X in the EU's sights, investigation into disinformation begins

Brussels opens infringement proceedings against X and the irrepressible Elon Musk.

An unprecedented investigation, the first in the name of the new community regime of the Digital Services Act (DSA), to sift through all the non-compliant practices for which the major may have been responsible also with a deceptive design and serious gaps in transparency. And, if the facts support the thesis, the risk for the former blue bird is to run into a maxi-fine of up to 6% of the annual turnover or, ultimately, the dismantling of the activities on European territory .

Five days after the Hamas attacks on Israel, Berlaymont Palace - led by the head of the Single Market, Thierry Breton - had warned the social network by starting preliminary proceedings regarding "false information", "violent and terrorist content » and «hate speech».

A necessary first step, from the perspective of the French commissioner's services, for the scenes of bombings from video games passed off as war footage, old videos of hostages broadcast as new ones appearing in the ether against the background of the conflict, and false political information launched with a click in the middle of a European election campaign just starting. However, X's responses to the initial findings and the transparency report published subsequently were not enough to convince Brussels.

The list of EU recriminations is long and will be subject to close scrutiny: low number of moderators, ineffective reporting of illegal content, insufficient warning messages against violent images, unsatisfactory data access granted to regulators, fake news not removed. Doubts also concern the blue stickers posted on certain accounts , which are likely to lead one to believe in certified identities, as well as the notes added by the user community to recontextualise false, biased or incomplete information, which however appear to be too few in certain languages.

Community services will now proceed to gather evidence, conduct interviews and carry out inspections before deciding whether to ask for new remedies from X or find a way to compromise. The deadline for the investigation, pursuant to the DSA, is not set. But the unprecedented procedure is also a warning for all the other big companies in the sector.

(Unioneonline/D)