Thierry Breton Mulai Investigasi Platform X Milik Elon Musk, Terhadap Pelanggaran DSA

EU industrial head Thierry Breton (photo: Twitter @ThierryBreton)

JAKARTA - EU industry chief official Thierry Breton on Thursday, October 12 opened an investigation into Elon Musk's X. This is the first investigation under a new EU technology regulation, having previously given a warning to social media platforms TikTok and Meta because it is considered insufficient to address the spread of disinformation after Hamas' attack on Israel.

"The three platforms have experienced a surge in false content related to the Israeli and Hamas conflicts, with disinformation that appears to be the most common on X," social media researchers said.

Breton's move is increasing pressure on TikTok and Meta to remove illegal and harmful content from their platforms in accordance with the Digital Service Act (DSA).

Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas against 🇮🇱, we have indications of X/Twitter being used to disseminate illegal content & disinformation in the EU.Urgent letter to @elonmusk on #DSA obligations ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/avMm1LHq54

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) October 10, 2023

Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas against worry, we have indications of X/Twitter being used to disseminate illegal content & disinformation in the EU.Urgent letter to @elonmusk on #DSA obligations pic.twitter.com/avMm1LHq54

The DSA, which took effect in November last year, requires large online platforms and search engines to work more to address illegal content and risks to public security, as well as protect their services from manipulative engineering.

CEO X, Linda Yaccarino, said last Thursday that her platform had removed hundreds of accounts linked to Hamas and taken action to remove or label tens of thousands of content since the attack, in response to a letter from Breton.

"We have sent a formal request for information to X, the first step in our investigation to determine compliance with DSA," Breton said in a post on X.

While X refused to comment.

They have until October 18 to provide details on how their crisis response protocol is activated and functioning, as well as until October 31 for other issues.

According to researchers, Musk's actions to cut free academic access to previous data tools made it harder to track keywords and hashtags, forcing researchers to manually filter content to track disinformation.

Since taking over Twitter, Musk has cut the workforce to around 1,500 out of 7,500 employees to reduce costs, including many working on content moderation, identifying and lowering coordinated propaganda campaigns, as well as reliable content curation.

X has also lost two heads of trust and security as well as one head of brand security, which works to prevent advertising from appearing next to malicious content. The company faces fines of up to 6% of its global turnover if it is proven to violate DSA.

On Thursday, Breton gave an ultimatum to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to step up efforts to remove illegal and harmful content from the short video app within 24 hours.

Breton's warning in a letter to Chew, which was first seen by Reuters, follows a similar letter to the owner X, previously named Twitter, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms. Breton then posted the letter on the Bluesky social media platform.

Breton said in a letter to TikTok, which is owned by Chinese conglomerate ByteDance that he had indications that the platform was used to spread illegal and disinformation content in the European Union after the Hamas attack.

"With your platform being widely used by children and adolescents, you have a special obligation to protect them from violent content that describes hostage-taking and other graphical videos reportedly circulating widely on your platform without appropriate precautions," he said.