Thierry Breton, an EU Commissioner, wrote an urgent letter to Elon Musk about his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, and its lack of content moderation. Breton noted a huge uptick in false information on the site following Hamas’ attacks on Israel over the weekend, and reminded Musk about the EU’s recently passed Digital Services Act—which went into effect in August and governs social media sites’ management of false information. The bloc is urging Musk to enforce “proportionate and effective mitigation measures to tackle the risks to public security and civic discourse stemming from disinformation”—or face penalties set out in the DSA. Breton also asked Musk to respond to his request in the next 24 hours, and noted that Musk’s answer would be included in his DSA compliance assessment.
