Some members of the European Union’s leadership are warning that billionaire Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc. will struggle to follow the continent’s content moderation rules in the months leading up to its first deadline.
(Bloomberg) — Some members of the European Union’s leadership are warning that billionaire Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc. will struggle to follow the continent’s content moderation rules in the months leading up to its first deadline.
“Twitter is falling short of its commitments to the anti-disinformation Code,” Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said via Twitter on Wednesday. She was responding to an Associated Press news story that disinformation spread by authoritarian regimes is gaining more traction on the website because of changes to the way it polices content.
Jourova’s comments came a day after the European Commission said Twitter is one of 19 groups that will fall under its strictest content-moderation rules. The social media company was designated a “very large online platform” and has four months to comply. The businesses also include Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Youtube, ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram and others that have more than 45 million monthly active users in Europe.
Not complying can cost the company as much as 6% annual revenue or even get the platform banned. Twitter did not provide a meaningful comment.
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Commission officials have raised concerns that Twitter won’t have the manpower to comply with the regulations, people familiar with the matter said. The company is still able to respond quickly to requests from the US, though there are concerns that this won’t be enough by the time Twitter must comply with the DSA legislation in August. Many of the rules are time-consuming and costly for companies to implement. They need to create a way for users to flag possibly illegal content, redesign their sites to stop targeting ads to minors and make data available to researchers.
“These 19 systemic platforms and search engines will have to redesign completely their system to ensure a high level of privacy, security and safety of minors,” the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said Tuesday in a briefing with journalists. “They will be subject to yearly independent audits, which they should expect to be very tough as a well rigorous supervision by the commission.”
Twitter is operating with a fraction of the staff it had when Musk took over as chief executive officer last year. The company has closed a number of its European offices, including Brussels, while the number of employees in other European cities is significantly reduced following companywide cuts.
Musk has spoken with Breton on numerous occasions, working to reassure the bloc’s executive arm that he’d be personally involved in making sure Twitter complied.
Still, Twitter’s first crack at showing the EU its compliance with the rules earlier this year was a disappointment. The commission had asked companies to voluntarily complete a form showing examples of how it adheres to the code of practice on disinformation and plans for future policies. Twitter’s filing failed to answer or used repeated answers for several questions, drawing the ire of politicians.
Breton has said the commission will perform a “stress test” at the end of June with Twitter to see how well it can comply with the DSA.
“I don’t think any big tech can afford losing the European market,” said Carme Artigas, Spain’s secretary of state for digitization and artificial intelligence. “Not complying with European regulation is like not being able to operate in Europe.”
–With assistance from Stephanie Bodoni.
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