Commission opens formal proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act

[notimetorelax]

I’m curious if X will manage to build up the moderation tools and automation without rehiring as many moderators as they used to have. Looking at the requirements, some of those challenging - preventing fast dissemination of illegal content.

[slim]

Having tried the "Added context" contributions, I think Twitter solved the moderation. It simply works. There's an abundance of free labor and it scales linearly with controversy/spread.

[fabian2k]

If the recent leak about the moderation policies for Twitter is correct, they don't actually want to remove that kind of content. So it might not be a matter of not having enough moderators right now but also an intentional policy decision to not sanction posts like this.

I can't find an English source here and the original is paywalled, but from a German article (https://www.heise.de/news/Leak-Leugnung-des-Holocaust-und-me...) summarizing the original reporting comes the following example of a tweet that is allegedly allowed now:

> Next stop on our tour across Poland is Auschwitz. For Jews this is the last stop, please exit and take your luggage with you.

It also mentions that threats of physical are no longer a reason for suspending accounts.

[demondemidi]

Disappointing that the vast majority of top levels here are describing the EU as some sort of totalitarian police state. It does respect rights. Do the people in the USA think that every country should let its citizens act like uneducated armed griefers?

[logicchains]

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-violation-priv... trying to ban end to end encryption is the opposite of respecting rights.

[logicchains]

>EU as some sort of totalitarian police state

Because it (or parts of it) were recently trying to ban private online communication, which is exactly what a totalitarian police state does.

[threeseed]

Interesting that it is timed with the recent launch of Threads in EU. Will definitely establish a compliance benchmark for X.

But the big problem for X is that Musk burned so many bridges with fired employees that the list of whistleblowers for any issues will be endless.

[rsynnott]

I think the timing is _probably_ coincidental, more down to a bunch of different things happening in European law currently than anything else. The Threads delay seems to be down to Digital Markets Act compliance tweaks (the DMA entered into force earlier this year); this is under the Digital Services Act, which enters into force in two weeks.

> These are the first formal proceedings launched by the Commission to enforce the first EU-wide horizontal framework for online platforms' responsibility, just 3 years from its proposal.

A mere 3 years! This is, in fairness, quite proactive by EC standards.

[flanked-evergl]

> But the big problem for X is that Musk burned so many bridges with fired employees that the list of whistleblowers for any issues will be endless.

That is great, I don't think any company should rely on employee trust to keep illegal practices under wraps. If you put it like this maybe it would be good for Meta to piss off their employees also so we can also get some insight into their illegal practices.

[whywhywhywhy]

How will they whistleblow against him if he fired them in the first week before he did anything?

[orwin]

Not flagging because it is more interesting than usual for a link about Twitter:

it's the first time the law is used, and it also _strongly_ hint that they tried first to get access to the informations without legal proceedings.

The legalese is strong, but I think most of it is understandable (which is surprising).

But: Twitter is now like the 12th social network, who cares?

[rsynnott]

I think the interesting bit here is how quickly they’re going out of the gate, really; the DSA doesn’t even come into force for another two weeks. Companies who were depending on DMA and DSA enforcement being on the same basis as GDPR enforcement (ie extremely slow) may be disappointed.

[westcort]

Just make a new rule that you can only post content on x that has first been posted on a properly moderated social media site.

[pavlov]

Musk keeps repeating that X always follows local laws and regulations, but in practice it seems to only apply to countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Curious.

[pjc50]

Interesting that Community Notes is mentioned, because it's by far the most reliable anti-"disinformation" mechanism I've seen.

The "bluecheck" system has been absolutely wrecked, though. Even with the haphazard patching of grey and gold ticks, a bluecheck more often than not is the sign of self-promoted nonsense.

[ajsnigrutin]

Yep, the great thing about community notes is, that it leaves the tweet unchanged and just adds context (or refutal, or whatever). It turns censorship into (hopefully) "argumented refutal".

