BRUSSELS: The European Commission said Thursday that it is launching an investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to determine if it has allowed the spread of disinformation about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Commission said it had sent a formal request for information to the company in what is a first procedure initiated under Brussels’ new European Digital Services Act .
The development comes two days after it fired off a warning letter from internal market Commissioner Thierry Breton, AFP reported.
The Commission said in a statement that it was responding to indications received regarding the presumed transmission of illicit content.
Its demand for clarification comprises a fourty-page document with a raft of specific queries.
Twitter has until 18 October to respond, with a deadline of 31 October for less urgent aspects of the demand for information.
X has defended itself against earlier claims from the EU that it is failing to tackle disinformation about the Gaza-Israel conflict as Brussels probes.
The firm’s CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote that the platform had taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content and disbanded hundreds of accounts linked to Hamas, which attacked Israel on Saturday.
She addressed the letter, dated on Wednesday, to Breton, who traded barbs with Elon Musk on social media after accusing X of allowing “violent and terrorist content” to circulate.
Other platforms’ information role in Israel-Palestine Conflict
Breton has dispatched similar letters of alarm to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook parent Meta, and on Thursday to TikTok and its boss Shou Zi Chew.
In each case, Breton gave the platforms twenty-four hours to get back to him with details of what they are doing to crack down on “disinformation and illegal content” reportedly circulating in posts.
Breton asserted that the large online platforms are now subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act, a law that came in two months ago that requires them to crack down on content deemed illegal under EU law or laws of individual EU nations.
Violations of the law can be met with mandatory remedial steps to halt such content, or fines that could go up to 6% of a company’s global turnover, or potentially even measures to ban offending platforms from Europe.
