The European Commission announced this Monday the opening of a “formal investigation” against the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, for alleged violations of content moderation and transparency rules for publications related to the Hamas attack in Israel.
The Commission decided to launch for the first time a procedure covered by the new Digital Services Act (DSA), adopted by the European Union (EU) in August and which regulates the operations of digital platforms in the European space.
“The opening of a formal investigation today against X shows that Gone are the days when large online platforms behaved as if they were too big to care about regulations.”said the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, responsible for digital issues.
“We will now launch an in-depth investigation into X's compliance with DSA obligations regarding the fight against the spread and amplification of illegal content and disinformation in the EU,” he added.
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The European executive opened a preliminary investigation on October 12, five days after the unprecedented attack by Hamas militants in Israel, for alleged dissemination of “illicit content” and “incitement to hate” on the social network owned by tycoon Elon Musk.
In a first stage, the authorities requested information to verify whether platform X implemented the obligations established by the European standard.
The response of the social network and its “transparency report”, published at the beginning of November on its content moderation method, did not convince the European executive.
The new European legislation on digital services gives authorities control powers and sanctioning provisions.
The digital services law obliges large platforms to annually evaluate the risk they may cause to society, taking into account aspects such as the content they recommend to their users, the advertising they show them or the intentional manipulation that may promote unverified accounts.
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Once detected, they have to quickly eliminate illegal content and the spread of false information and notify the people who published the content as soon as possible of its elimination, giving them the possibility of appealing.One of the main objectives of the regulations is to force platforms to be more transparent in the design of the algorithms that determine the content that users see, in such a way that their manipulation is avoided.
The rule contemplates fines that can reach 6% of the global turnover of the accused company and in the event that serious and prolonged violations are proven, a ban on operating in the EU space may even be declared.
The Commission reported this Monday that after opening this formal investigation, it will continue gathering “evidence” and that it will request more information from X, including interviews or inspections.
The opening of this process allows the European executive to take measures to force X to comply with the rules or to accept solutions proposed by the social network to resolve the problems indicated. The open investigation does not stipulate any deadline.
AFP and EFE
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