The EU’s top digital officials have committed to push forward “energetically” with an investigation into whether Elon Musk’s X social network breached the bloc’s content moderation law.
The European Commission’s digital czar, Henna Virkkunen, and justice chief Michael McGrath said the executive arm will come to a conclusion “as early as legally possible”, in a letter to European lawmakers this week.
It’s the strongest statement about the probe yet from the new group of EU commissioners and shows how X has taken on greater significance as Musk has used the platform to promote right-wing candidates globally.
The EU opened an investigation into whether X’s policies comply with the Digital Services Act — Europe’s rulebook to fight illegal and harmful content online in 2023. Since then, Musk has risen to become one of US President-elect Donald Trump’s closest advisers, all the while escalating his right-wing political rhetoric on the platform he owns.
Representatives for X and the commission didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk also endorsed German far-right leader Alice Weidel from Alternative for Germany and will host a live-streamed interview with the candidate on Thursday. In response, the commission announced it would be looking to see if X’s algorithms are used deliberately to boost the live-stream, which would potentially be in breach of the DSA.
Large online platforms deemed in breach of the DSA risk fines of as much as 6% of their global yearly revenue.
Complaint
The commission’s letter on Tuesday was prompted by a complaint from Weidel’s rivals, centre-right German lawmakers Andreas Schwab and Daniel Caspary, who had expressed concerns about Musk’s influence in the upcoming elections. While the world’s richest man doesn’t have any direct control over policies or politicians, the influence he wields on his social platform and via his millions of followers gives him a megaphone to promote or disparage candidates.
Read: Elon Musk’s net worth tops $400-billion
“I’ve called on the European Commission several times to use the tools that we’ve given it democratically a lot more robustly to discourage this sort of behavior,” French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in an interview on France Inter radio on Wednesday. “Either the European Commission applies the laws we’ve created to protect the public sphere with the utmost firmness, or it doesn’t, in which case it must agree to return the ability to do so to EU member states.” — Gian Volpicelli and Samuel Stolton, with James Regan, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP
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