821

EU charges Elon Musk’s X for letting disinfo run wild (www.politico.eu)

submitted 5 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

103 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(page 2) 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 5 points 5 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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 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.

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.

In preliminary findings, the Commission said X's platform so-called blue checks had misled users into thinking some content was trustworthy when it wasn't necessarily.

The platform also didn't respect an obligation to provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository and limited access to its public data to researchers, the Commission said.

The EU so far launched investigations under the DSA into companies including AliExpress, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram and TikTok over alleged problems like insufficient consumer protection and addictive algorithms.

The original article contains 389 words, the summary contains 172 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] NecroSocial@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] freeman@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] mrgalaxy@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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?

[-] oce@jlai.lu 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)

[-] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I'm no fan of Musk but given how other platforms like Meta, Reddit and even TikTok are kowtowing to Zionist pressure to clamp down on Palestinian support I'm extremely suspicious of this move. It seems like a convenient excuse for greater censorship.

[-] suction@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Hey, did Nick Fuentes tell you to write that?

load more comments (3 replies)

[-] Sparky 4 points 5 months ago

Fucking finally!

[-] atro_city@fedia.io 3 points 5 months ago

Maybe provide an alternative? Ban EU politicians from using Twitter for their official accounts

[-] suction@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

oh no, what are they gonna do?? what are WE gonna do?? ;```````````(

load more comments (1 replies)

[-] Gsus4@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago

...and they are only 1 year too late...

load more comments

this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024

821 points (100.0% liked)

World News

39401 readers

1890 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.