Elon Musk likely set the bar impossibly high when the entrepreneur professed he would transform Twitter into the “most reliable source of truth” on the internet. Almost a full year into his ownership of what he now calls X, Musk faces the first major test of his lofty goal after this week’s grisly attacks by Hamas cost the lives of an estimated 1,300 unarmed civilians.
Israelis and Palestinians are now currently waging a heated online battle for the hearts and minds of the broader public in a bid to prevent further bloodshed visited upon their respective communities—even if it requires employing false or misleading means.
In response to a 24-hour ultimatum imposed by the European Commission, the executive Musk installed at the helm of X sought to assure Brussels her team was working flat out to fulfill the EU’s most basic legal requirements barring the wanton spread of deliberate untruths to its 450 million citizens.
“In response to the recent terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, we’ve redistributed resources and refocused internal teams, who are working around the clock to address this rapidly evolving situation,” Linda Yaccarino said on Thursday. “Our work is ongoing.”
Among other steps taken, she said X assembled a crisis leadership group to assess the situation, coordinate with law enforcement, remove accounts spreading violent extremism, restrict the sharing of graphic content, and label misleading posts.
Since the start of the attacks, X has furthermore worked with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism and other NGOs in order to identify and remove hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts from the platform, according to Yaccarino.
The European Commission acknowledged that it had received her response and would now consult before deciding on further steps.
Judging by a controversy involving Joe Biden himself, the scale of the misinformation problem facing her team is daunting.
Even the president may prove guilty of spreading incendiary claims after the White House admitted the nation’s commander in chief had not seen any “pictures of [Hamas] terrorists beheading children” as Biden had said.
If even he can get it wrong, then what hope do normal X users not privy to top-secret U.S. intelligence have in separating fact from fiction in the fog of war?
New EU crackdown on disinformation
Had Musk not bought Twitter last October for $44 billion, this supremely sensitive issue would not be his problem. But now he has to answer to the European Union, guardians of the lucrative single market that helps keep his financially troubled company afloat.
In effect since late last year, the new EU Digital Services Act cracks down on disinformation through the threat of punitive fines.
The DSA is in no small part the legacy of Frances Haugen, who blew the whistle on Facebook for deliberately allowing the spread of demonstrably false content on its platform to boost profits.
In the case of both the 2016 presidential election and Brexit referendum, during which Cambridge Analytica microtargeted Facebook users with falsehoods, this has proved to influence democratic outcomes.
On Tuesday, the EU commissioner in charge of enforcing the DSA wrote to Musk demanding details on how he would ensure compliance to protect its citizens from mistruths designed to sway public opinion.
“We have indication that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU,” Thierry Breton claimed in a letter posted to X.
Musk is heavily underwater on his Twitter purchase and hopes to salvage the deal by creating an army of “citizen journalists” uploading data-heavy content like long-format videos he can then monetize through adjacent ads.
The world’s wealthiest individual, who freely admits his disdain for regulatory overreach, reacted in a thin-skinned manner to Breton’s allegations: Within 90 minutes he publicly demanded the European Commission back up its claims of “fake content” with specifics, since he claimed to have no idea what they meant.
“We take our actions in the open. No backroom deals,” he wrote, in a veiled criticism of the political horse-trading for which Brussels is famous. “Please post your concerns explicitly on this platform.”
While Yaccarino attempts to resolve the issue with the Commission diplomatically, Musk can take comfort in the knowledge it’s not just X that finds itself in the EU’s crosshairs.
On Wednesday, Breton told Musk’s competitor Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook and Threads owner Meta had 24 hours to set forward its plan to tackle disinformation.
