The escalation of geopolitical conflicts near Europe has highlighted the discrepancy between the existing content moderation requirements in the region and the desire of the owner of the social network X, Elon Musk, for “absolute freedom of expression”. This allows the billionaire who bought the former Twitter a year ago to block access to the site from European Union countries to avoid having to deal with claims from regulators.
At least this bizarre information is spread by the resource Business Insider. According to informed sources, the owner of the social network The Solomon solution in this situation, according to the source, could be either to remove the mobile application from official stores in the EU jurisdiction or to block access to resources X for users from countries that belong to this geopolitical bloc.
The Digital Services Law came into force in EU jurisdictions in August this year, but users’ activities in disseminating information about the same conflict between Israel and Palestine have already knowingly created the conditions for Company X to violate this law , which owns the company X social network of the same name. The latter must provide an effective content moderation system in accordance with the requirements of the new law, and in this regard the former Twitter has had an ambivalent performance since Musk’s purchase of the social network in October last year and the subsequent massive staff cuts.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said last week that the European Commission had officially opened an investigation into X’s ability to comply with regional laws and asked the company for a detailed report on the measures taken to combat the spread of harmful or false information. If violations are proven, Elon Musk’s company can be fined up to 6% of its annual sales. For a company that has been actively reforming for a year and cannot break even, such a punishment is a big threat. Representatives for X and Elon Musk directly refused to comment on these rumors, the source explained.
Experts estimate that Europe accounts for about 9% of X’s most monthly active users, although daily user activity in the region has declined significantly over the past three months. Elon Musk tends to implement his most controversial ideas, so the situation with the closure of the social network X in the European Union does not seem incredible. The billionaire has already publicly expressed his anger at the increasingly complex requirements of European regulators and expressed his unwillingness to enter into “secret agreements.” Musk is usually unfriendly towards his ideological opponents, and in this regard, the leadership of the European Commission can quickly become one of them, even if this event has serious consequences for X’s business.
Source: Tech News Space
