Elon Musk has until the end of Wednesday to respond to demands from Brussels to remove graphic images and disinformation linked to the violence in Israel from his social network X — or face the full force of Europe’s new social media rules.

Thierry Breton, the European Union commissioner who oversees the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) rules, wrote to the owner of X, formerly Twitter, to warn Musk of his obligations under the bloc’s content rules.

If Musk fails to comply, the EU’s rules state X could face fines of up to 6 percent of its revenue for potential wrongdoing. Under the regulations, social media companies are obliged to remove all forms of hate speech, incitement to violence and other gruesome images or propaganda that promote terrorist organizations.

Since Hamas launched its violent attacks on Israel on October 7, X has been flooded with images, videos and hashtags depicting — in graphic detail — how hundreds of Israelis have been murdered or kidnapped. Under X’s own policies, such material should also be removed immediately.

  • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Is this the thing that finally makes Musk feel some pain? You can’t wiggle out of this one, EU law is pretty tight on this stuff.

    • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Is this the thing that finally makes Musk feel some pain?

      Not if his goal is to run Twitter into the ground. (And I’m about 3 months or so into believing it is.)

      • stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Although I can understand that perspective, I honestly think that he’s actually just very, very dumb and completely clueless about how money actually works and how businesses function. He’s rich enough to never have had to learn any of that and spend his way through failure after failure. I am absolutely certain that he believed that he’d run in there, steer the ship right, and all would be well.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          Yeah absolutely, be thought that it was easy because he didn’t pause to consider any of the confounding factors - the same mistake he always makes, self drive to Mars bases he gets fixated on the fact it’s possible and doesn’t really consider the many things making it difficult.

          I think he thought that he’d go in and don’ta big lever that turns it from biasing the left and amplifying people hating billionaires then when he turned it off everyone would cheer and clap. He’s the typical idiot that has shitty political options and thinks everyone else secretly agrees bit only he’s breve enough to say it.

  • flossdaily@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Getting rid of misinformation is great.

    Getting rid of accurately reported, gruesome images because of a government mandate flies in the face of the core principles of free speech. And it would cause real damage to the world.

    Remember that it was only when the world actually saw images of the Nazi concentration camps that the world actually believed it. They’d heard about it for years, but it was largely ignored.

    • qyron@sopuli.xyz
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      9 months ago

      I respect that but the images presented to the public were selected to denounce and illustrate horrendous acts commited.

      Here, I’d risk there is a very high risk/probability whatever may be leaked/posted is for pure shock value, with no intention to inform or contextualize.