The European Commission recently launched a formal infringement procedure to determine whether X, Elon Musk’s digital platform, violated several points of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the 2022 EU regulation on e-commerce, illegal content, disinformation and transparent advertising, which modernises the 2000 e-Commerce Directive.
This is a topic very close to the heart of the European People community, as it works daily to ensure that the information it provides to its community of readers is clear and reliable.
Returning to the infringement proceedings, it is worth noting that this is the first proceeding launched since the creation of the 2022 regulation. The decision to launch the process was announced two days ago, on December 18, following preliminary investigations carried out by examining more than 6,000 posts, which had already led the Vice President of the EU Commission, Vera Jourova, to note that X is now “the platform with the highest number of posts with incorrect information or disinformation”. It is now in fact considered first for the dissemination of content inciting hatred, propaganda of all types, and other behaviors considered - now officially - incorrect. The last case examined was the dissemination of illegal content relating to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Why an infringement procedure?
When an online platform is classified as being of considerable size, and therefore called a “VLOP” (we are talking about more than 45 million users within the European Union alone), the regulation to which it is subject is obviously more stringent, as the risks it runs, in terms of impact on society, are very high.
For this reason, Elon Musk's social network is not the only one that has been asked for clarifications on how its platform implements measures to comply with the DSA; it is the only one, however, that, following this request, has been subject to an infringement procedure.
The day before yesterday, the European Commission announced that the procedure will focus mainly on four areas:
1. Compliance with obligations against the dissemination of illegal content, in particular with an investigation into the implementation of such obligations, which should be sufficient to ensure the functioning of the notification and action mechanisms required by the DSA;
2. The effectiveness of measures to counter the manipulation of information, especially during electoral processes, which in particular concern the “Community Notes” when talking about X, which would allow users deemed “suitable” by the platform to add comments and further information under the posts of others;
3. The near-absence of data available to researchers who should be able to control the level of transparency of the social network. In this regard, “Unlike other VLOPS such as Meta, Google or TikTok, X did not have any dedicated program to provide researchers with access to publicly available data until three weeks ago. X then quietly published a Google form where researchers could request access. But it is unclear whether anyone had access and under what terms,” explained AWO’s director of public policy, Mathias Vermeulen.
4. The famous “blue ticks” which, as we all know, have recently become accessible to everyone through payment, thus being deprived of their primary purpose, that is, to certify the authentication of the account in question.
The infringement procedure will certainly continue with investigations, interviews, and probably provisional measures pending final findings and decisions which, as the Executive Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Digital and Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, has anticipated, could also lead to the imposition of heavy fines on Elon Musk's platform.
