A public dispute between Elon Musk and the EU has sharpened concerns in Europe about its ability to wield power over the sprawling social media platform X at a time when disinformation and deepfakes have helped to fuel political discord and an outbreak of UK rioting.
Europe has taken a tougher approach to regulating digital platforms than the US, but Musk’s acquisition of X, then called Twitter, almost two years ago has brought the issue into greater focus after he slashed its moderators, restored previously banned accounts and increased his own outspoken posts.
At the same time, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) brought the bloc fresh powers to enforce sweeping rules in areas such as disinformation and advertising, including a penalty that one official who worked on the rules called a “nuclear weapon”: removing access to a social network across the region.
“We are really standing at the cusp of an era of tough enforcement,” said Georg Riekeles, associate director at the European Policy Centre. He said the stand-off between Musk and the bloc marked a critical moment in the EU’s battle to act against powerful online platforms.
Musk, he added, had shown “how tech can be weaponised”.
The EU’s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton this week posted a letter on X hours before the billionaire interviewed US presidential candidate Donald Trump on the platform, threatening the “full use” of sanctions under the DSA if Musk failed to curb “illegal content”.
Both Musk and Trump’s campaign reacted angrily. Musk posted a meme from the film Tropic Thunder indicating to Breton that he should “Take a big step back and literally fuck your own face”.
Musk has cast himself as a champion of free speech via X and has criticised what he called censorship under the DSA, while the Trump campaign said after Breton’s letter: “The European Union is an enemy of free speech and has no authority of any kind to dictate how we campaign.”
Breton’s intervention was quickly disowned by the European Commission, which said the “timing and the wording of the letter were neither co-ordinated or agreed” with fellow commissioners.
It increased tensions that had been building since X in December became the first platform to face an investigation under the DSA over claims it failed to be transparent about advertising and allowed the dissemination of content deemed illegal in the EU. The commission has since begun proceedings against Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, for contravention of rules about their use by minors, as well as against video-sharing platform TikTok over a reward scheme.
The DSA, introduced in 2022, has given Brussels powerful tools to curb the worst excesses of false online content on platforms — at least in theory. Platforms found to contravene the rules, which set new standards for monitoring hate speech, fake images and video and disinformation, can face fines of up to 6 per cent of revenue.
If the platform continues to “cause serious harm”, the act says the commission could instruct the telecoms provider in the country where the company is based within the EU to switch off access to the site.
“At some point there are some very strong tools in your toolbox but it’s a question of whether you want to use that,” Riekeles said.
Losing access to the EU would significantly dent user numbers on X, which has been hit by stalling growth since Musk’s takeover. X had 111mn monthly active users in the EU in the six months to January, according to the platform, more than a sixth of the 600mn users that the billionaire has said are registered.
Catalina Goanta, associate professor in consumer law and technology at Utrecht University, said the current “stand-off” with X was a “very unfortunate” position for Europe that could complicate its investigation.
“The commission can’t just say: We’re going to impose these rules on Meta and TikTok and not on X,” she said.
Musk himself has 194mn followers, which make him the most-followed person on X. But analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate this month found that at least 50 of his posts about the US election in 2024 — which collectively amassed more than 1.2bn views on the platform — had been debunked by independent fact-checkers.
Musk also spread large amounts of content relating to an outbreak of far-right rioting in the UK this month, including jibes aimed at Prime Minister Keir Starmer and suggestions that the country was prioritising the protection of Muslims and minorities over white protesters.
In the UK, the Online Safety Act — which became law in September after years of wrangling, but will not take full effect for several months — only covers misinformation if the content is deliberately false and distributed with the intent to cause “non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
It creates sweeping powers for UK media regulator Ofcom to police tech giants for failing to curb illegal content — such as hate speech and incitement to violence — including by imposing fines of up to 10 per cent of worldwide revenue and criminal liability for named senior executives. Like the EU, in “extreme cases” Ofcom can require internet service providers to stop working with a site — in effect blocking it in the UK.
Riekeles said the US taking a tougher stance against Big Tech companies under the Joe Biden administration had opened a door for more aggressive action in Europe.
Officials working with X in Brussels have said the company has been largely responsive during the commission’s investigation.
Yet Goanta added that even if X wanted to comply with the DSA, it might struggle to fulfil its obligations — particularly when policing non-English content — after moderation teams were slashed. X in April said it employed just one content moderator with professional proficiency in Latvian and Polish, for example, and none in Dutch.
At the same time Ken Daly, an antitrust lawyer at Sidley Austin, said the commission was engaged in a “constant game of cat and mouse” with companies and had to be careful not to appear to be “totally anti-business, threatening to push large and popular companies out”.
“[Musk] is obviously being provocative and daring the commission to go further,” he added.
The question is whether politicians, many of whom post prolifically on X, are willing to take on Musk.
A UK government insider said there was “no appetite to have a row with Musk on X” as Breton had done, and that the UK was focused on getting the platform to respond when posts of concern were flagged by the government’s disinformation team. The person said the company had been slow to respond on some requests to take down content of concern, but had engaged on lowering the visibility of other posts.
Shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat said some of Musk’s comments had been “delusional” and “simply false”, but it was beyond the UK government’s remit to attempt to rebuke or sanction him, given that his company operates overseas and is responsible to its shareholders — in this case himself.
EU officials privately said they feared Breton’s letter may have been counterproductive and provoke the incendiary billionaire further.
“I just personally think it was totally superfluous and not helpful at all,” said one.
Jan Philipp Albrecht, president of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung think-tank and a former EU lawmaker, said the bloc should consider toughening its approach to social media platforms by making them subject to libel law in the same way as media outlets, which themselves can be held accountable for content alongside its authors.
More broadly, he said: “We can’t stand there and wait for Musk to get back to a mature behaviour. We have to make sure he adheres to the rule of law.”
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