The European Union opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s X on Monday examining the platform’s role in spreading ‘illegal content’ around the Israel and Hamas war. X has come under fire recently for antisemitic content on the platform, losing a slew of advertisers in the process.
“The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers,” said European regulators on Monday.
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Lastly, regulators will examine whether researchers have been given effective access to X’s platform data. Researchers and reporters have struggled to verify the statistics coming out of X, such as a claim that only 2 out of 500 million accounts saw antisemitic content next to Apple advertisements. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which researches hateful disinformation, says X has been unable to deal with “an unmistakable surge of extremism on the platform.”
“Since Elon Musk completed his takeover of Twitter – and especially since the October 7 atrocities carried out by Hamas in Israel – bad actors have been empowered and encouraged to spew antisemitism, lies, and hate with impunity,” said Imran Ahmed, founder of the CCDH in a statement to Gizmodo. Elon Musk sued CCDH in August for scaring off advertisers as well.
X said it was cooperating with the investigation in a tweet on Monday, but asked that this process “remains free of political influence and follows the law.” X then noted it was focused on creating a safe, inclusive environment while protecting freedom of expression.
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