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Whereas the world continues to surprise what ‘free speech absolutist‘ and gadfly billionaire Elon Musk may imply for the way forward for Twitter, the European Union has chalked up an early PR win within the lengthy sport of platform regulation — extracting settlement from the Tesla founder with its freshly rebooted strategy towards content material coverage.
EU inner market commissioner, Thierry Breton, paid a go to to the would-be Twitter proprietor, Musk, yesterday for a gathering at his gigafactory in Austin, Texas, the place we’re instructed regulation of on-line speech was a key dialogue matter, alongside “mutual curiosity” provide chain chat.
Breton was eager to introduce Musk to the newly agreed Digital Providers Act (DSA), which is able to come into power throughout the bloc within the coming years — possible in early 2023 for bigger platforms similar to Twitter — with the purpose of harmonizing content material governance guidelines and dialling up shopper protections. Breaches of the regulation can entice fines of as much as 6% of world annual turnover.
Requested whether or not the newly agreed regulation matches along with his deliberate strategy for Twitter, Musk responded: “I feel it’s precisely aligned with my pondering”.
“It’s been an excellent dialogue,” Musk additionally stated within the temporary Q&A with Breton. “I agree with every part you stated actually. I feel we’re very a lot of the identical thoughts. And I feel something that my corporations can do that will be helpful to Europe, we wish to do this. That’s what I’m saying.”
“On social media, that they had a constructive change on the affect of the lately adopted EU Digital Providers Act on on-line platforms in areas similar to freedom of speech, algorithm transparency, or person accountability,” a spokesman for Breton’s workplace additionally instructed us — pointing to a “brief video” abstract which was promptly posted to Twitter, post-meeting, the place Musk might be heard making the aforementioned remarks.
Setting apart the awkward physique language between Musk and Breton (defensive vs obsequious), it stays to be seen whether or not the previous may need the final (hole) chuckle — ought to it prove he’s inadvertently highlighted a serious gap within the bloc’s plan.
In current weeks, since information of Musk’a $44BN bid to purchase Twitter broke, he’s instructed his rule of thumb for moderating speech on the social media platform will cleave to native legal guidelines that require the removing of unlawful speech — however depart just about every part else up.
Which might imply he’ll fortunately open the floodgates to poisonous abuse and senseless conspiracy theories — aka ‘authorized however dangerous speech’…
Europe’s grand plan for modernizing platform guidelines, in the meantime, basically sidesteps this fuzzier (controversial) space of authorized however dangerous speech in favor of fixing hard-and-fast guidelines to harmonize speedy takedowns of strictly unlawful stuff (e.g. CSAM; copyright infringement; hate speech in sure markets; one other EU regulation that’s as a consequence of begin making use of this 12 months additionally targets terrorist content material with a one-hour takedown rule).
So it’s maybe no surprise that Musk got here away from the assembly with the EU commissioner professing their approaches align — if Breton stated the principles are centered on tackling unlawful speech. Affirmation bias is a helluva a drug!
That stated, EU lawmakers do have a lot of (softer) mechanisms within the pipe to deal with fuzzier content material issues similar to disinformation — and to set transparency guidelines round political advertisements. So it might be that Musk hasn’t totally grokked all of the methods the bloc intends to strain platform suppliers to not unfold different sorts of poisonous and/or dangerous content material.
If he succeeds in shopping for Twitter, one factor is obvious: Musk shall be fielding many extra requests for conferences from lawmakers at house and overseas. And if he chooses to tug out the speech stops, and let poisonous abuse and damaging disinformation rip, he’ll shortly discover quite a lot of these requests turning into laborious and quick calls for.
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