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EU charges Elon Musk’s X for letting disinfo run wild

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.

NecroSocial ,

Not saying this out of any support for Elon or Twitter, just because I respect free speech.

It would be nice if the US pushed back on the EU on this type of thing. Going after platforms for the speech of their users, especially with a government mandated monetary incentive behind it, is an open door for censorship and unfairness. A US company, born under the auspices of a nation where free speech is literally rule number one, should be defended by the US government when other nations create rules attempting to stifle that free speech (especially when those rules also come with huge fines which siphon money, however much, from the US economy).

Governments should be developing ways to stop bots and botnets not stifling human public expression, no matter how disagreeable to the political sensibilities of those governments that expression may be.

mrgalaxy ,

Oh you mean the same government that was revealed to have worked with Twitter to ban political opposition under the same reasoning of misinformation and hate speech?

Drivebyhaiku ,

The issues with the US bulling their way in here is that while they set themselves up as the arbiters of free speech… these are not your counties. These are democratic institutions who have made independently made these decisions based on their concepts of what constitutes safeguarding the welfare of their citizens. They have determined that repeat targetted provably untrue propaganda based out of intellectual dishonesty that is designed to leave people angry at minorities creates conditions where people logically come to the conclusion that the killing, oppressing and subjugation of people to the point they see death as preferable to life is not okay.

The version of “free speech” that constantly gets toted as a universal good is essentially an experiment. When you see how something is functionally shaping your society and you see that while aspects of it are very healthy and cause additional stability and protection to people but a misuse is causing some people to be treated as subhuman then it’s time to amend the rules. A government should be held accountable for the welfare of all it’s citizens and those non-citizens whom it has temporary sovereignty over. Each country has the right to determine how best to initiate that directive. You are very welcome to defend your version of free speech as defined by American sensibilities on American ground, but American meddling in the ethics of countries whose value systems deal in more nuance would be very unwelcome. Quite frankly since the application of “free speech” under American terms has caused so much political stratification in their own homeland to the point where civil war or a breakdown of other democratic norms are snowballing they need to see to their own house before they can critique other nations.

floofloof ,

Going after platforms for the speech of their users,

The EU is going after X for selling blue check marks while marketing them as a sign of trustworthiness. They claim this is misleading. They’re not going after X for anything the users said.

freeman ,

US companies can fuck off withdraw from the EU.

Also the US is not pro free speech. The first amendment only prevents the government from censoring not private entities such as twitter and other social media. They can in fact and do censor their users so them crying wolf about being censored themselves is ironic. After all they are not even human unlike (well some of) their users.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

In many European countries, there’s no American style free speech, there are laws that forbid some contents, such as racism, sexism and lgbtq-hate. People get fined and associations are dissolved because of it frequently.
I understand the argument for not letting a government control speech, because it seems against democratic. But when you see what’s happening to the USA where about half the voters are voting for someone who wants to undermine its democracy, attack women, the poor and the minorities, maybe you would think that the impact of free hate speech on democracy can be destructive.

Snothvalpen ,

Free speech protects journalists from being imprisoned for reporting on events in the world, with the angle to the story they see fit.

Free speech is not about preventing any old fart spewing actual falsifiable lies/misinformation from being silenced on a privately owned platform.

Free speech also isn’t about choosing to disregard anti-misinformation laws in other parts of the world, in the name of said old farts’ rights to say anything, but still insisting on serving customers in those same parts of the world.

That’s what EU is fighting against. Misinformation spread on a platform serving EU customers is finable. If Twitter/X wants to stick to free speech principles without being fined, they have two options.

  1. combat misinformation/lies (this isn’t anti free speech)
  2. geoblock the EU. Don’t do business here
Sparky ,
@Sparky@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Fucking finally!

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