Elon Musk an avid user of Twitter
Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, sent Elon Musk’s Twitter that is, in effect, a cease and desist order giving the company just 24 hours to remove misleading propaganda and false reports about what is going on right now in Gaza from its service or face sanctions within the EU. The 24 hour period is almost up.
This order also includes a requirement to engage in better screening in the future.
Elon Musk notoriously removed many restrictions that Twitter held regarding the prohibition of fake news reports and hate speech on the social media service after he bought the company in 2020 for $44 billion. But now he allows Hamas to spread disinformation and show heinous videos of their victims being torn apart.
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“Public media and civil society organizations widely report instances of fake and manipulated images and facts circulating on your platform in the EU, such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games,” said the letter. “This appears to be manifestly false or misleading information.”
And in a stern warning to Elon Musk and Twitter Breton added, “I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed.”
The letter itself was shared on Breton’s Twitter feed with the comment, “Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel, we have indications of X/Twitter being used to disseminate illegal content & disinformation in the EU.”
According to the political review website Politico, a survey it conducted of Twitter posts found “scores of videos that allegedly showed militants murdering civilians and Israeli soldiers; viral hashtags associated with the ongoing violence that praised Hamas’ activities; and social media posts that included graphic pictures of those killed and antisemitic hate speech.”
While this kind of material was also found on other services, Politico reported that on Elon Musk’s social media platform “the level at which the terrorist-related content was circulated on X (Twitter) was significantly higher compared with others, according to analysis by POLITICO and two outside researchers who independently reviewed the tech companies’ response to the Middle East crisis.
“There is a huge prevalence of extremely graphic violent material on X,” Adam Hadley, director of Tech Against Terrorism, a nonprofit organization that works with social media platforms and governments to combat how terrorist organizations spread their propaganda online, told Politico. “This doesn’t appear to be the same on other large platforms.”
Even before the barbaric attack by Hamas over the weekend Elon Musk had already been widely criticized by Jewish groups and others for allowing the dissemination of anti-Semitic posts and hate speech on his platform. Musk says that this is about protecting freedom of speech, but the man just doesn’t get it: There are limits to free speech and he is letting people go way over the line into the unacceptable.
