European Digital Services Act (DSA). It comes two days after it fired off a warning letter from Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton.
In a statement, the Commission said it was responding to “indications received regarding the alleged transmission of illegal content.”
The request for clarification consists of a forty-page document with a series of specific questions.
Twitter has until October 18 to respond, with a deadline of October 31 for less urgent aspects of the information request.
Breton, the Commission’s self-styled “digital enforcer”, told AFP that Thursday’s move is about “protecting our citizens and democracies by providing users with a safe environment and reliable sources of information – including in times of crisis”.
X has defended itself against previous claims by the European Union that it is failing to tackle disinformation surrounding the Gaza-Israel conflict while Brussels investigates it.
The company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, wrote that the platform, formerly Twitter, had “taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content” and deleted hundreds of accounts linked to the Gaza militant organization Hamas, which attacked Israel on Saturday attacked.
She addressed the letter, dated Wednesday, to Breton, who sparred with Musk on social media after accusing the platform of circulating “violent and terrorist content.”
Breton has sent similar emergency letters to Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook parent Meta, and on Thursday to TikTok and its CEO Shou Zi Chew.
In any case, Breton gave the platforms 24 hours to contact him with details of what they are doing to crack down on “illegal content and disinformation” allegedly circulating in posts.
Breton stressed that major online platforms are now subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), legislation that came into force two months ago and requires them to crack down on content found to be illegal under EU or national law. individual EU countries are considered illegal.
Violations of the DSA could be addressed with mandatory remedial measures to stop such content, or with fines of up to six percent of a company’s global turnover, or possibly even with steps to ban offending platforms from Europe.
Breton posted copies of all his letters to his accounts at X and to an X rival named Bluesky.
X is mainly in the Brussels sights because Musk, who bought Twitter for $ 44 billion last year, has dismantled his staff, including contentmoderators, in an attempt to save money.
– Young TikTok users are at risk –
Yaccarino’s response letter to Breton, reposted by the CEO on her X account, said the company had removed posts involving “violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media.”
She said that in the first four days after violence erupted in Israel, more than 700 notes were added to messages and were seen tens of millions of times.
In his letter to TikTok, Breton emphasized that its users, who are mainly young, are particularly vulnerable to false and manipulated information.
“Given that your platform is widely used by children and teenagers, you have a special obligation to protect them from violent content depicting hostage situations and other explicit videos that are allegedly widely circulating on your platform without appropriate guarantees,” said Breton.
To Zuckerberg, Breton noted that Meta had made some effort to moderate content, but urged her to be “vigilant” in meeting DSA requirements in light of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.
A Meta spokesperson said in response that the company had quickly set up monitoring teams with experts who spoke Hebrew and Arabic, who worked with fact-checkers to curb disinformation, and that “we will continue this work as this conflict unfolds.”
AFP fact-checkers found several posts on X, Facebook and TikTok promoting a fake White House document allocating $8 billion in military aid to Israel.
And on several platforms, users have passed off material from other conflicts, or even from video games, as images from Israel or Gaza.
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