The European Union announced that is opening an investigation into X for alleged dissemination of illegal content and disinformation, including terrorist and violent content and hate speech. This comes a few days after the EU warned X for failing to take action on illegal content on its platform following Saturday's deadly attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
This is the first investigation open under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). According to the DSA, X is obliged, as a “very large online platform”, to reduce the risks caused by misinformation and to act on reports of illegal content. Since the attacks, posts identified as false by fact-checkers have circulated in X, purporting to show images of attacks inside Israel and Israel's retaliation against targets in the Gaza Strip. These include footage filmed last month in Egypt and a clip that claims to show Hamas missile attacks on Israel but actually comes from a video game.
Many employees who oversaw content moderation at X, including its human rights team, were eliminated during X's mass layoffs last year, as part of Elon Musk's attempt to improve the platform's profitability.
In his warning to Musk on Tuesday, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote that the EU has "indications" that X is being used to spread illegal content and disinformation in the EU and reminded X of its need to moderate the content. He added that when the company receives notices of illegal content in the EU, it has to be "timely, diligent and objective" in removing the content and that the EU has "from qualified sources, reports on potentially illegal content circulating on its service despite of flags of the relevant authorities.”
The EU asked Musk to contact relevant law enforcement authorities and Europol, giving him 24 hours to respond to requests, including one regarding DSA compliance. Breton warned that an investigation could be opened and sanctions imposed.
In response to the warning, X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted a letter saying a leadership group had been convened to consider X's response and that "tens of thousands" of content had been removed, along with » of publications and «hundreds» of accounts linked to terrorist groups, violence or extremism. She also said that the company formerly known as Twitter is responding to requests from law enforcement, but had not received any requests from Interpol at that time.
X he said in his security account that there were more than 50 million posts worldwide over the past two days referencing the weekend terrorist attack, underscoring the reach of the content generated. He Thursday afternoon The Hamas attack had killed more than 1.200 people, the Israeli military said, and at least 1.537 people had been killed in Gaza by Israel's retaliatory strikes, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
Now that an investigation has been opened, X has until October 18 to provide information on “the activation and operation of X's crisis response protocol” to the EU, and until October 31 to respond to its other requests. The EU can impose sanctions for disinformation and impose sanctions for failing to respond within its deadlines. The EU is investigating X's compliance with the DSA, including its policies on illegal content notices, complaint handling, risk assessment and what measures it is taking to mitigate identified risks.
Earlier this year, Musk withdrew from the EU Code of Practice on Online Disinformation. In response, Breton said: “Twitter abandons the EU Voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. But the obligations persist. “You can run but you can’t hide.”
TikTok and meta They have also been warned by the EU about disinformation but in September, the EU said that X is the worst at spreading disinformation.
