Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, is being investigated by the European Union over allegations that it breached Europe's highly restrictive laws on online speech while addressing misinformation related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The European Commission announced on Monday that it was opening an investigation into whether X had broken the Digital Services Act, which holds Big Tech companies accountable for "harmful and illegal" content and requires transparency about content moderation and algorithms. The investigation will look specifically into "the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas's terrorist attacks against Israel" and whether X's efforts to stop "information manipulation" through the Community Notes system were sufficient. This is the first time the EU has launched proceedings under the DSA.
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"The higher the risk large platforms pose to our society, the more specific the requirements of the Digital Services Act are," Executive Vice President for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age Margrethe Vestager said in a statement. "We take any breach of our rules very seriously. And the evidence we currently have is enough to formally open a proceeding against X."
We have opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the #DSA in areas linked to:
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) December 18, 2023
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More information on next steps: https://t.co/VHJjIsVftY pic.twitter.com/oygKah5GIq
X is one of 16 platforms regulated by the DSA, which went into effect in April 2023, although the company declined to sign an agreement with the EU to regulate its online content.
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EU Commissioner Thierry Breton had threatened to take legal action against X and Meta in October, demanding they take more aggressive action to minimize disinformation spread by Hamas.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino responded by affirming that X was committed to "serving the public conversation, especially in critical moments like this, and understands the importance of addressing any illegal content that may be disseminated through the platform." This included removing tens of thousands of posts involving false information, suspending hundreds of accounts, and posting thousands of Community Notes, or X's crowd-sourced fact-checking service.