Commission investigating X for alleged violations of EU content moderation rules

The European Commission opened formal infringement proceedings against X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday (18 December) over alleged breaches of the Digital Services Act.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the EU’s brand-new content moderation rulebook. In April, the Commission identified X as a very large online platform since it has more than 45 million users in the EU.

This categorisation comes with a particularly strict regime regarding transparency and risk management. The new rules for these large platforms, considered to have a ‘systemic’ risk for society, kicked in in late August.

While the EU executive has sent requests to other systemic platforms for information on how they comply with the DSA obligations in the past weeks, this infringement proceeding is the first enforcement action under the new law.

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who in several instances in the past made public statements assuming the role of the digital regulator, announced the action precisely on X and mentioned three areas of investigation.

These areas include a suspected breach of obligations to counter illegal content and disinformation, a suspected breach of transparency obligations and a suspected deceptive design of the user interface.

Collision course

However, the action against X is far from unexpected. As Euractiv anticipated in April, the social network was on a collision course with the European Union ever since Elon Musk acquired it in October 2022, as his political agenda and business plan seemed incompatible with the DSA.

Musk’s broad idea of free speech clashes with the spirit of the DSA’s risk management approach, with content moderation efforts construed as censorship. Instead, Musk’s approach is based on community notes, where users review someone else’s statement.

As a result, since Musk appointed himself as ‘Chief Twit’, he slashed all the organisation’s content moderation teams and transparency tools, turning what was once the industry leader in this area into the black sheep.

Since X did not make any serious step toward complying with the DSA, and Europe is only a rather marginal market for the platform, there is a possibility that the new management might consider leaving the EU market rather than complying with its content moderation rules.

In October, citing sources from Musk’s inner circle, Business Insider similarly reported that the founder of Tesla was considering a European exit to avoid compliance with the DSA.

The possibility of X exiting the European Union became more likely with the platform leaving the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, a voluntary tool whose participation facilitates compliance with the DSA’s risk management and content moderation obligations.

In-depth investigation

In turn, for the Commission, this is the first enforcement action under its much-hyped new regulation. Therefore, X provided perhaps the easiest target for a show of strength, as other platforms will closely watch how things fall out to see if the DSA has teeth.

The formal action is based on a preliminary investigation of the risk assessment report X submitted in September, the transparency report published in November, and the replies to formal requests for information that touched upon disseminating illegal content related to reopening the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The EU executive raised some doubts about the level of resources of X’s content moderation teams, questioning whether they are sufficient to keep up and running the notice and action mechanism for illegal content required under the DSA.

The effectiveness of Community Notes and other measures meant to mitigate risks to civic discourse and electoral processes is also called into question, as the risk assessment was deemed not sufficiently detailed, especially concerning non-English languages.

The Commission also suspects the way X provides access to researchers might not be DSA-compliant, particularly concerning the process of requesting access and the fact that it is not provided via an Application Programming Interface.

“Contrary to other VLOPS [very large online platforms] like Meta, Google or TikTok, X did not have any dedicated programme to provide researchers with access to publicly available data until three weeks ago. X then quietly published a Google Form in which researchers could request access. But it’s unclear whether anybody has received access and under which terms,” Mathias Vermeulen, AWO’s public policy director, told Euractiv.

Another reason for concern is the ‘blue tick’, which is used to identify authenticated accounts but has become the basis for X’s subscription base. The EU executive wants to know if the platform’s users understand these are no longer authenticated accounts but paid ones with boosted content.

Finally, X is believed to be in breach of the requirements for transparency in advertising, as EU officials consider its ad repository is not functioning as it should.

The Commission will now conduct an in-depth investigation that might lead to binding commitments or sanctioning up to 6% of the company’s global turnover. There is no specific timeline to conclude the proceeding.

X did not reply to Euractiv’s request for comment by the time of publication.

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

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