(CN) — European Union regulators on Monday launched a probe against Elon Musk's X social media platform, formerly Twitter, to determine whether it is violating new rules to stop the spread of disinformation and hateful content.
Monday's announcement was the opening salvo in what's likely to become a long legal fight between Musk's anything-goes approach to free speech and the EU's efforts to make the internet safer for Europeans by forcing the world's biggest online platforms to remove harmful content.
This is the EU's first attempt at enforcing its Digital Services Act, a law that came into force in August. The law compels Big Tech companies to quickly remove harmful content, or else face massive fines and even get banned in the EU.
Musk and EU regulators have been on a collision course ever since the maverick American billionaire took over Twitter in October 2022, buying it for $44 billion. After the takeover, Musk changed its name to X and allowed content on the platform to become much less filtered. He also allowed the return of users who were banned previously, such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Critics say Musk has allowed X to turn into an ugly forum for lies, hate speech and disinformation.
In October, after Hamas attacked Israel, the outbreak of war led to a torrent of graphic, violent and fake videos, hate-filled content, disinformation, propaganda and misinformation to flood the internet. Much of it found its way onto X.
Later that month, the European Commission warned Musk to take action against harmful content on X stemming from the war. At the time, the EU opened a preliminary probe and gave the company a window of time to come into compliance with the rules. After admonishing X, EU regulators also warned TikTok, YouTube and Facebook owner Meta to step up efforts to abide by the rules.
“Today's opening of formal proceedings against X makes it clear that, with the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are 'too big to care' has come to an end,” said Thierry Breton, a European commissioner in charge of enforcing the EU's digital laws.
He said the commission will “start an in-depth investigation of X's compliance with the DSA obligations.”
The probe will focus on X's efforts to counter illegal content and disinformation; examine whether it is illegally obstructing access to its data by charging large fees; evaluate the effectiveness of its so-called “community notes” crowdsourced system for flagging misinformation; and determine if it is engaging in deceptive “dark patterns” by allowing a user to receive a “blue check” by paying a subscription fee. Previously, Twitter allotted blue checks to verified high-profile users.
Having initiated infringement proceedings, the commission said it now has the power to require X to take interim measures to comply with the law while the investigation is carried out. It said there is no deadline by which it must complete the probe.
“X remains committed to complying with the Digital Services Act, and is cooperating with the regulatory process,” Joe Benarroch, an X executive, told Politico.
The Digital Services Act is considered the first attempt in the democratic world to rein in the lucrative but deeply damaging practices by Big Tech to bombard users with personal ads and allow disinformation, hate speech, falsehoods and illegal content to mushroom across the internet.
Under the law, the world's largest tech platforms have 24 hours to remove material deemed harmful and they must routinely submit assessments about the risks posed by their platforms and work to lessen those dangers.
The rules apply to 19 platforms and search engines that have 45 million or more monthly users, which is roughly equal to 10% of the EU's population.
Running afoul of the rules could be immensely costly, with fines of up to 6% of a company's global revenue. The law even allows platforms to be banned from the EU for failure to comply.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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