A top European Union official warned Elon Musk on Wednesday that Twitter needs to beef up measures to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content to avoid violating new rules that threaten tech giants with big fines or even a ban in the 27-nation bloc.
Thierry Breton, the EU's commissioner for digital policy, told the billionaire Tesla CEO that the social media platform will have to significantly increase efforts to comply with the new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, set to take effect next year.
Breton said he was pleased to hear that Musk considers the EU rules “a sensible approach to implement on a worldwide basis.” Musk has signaled an interest in rolling back many of Twitter's previous rules meant to combat misinformation, most recently by abandoning enforcement of its COVID-19 misinformation policy. He already reinstated some high-profile accounts that had violated Twitter's content rules and had promised a “general amnesty” restoring most suspended accounts starting this week.
In the call Wednesday, Musk agreed to let the EU's executive Commission carry out a “stress test” at Twitter's headquarters early next year to help the platform comply with the new rules ahead of schedule, the readout said. Along with European regulators, Musk risks running afoul of Apple and Google, which power most of the world's smartphones. Both have stringent policies against misinformation, hate speech and other misconduct, previously enforced to boot apps like the social media platform Parler from their devices. Apps must also meet certain data security, privacy and performance standards.
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