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European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton has written to Elon Musk calling on him to remove disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas War from his platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
‘Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indications that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU,” Breton wrote in a letter which he also posted on X on Tuesday evening.
“Let me remind you that the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation,” it continued.
If X fails to comply with the disinformation regulations included in the European Union‘s Digital Services Act, the platform faces penalties, including fines of up to 6% of its total worldwide annual turnover.
In an interestingly timed announcement, Breton then posted some 14 hours later on his X account that he had joined burgeoning rival social media platform Bluesky, created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.
“Bonjour! Even though the grass is not (always) greener on the other side, the sky is sometimes… bluer. Let’s keep in touch!,” wrote Breton in an X post on early Wednesday morning.
In his previous post, Breton gave Musk 24 hours from 7pm CET on Tuesday to respond to the request for disinformation to be removed from X.
Musk replied directly to Breton’s X post, asking for a list of the violations allegedly committed by his platform.
“Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports. Please list the violations you allude to on 𝕏, so that that the public can see them. Merci beaucoup,” he wrote.
There has been no further official comment from Musk or X on the matter.
Breton’s letter to Musk follows the deadly attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants out of Gaza on Saturday, which killed 1,200 Israelis according to latest figures released by the country.
Israel has retaliated with a complete siege of Gaza and heavy bombardment of the densely populated Palestinian territory which is home to more than two million people.
Disinformation circulating on X and other social networks around the Israel-Hamas War includes claims that an Israeli general was captured in Saturday’s raids as well as recycled clips of past flare-ups in the violence and old addresses by Russian President Vladimir Putin overlaid with inaccurate subtitles suggesting he wants to enflame the situation.
Breton said X was legally bound to remove disinformation as quickly as possible once it had received notice that it was disseminating illegal material in the European Union.
He added that the platform was duty bound to put in place “proportionate and effective mitigation measures to tackle the risk to public security and civic discourse stemming from disinformation.”
Musk has come under pressure repeatedly from the E.U. over his governance of X, ever since he took officially took ownership of the platform when it was still known as Twitter in October 2022.
Breton and Musk have exchanged face to face on a number of occasions with the commissioner impressing on the tech tycoon the need to aggressively act against disinformation on the site.
Read Breton’s letter to Musk below.
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