[2devnull]

Did people actually rely on the bluechecks anyway in the first place? For me it was at best a slight help if I was trying to find a celebrity that had impersonators. I would be surprised if I’m a very typical user of course. But still I had the impression the bluecheck system was fondly replaced.

[SiempreViernes]

I know of one example where community notes was used to spread outright lies about the victim of police brutality a full day after the claims were disproven, so it still needs some work.

[actionfromafar]

Another amusing thing right now, X marked a journalistic article about Tesla as "spam, misleading or violent":

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/sverige/x-marker-lank-till-...

[immibis]

I don't understand why Elon hasn't hijacked Community Notes for his own purposes yet.

[fallingknife]

Of course they will come after that. Because when the government says "remove disinformation" they mean "remove things that we don't like," and community notes doesn't do that.

[throwaw12]

"news" means something "new is happening", how do you know if it is a disinformation or right when it just came up?

Should we blindly trust and consume news from mass media propaganda machines like CNN, Fox news, BBC and etc?

[speak_plainly]

Liberalism was meant to end this kind of EU censorship. Parliaments were supposed to be the place where diverse and illiberal speech was dissolved into a new liberal language, not through brain dead regulation and technocratism.

If Meta properties are the example of what to expect from the future locked-down internet, prepare for the internet and much more to wither on the vine and die a slow and sad death.

[troupo]

> If Meta properties are the example of what to expect

Then you see why governments end up regulating them. Not because "liberalism was meant to do something magical"

[throwaw12]

"among others, concerned the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas' terrorist attacks against Israel, the Commission has decided to open formal infringement proceedings against X under the Digital Services Act."

Why not open a case against Israel and some of the citizens for spreading a misinformation about beheaded babies and some other lies?

[6footgeek]

So what's the betting that X will be unavailable in Europe by end of day?

[flanked-evergl]

I will take the counter bet, and even go as far as saying X will remain available in EU for the next month at least.

[drooopy]

Don't threaten me with a good time.

[troupo]

Musk will run his mouth and then implement everything required.

[Exendroinient23]

EU just wants to regulate everything. Recent ai regulations are very bad. Purposefully nerfing yourself at the technology front isn't a solution.

[logicchains]

>Purposefully nerfing yourself at the technology front isn't a solution

It is a solution if the problem is "preventing anything that could challenge the entrenched elites".

[jongjong]

The EU government doesn't give a crap about unfair social media algorithms when they benefit their authoritarian agendas (at the expense of citizens) but as soon as soon as the algorithms go against their own agenda, they immediately launch a commission! And, ironically, the algorithms today are less constrained than they've ever been.

[red_trumpet]

You realize that the European Commission[1,2] is a big part of the executive branch of the EU, yeah? (The other one being the european council). So if there is something as an "EU government", it is the commission.

[1] https://commission.europa.eu/index_en [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

[RandomLensman]

What authoritarian agenda? What commission?

[gwervc]

Exactly, "the effectiveness of measures taken to combat information manipulation" sure didn't seem to be an issue for decades for the UE commission when thr manipulation was done by a cell at Twitter itself, such as removing trending conversative hashtags or suspending right-wing EU politicians.

Of course now that the platform allows more balanced opinions, any power available will be used to silence (growing) opposition.

[pseudo0]

Just pull out of the EU. It's overtly hostile to freedom of speech. Run Twitter from the US, and let the EU erect their own "Great Firewall" if they want to block it. F500s (or at least the ones still advertising) can pay for ads through their US subsidiaries, and the handful of remaining Twitter employees in Europe can either take a relocation package or severance.

[lapinot]

How is fighting against dark patterns, opaque and arbitrary moderation decisions (among other things) an attack on (your very american conception of) free speech?

[timeon]

"freedom of speech" is just Virtue signalling.

Not sure why would Twitter leave EU - Musk's Twitter has no problem suppressing freedom of speech, like in that case of Turkey.