The social media platform called X has just achieved dubious fame. The app, which was called Twitter until some time ago, is the first company to be subject to European Union proceedings for violations against the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA will only apply to most companies in the EU from 2024, but for some particularly large ones – so-called “very large online platforms” – it has been in effect since August of this year. It is only logical that the EU’s procedural hammer is now coming down on the head of X boss Elon Musk. The wandering Tesla boss with his stumbling platform is an all too easy victim. The blame for this is none other than Musk himself.
The bots are more intrusive than ever
In just over a year, Musk has turned an occasionally profitable, respected, and dearly loved platform into a loss-making hellhole of conspiracy theories and dubious Bitcoin influencers.
In the name of fighting bots, i.e. fake user accounts, Musk has introduced a subscription model that makes it harder to distinguish between bots and real people. Anyone who still uses X knows that bots that want to sell users either pornography or cryptocurrencies are now more intrusive than ever.
Musk hoped to make the X less dependent on advertising revenue with its subscription model. That failed. Even if the number of one million paying customers recently reported in the media is correct, that does not begin to compensate for the losses caused by fleeing advertising customers. Musk has alienated many people. Ad revenue is likely to fall further after Musk sold all advertisers at the end of November hurled a neat “Fuck You”. and accused her of blackmail.
Musk probably knew that his subscriptions wouldn’t save X anytime soon. In order to improve cash flow, he kicked out a good three quarters of the old Twitter workforce immediately after taking office as CEO. These included many employees who had to deal with government regulations due to content moderation or compliance.
All these steps are now taking their toll.
Consequently, after the attack on Israel on October 7th, Hamas propaganda spread unchecked on X. On the one hand, terrorist propaganda counts as freedom of expression in Musk’s absolutist understanding of the term. On the other hand, there may simply not have been enough employees left to delete the propaganda before it spread.
Surprise: Anyone who fires employees has fewer employees afterwards
It would also not be surprising if the… Transparency report that X sent to the EU after the first inquiries, actually showed severe deficits. At the beginning of the year, Musk also kicked out the employees responsible for such reports.
This platform under this management is a great target for the Commission, which can now show that it is serious about the rules for the Internet. The procedure is the first emergency for the new Digital Services Act. Critics of the rules fear that the rules on disinformation, hate speech and fake news are too unclear or imprecise to stand up in court.
But in the case of X, that shouldn’t matter. This platform has broken just about every rule, no matter the interpretation.
However, it will probably be a while before the commission can impose the maximum fine of up to six percent of annual sales against Musk’s company. First there is a comprehensive examination. But this alone should really annoy the X owner. The investigators are allowed to request access to the company’s headquarters and must gain insight into the platform’s program code and algorithms. The EU can also summon key company managers for questioning.
An annoyed Musk can do anything. Maybe he’ll come back to an idea that was once said about a year ago: switching off X in Europe. Given the current state of the service, this would be a loss that the EU can bear.