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.
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.
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.)
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.
Either you’re oblivious, or you’re being paid to prop up this “Elon’s just a big dummy” idea.
You know he had a fair bit of involvement in some other businesses, right? His destructive behaviour has been on an entirely different level from the moment he acquired Twitter.
On the one hand, you insult me. Then you make a comment that supports my position. Very odd.
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.
Purging the images off social media will make it easier to deny that the atrocities ever happened. Keep them there in all their gory uglyness , perhaps put a spoiler tag over them to prevent someone with a feeble constitution from accidentally stumbling onto them and accidentally being triggered , but leave them there as evidence of the evil that happened.
It should be archived and put somewhere people can go and access it for historical and educational purposes, but that’s it. It’s horrible, and even knowing what’s happening is ALREADY bad enough.
There are already people denying it ever happened , this why it is needed.
Or what lol. Rich people are above the law.
This is some “quality” reporting. Nowhere does the EU says to remove “graphic violent images”, it’s only asking for transparency in what gets removed and the removal of disinformation and calls to violence.
A porn actress was made accountable for similar actions in less time and with more impact.
That’s irking to limiting press freedom if gruesome photos and videos are forbidden. That ain’t good, EU!
Edit: for all the dumb fucks downvoting me… Where the fuck did I say anything about fake news and propaganda?
Anyone has an idea what turned the American people against the Vietnam war? Exactly. Horrible videos and photos. That’s how the world learns about immoral horrors. And Nazi concentrationi camp photos in all the Nazi German newspapers early on would have changed the course of ww2. But there weren’t any published photos…
2nd Edit: important context I missed: from https://feddit.nl/comment/3638132
The only images the EU asked to have removed are images from unrelated conflicts and video games portrayed as geniune images of the current events, so blatant disinformation.
It’s in the request made by the EU. The Politico article made up the part where all graphic images are to be removed.
Get out of here with your silly US-centric idea of “absolute free speech”. Pretty much every civilized country in the world has boundaries to what is considered acceptable.
And even the US does (though they are fewer than elsewhere, granted).
But for some reason the US has produced this myth that absolute freedom of speech (which it doesn’t have) somehow is the best possible choice (which it isn’t).
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.
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.
Yeah, I see denouncing and illustrating terrorist attacks as a good thing.
If that is Net Revenue, I have some bad news for the EU. 🤣🤣🤣
I think you’re thinking of profits, which is revenue minus costs.
EU fines are a percentage of global revenue, which means all the money you make in any way, anywhere in the world, before subtracting any bullshit.
Which was $4.4 billion in 2022 and is estimated to be roughly $3 billion for 2023, so the maximum fine would be 180-264 million depending on which figure is used.
For comparison, the net loss (not profit) for 2022 for twitter was 270 million.Per occasion, and the Commission can also create a moderation enforcement team specifically for Twitter, basically forcing Twitter to have moderation, and put the cost of said moderation on Twitter, as charges separate to the fine.
The “brilliance” of Elon’s plan: he is impervious to EU fines because he doesn’t make any money.
He makes a lot ofmoney - he just loses more.
If that is gross revenue, I have bad news for the EU. “X” is, IIRC, operating in the red since Musk bought it.
He’s gonna fuck this up, too.
Has it been 24 hrs yet?
