According to EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton, Twitter has left the Code of Practice on online disinformation.
Breton warned Twitter last night that it cannot avoid legal accountability in this area in a tweet that revealed Twitter’s upcoming withdrawal from the EU Code.
Twitter leaves EU voluntary disinformation code. Obligations persist. Breton remarked, “You can run but you can’t hide,” referring to the site’s legal requirements as a very large online platform (VLOP) under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
As of August 25, #DSA makes countering disinformation mandatory. Our teams will enforce.” In addition, the November pan-EU regulation mandates VLOPs like Twitter to identify and address systemic risks to such disinformation and civic discourse and political processes. VLOPs have three months to meet DSA responsibilities. Twitter’s publicity office responded with a feces emoji.
Twitter’s previous management joined the voluntary EU Code on Disinformation in 2018. However, Elon Musk, Twitter’s billionaire owner, appears to want to challenge the EU on speech moderation, despite his earlier claims to Breton that he supported the bloc’s digital rulebook. Instead, Musk chose a costly war. DSA violations can result in 6% worldwide annual turnover fines.
Twitter might lose access to 440 million people in a zone where the Commission has warned that serious, recurrent non-compliance could lead to service blockage.
The original EU Disinformation Code required Twitter to target ad income, bots, and bogus accounts, provide tools to report disinformation, and empower researchers to examine.
In June 2022, the Commission introduced a strengthened version and a transparency center to verify compliance. Signatories’ DSA compliance would also depend on following the Code. Twitter’s purposeful withdrawal now—three months before the regulation takes effect—signals it’s rejecting the bloc’s digital services rulebook.
Twitter has trouble removing bot networks and other bad content before Musk. However, after his $44 billion purchase of the platform last fall, Musk has taken detrimental actions to drive the platform oppositely. Musk has committed numerous acts of operational vandalism that have destabilized veracity and encouraged trolls and chaos agents to run amok on Twitter, including drastic cuts to moderation staff and a massive hike in the price Twitter charges external researchers to access data via its API.
In November, the EU warned Musk that Twitter had “huge work” to avoid violating the DSA, including name-checking falsehoods. In February, Twitter was warned again for not reporting under the Disinformation Code. Musk was likely to shut down the one thing he could.
As mentioned above, the Code is voluntary, but the EU has linked it to DSA compliance as a de facto guideline for VLOPs’ disinformation obligations. Twitter’s willful withdrawal invites the Commission to sanction obvious rule-breaking or risk the law failing.
With Musk taking controlling Twitter, we predicted this collision course last year. The billionaire’s goal of pushing a far-right political philosophy requires him to support disinformation to spread anti-democratic conspiracy theories. In a recent Atlantic article, Charlie Warzel wrote, “[Twitter] has unquestionably transformed under [Musk] leadership into an alternative social-media platform — one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.”
Musk’s transformation of Twitter into a far-right stan site can certainly fly in the US; under constitutional protections for free speech, the worst he can do is ruffle a few feathers and drive progression users off his platform (basically, hit himself in the pocketbook—although we know he’s got wealth to burn).
Musk’s advocacy of conspiracy bs puts him in conflict with EU regulators who oppose overt anti-democratic manipulation. Prepare for a costly fight.
