Yahoo Finance EU launches investigation into Elon Musk’s X over Hamas propaganda
The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s Twitter over its alleged dissemination of misinformation and propaganda related to Hamas.
The Commission announced that it had launched a full probe into Twitter, now known as X, to see whether it had broken new EU rules governing online services.
The investigation is the first under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping set of laws for social networks and search engines, which came into force in August and can impose massive fines on companies seen to break the law.
It comes two months after EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton wrote to Mr Musk asking him to crack down on “the spreading of terrorist and violent content and hate speech” on the site. It launched a preliminary investigation in October.
The opening of formal proceedings allows the EU to impose interim measures on X, such as changes to its algorithms or stricter monitoring of illegal content.
X has come under fire since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 for failing to counter misinformation and violent content on the social network.
Mr Musk himself has been accused of fuelling anti-Semitism by endorsing a conspiracy theory, and major advertisers have boycotted the service after their adverts were found next to pro-Nazi material.
An X spokesman said: “X remains committed to complying with the Digital Services Act, and is cooperating with the regulatory process. It is important that this process remains free of political influence and follows the law.
“X is focused on creating a safe and inclusive environment for all users on our platform, while protecting freedom of expression, and we will continue to work tirelessly towards this goal.”
The EU said its investigation covered not only the dissemination of illegal content, but X’s measures to fight misinformation, in particular its Community Notes function, which produces crowdsourced footnotes on tweets deemed misleading.
It is also looking at whether X has made data transparent to independent researchers, and its Premium service, which charges users for the blue ticks once reserved for public figures. It said the feature amounted to “a suspected deceptive design of the user interface”.
EU digital commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: “We take any breach of our rules very seriously. And the evidence we currently have is enough to formally open a proceeding against X. The Commission will carefully investigate X’s compliance with the DSA, to ensure European citizens are safeguarded online.”
Mr Breton said: “Today’s opening of formal proceedings against X makes it clear that, with the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are ‘too big to care’ has come to an end.
“We now have clear rules, ex ante obligations, strong oversight, speedy enforcement, and deterrent sanctions and we will make full use of our toolbox to protect our citizens and democracies.”
X closed its Brussels office last November, shortly after Mr Musk bought the company for $44bn (£35bn). Mr Musk has reportedly discussed shutting down the service in Europe.
The EU has sent letters to TikTok and Meta, but has not announced investigations into the companies.
