The European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton opened an investigation on October 12 against X (formerly Twitter) for the alleged dissemination of “false information”, “violent and terrorist content” or “hate speech”. Since the start of the clashes, a lot of content has been published on X, a platform owned by Elon Musk, as well as on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, the latter two belonging to Meta.
The European Union wants to put pressure on social networks to remove all illegal content from their platforms and comply with the European regulation on digital services, which came into force this summer and which must regulate the activities of social networks, in particular those of the giants American digital companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.
Fake news
Thierry Breton thus continues the turn of the screw started at the start of the week and which saw him successively warn X, Meta and again on Thursday TikTok, in letters addressed to their leaders. Earlier in the day, the European Commissioner had given TikTok boss Shou Zi Chew 24 hours to inform him of the measures taken by the social network to prevent the dissemination of false information since the attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel .
The request for information sent to In extreme cases, fines can reach 6% of the group’s global turnover. The request for information “follows indications received concerning the presumed dissemination of illicit content,” explained the Commission, which has inherited new power of control and sanction.
This request takes the form of a document of around forty pages with specific questions. A first series concerns clarifications to be made on the publication of illegal content and false information, in the context of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Twitter will have until October 18 to respond.
In response to the European Commissioner’s missive, X CEO Linda Yaccarino indicated that the social network had deleted hundreds of accounts affiliated with Hamas.
This article is originally published on lesechos.fr
