On Friday, the recently elected European Commission is looking into Elon Musk’s X over illicit content on their website. X has breached the EU’s rule over content moderation. They have ordered for documents that could be used to prove X’s guilt which it has to provide on February 15th 2025. The owner of X Elon Musk has had many disagreements with EU regulators. Some European politicians have taken it so far that they have accused him of interfering with the election. A prime example of this that was pointed out is Musk having a streamed conservative Germany’s far right Alternative for Germany. The European Commission has commented that the steps they are taking will help them do a complete and fair investigation into X.
They have also stated that Elon Musk has a right to free speech and can hold livestream with politicians. The EU is mostly investigating if X’s algorithm promotes certain political agendas. Another concern of the European Union is the connections that Musk holds particularly to the United States President Elect Donald Trump who will take office on January 21st 2025. Trump has already been critical of many EU policies which makes companies come to him to help them fight against EU restrictions. In fact, Meta C.E.O Mark Zuckerberg went to Trump to fight EU regulation. Zuckerberg has stated he would work with Trump to push back on censorship in Europe with him highlighting the many laws that the EU has enacted about censorship in Europe. Going back to Musk, the EU has accused his algorithms of promoting far-right politicians such as Trump. They want to see how X’s recommender system, which is the system that recommends content to users on the site. EU Executive Vice President has stated that she is ready to ban X if it is found in breach of the DSA.
The essential question now is what would constitute X breaching the DSA. The DSA or otherwise known as the Digital Services Act regulates that digital services only act as intermediaries to users. In other words, they don’t push certain types of content onto the user. The part of the DSA that pertains to the investigation of X are the bans on targeted advertising. This makes it so the digital service can not push content based on ethnicity, political views, or sexual orientation. As stated before, the European Commission is pushing that X is pushing content based on political views which would be in breach of DSA regulations. On the European Commission website it is also stated that the regulations of the DSA apply to companies formed outside of Europe as long as they are using Europe’s single market system. As X is outside of Europe, they also have to appoint a legal representative to represent them. The European Commission is therefore investigating if X is pushing content because of political views. If found guilty, X could be banned in Europe like how TikTok is banned in the United States. In fact, the leader of France’s national rally Jordan Barddlla has claimed that the European Union is willing to ban X over fears that Elon Musk is using X’s algorithms for his political gains. Bardella even posted on his X account that many European officials are calling for the ban of X.
Written by Samarth Irani
