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.
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.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Modern “journalists” are almost always scum.
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.
Intent doesn’t matter. People should be allowed to document and post crimes committed against humanity
The pictures are old and don’t relate to what’s happening currently.
Also, what do you think the differences between pre-meditated murder and manslaughter are? Intent absolutely matters.
Intent does matter. It is so inportant it is even relevant in courts of law.
You want the images of the barbarism raging in Israel as we speak to be known to the world and that is a good thing. People need to see the acts being commited there.
Yet twitter is not, in any way, the platform for it, as those same images are very easily twisted out of context and thrown out in a fashion that will only serve to further entrench extreme positions and used for sheer shock value.
These are human lives being laid to waste, not a social media circus for browny points.
I’m not sure, but I believe this is only for social media sites. You can still document it, but social media isn’t the place. I assume you’d be able to link to that, but not to the images directly, but I’m just guessing.
Yeah, I see denouncing and illustrating terrorist attacks as a good thing.
Yes, which requires an unbiase position, supplying all possible information.
Nowadays, and even more when considering twitter, that is hardly the case.
The pictures are old and unrelated to what’s happening currently.
Which makes it even worse, I’d risk? If the said pictures are unrelated, why are those being pushed forward? Are we voluntarily trying to dumb ourselves?
I should have replied to the person you responded to, you are clearly on the same page I am.
You’re speaking against the propaganda fueled groupthink, that’s a bannable offense.
You should read before you post.
Getting rid of misinformation is great.
That is the goal. The OP article and especially the headline here is misleading.
This is what is in the original letter regarding violent images: „repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games“.
The issue is not violent images per se. The issue is misinformation through violent images that are unrelated to the current events.
Or what lol. Rich people are above the law.
I’m glad to see for once the fines are proportional to revenue, and not a fixed amount. 6% hurts.
Will it hurt though? How are they going to collect the 6%? Do US based banks cooperate with the EU on this kind of thing? What happens if Musk just tells them to go fuck themselves?
I assume EU-based ISPs will be forced to ban access to the website for noncompliance, otherwise it would have literally no teeth whatsoever
That’s actually pretty scary for the Internet.
Nah it’s pretty good for the internet. We also blocked Russian propaganda outlets and shit in the EU. It’s much nicer.
Oh right, I forgot you Europeans didn’t have a first amendment
Guess what
We don’t even have the american constitutionOur laws are older and much more robust than the ones in the US.
They also adapt with the times.
But that just might have to do with the fact that EU politics don’t cater that much to corporations but instead to the people that elected them.
Probably a lot of Xi tter customers headquatered in EU. They can say to their own banks to not send money.
how can settle for that?
when normal people spend years in single cell rooms for small offenses Lmao 🇺🇸🦅😎
This is in the EU, so your emojis don’t make sense. But you are right, rich people get off way too easy the world over.
Xitter is a corporation that doesn’t live in the EU
Sorry, completely off topic and not the place, but …
your comment is perfectly complemented by your username above it.
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You’re thinking of profit. Revenue is all money coming in before expenses. Revenue is still a big number even if they’re losing money.
Also it’s 6% of turnover, not revenue. And world-wide, not just the EU.
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This is not toothless…well it is a bit in that they constantly warn instead of imposing the fines but 6% of revenue has fuck all to do with net profit(which is always positive or else it would be a loss).
I mean, twitter is at the risk of bankruptcy so…
EU can only penalize him on revenue (not profit) in the EU. So likely small fries compared to the billions of dollars of devaluation and advertiser revenue he’s already squandered on his crusade.
He’s gonna fuck this up, too.
He won’t, we all know he won’t. He’d sooner get Twitter banned from Europe than actually try to improve his platform.
The intent is to ruin twitter. That was why he used $22B of Saudi money to buy it.
That is such a win though.
Although the powers that manipulate Elmo won’t like it when they can’t manipulate the politics in the EU anymore.
A porn actress was made accountable for similar actions in less time and with more impact.
It’s almost as if billionaires are untouchable?
Is his goal to get the app banned from Europe?
I could see that being the business plan.
It would be great! Europe will be better without x
X ? You mean X, formerly known as Twitter.
No, they just hate algebra
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.
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.
Has it been 24 hrs yet?
End of Wednesday in Brussels was ~7h ago. So, yes.
So, what is the followup?
Any phrase, request or threat in the from of “do X or be subject to the rules” is inherently flawed.
Why not skip the asking part and go straight to the enforcing the rules part because they’re, you know; the fucking rules.
^ sue em n block em
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.
The better would have been to ban Twitter. People and politics have to understand you can’t talk with irrational people.
Nationalize it.
Governments use twitter, a private, for-profit system, far too much for official communications. Governments should run their own communications systems that the public can interface with.
Poop emoji incoming
Or else what? Small fine? You’ll never see him.
Did you even read the text post? 6% of revenue, because some places have reasonable laws that charge percentages of revenue.
I read it. I was asking a rhetorical question. 6% of X revenue is not 6% of elon revenue, fwiw. Impact is still limited.
They don’t have the legal right to take money directly from Musk as nice as that would be.
Of course impact is going to be limited. The alternative being unlimited? I don’t think Musk deserves most of his wealth, but for the penelty of something like this to be taking literally all of it away would be insane. It’s always going to be limited. That’s basically what laws do. They should be proportional.
The alternative? What alternative?
My only point here is this isn’t going to have any major impact on his day to day operations regardless of how you try to spin my comments. Not sure why this is such an argument for you.
The alternative to them being limited is unlimited. There’s no in between for those words. It’s either limited or it isn’t and is unlimited.
I get wanting more, but what percentage is “right” for you. There has to be a percent that’s acceptable, and anyone can always say it isn’t enough, unless it’s unlimited which would be rediculous.
The alternative to them being limited is unlimited. There’s no in between for those words. It’s either limited or it isn’t and is unlimited.
Mind… blown
Well, it’s revenue not profit, so theoretically it could be money out of his pocket that the social media platform formerly known as Twitter perhaps wouldn’t be able to pay by itself.
