Evgenia Sokolenko17:04, 26.09.23

If Musk does nothing, the X social network will be threatened with a ban in the EU.

The European Union has warned Elon Musk of the need to comply with new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda , as his social network X (formerly Twitter) showed the highest level of disinformation of any popular social network.

“This weapon of mass manipulation is aimed both at Russians and at Europeans and the rest of the world. All the more so as we should expect the Kremlin and others to be active before our European elections,” said Vice President of the European Commission Vira Yurova, quoted by The Gurdian

Most social networks have agreed to work with the EU on a voluntary code of conduct to set industry standards for fact-checking and other measures. The EU threatened that if Musk does not do anything, the X social network will be threatened with a ban in the EU.

“X, formerly Twitter, which is no longer subject to the code, is the platform with the most disinformation posts… There are strict legal obligations. So my message to Twitter/X is that you must comply. We will watch what you are doing,” Yurova emphasized.

She talked about the steps other platforms have taken to combat Russian influence. In the first four months of the year, Google closed more than 400 channels that participated in Russian disinformation. Meta has expanded its fact-checking partnership to 22 languages ​​in the EU. 37% of users unsubscribe when notified of fake news, which shows how consumers value misinformation labeling.

Propaganda in Musk’s social network

In early March, the BBC published the results of its own journalistic investigation, which showed that  Twitter had stopped fighting Russian and Chinese propaganda . In particular, I removed the restrictions from the Kremlin accounts  – the accounts of Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry are recommended to users without any restrictions.

X Elon Musk’s social network (formerly Twitter) played an important role in the fact that  Russian propaganda about Ukraine reached a larger number of people than before the start of the war. As The Washington Post reports, this is evidenced by the results of a study published this week by the European Commission.

In addition to X Mask, the spread of propaganda was also significant on Instagram, Telegram and Facebook owned by Meta Corporation.

(C)UNIAN 2023