The EU Commissioner, Thierry Breton met with Twitter CEO Elon Musk on November 30th to discuss the now infamous change in management and the platform’s future with the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which the billionaire will have to adhere to if he wants Twitter to exist in the EU.
As Thierry Breton said: “There is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising.”
Indeed, in a new blog post, outlining the approach of Twitter 2.0, Twitter says: “None of our policies have changed. Our approach to policy enforcement will rely more heavily on de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.”
But that’s not entirely true. Social Media Today points out that the COVID misinformation policy has been mysteriously dropped. Going on to say: “Musk seems to be trying to play both sides with this approach – rather than removals and suspensions, Musk’s hoping that he can reduce the presence of offending tweets and comments, which will be enough to meet the DSA and other regional requirements.”
The reality of the situation is that Musk equates regulation with suppressing free speech, but government bodies don’t agree. So, it’ll be interesting to see who wins out there.
