The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.
The report analysed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn.
Facebook was the second worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.
Nevertheless, Facebook and other tech giants, including Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to the code of practice the EU drew up to ensure they could get ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws.
Twitter left the code of practice but it is obliged under the new law to comply with the rules or face a ban across the EU.
All journalists should get off of it today. Right now. Not tomorrow but now.
All the journos I am aware of are on substack/bluesky/whatever else they’re flocking to this week, and also on twitter, because of course they are.
Honestly, yesterday. As soon as the rebranding changed the past form of tweeting from twat the last thing of value on that platform was lost.
All the ones that have stayed have told everyone exactly what their real priorities are.
I liked to follow certain niche content creators on Twitter but the platform has become unusable since Elon took over. Genuinely sad.
I’m really disheartened that most of the people I follow on twitter haven’t moved to other platforms, or if they did they decided to go to bluesky that is the same shit as twitter (or is bound to be in a few years).
Melon Husk will probably treat that as a win. It’s confirmation that what he is doing is working and he’s aggregating the right (not as in “correct”) people on his platform.
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The new laws under the DSA will enable “structural remedies” for consistent non-compliance, and it requires fighting disinformation. This is the EU telling him to shape up or risk forced divestment.
The question is whether they will make good on it, or who blinks first.
Berlaymont doesn’t blink. They also don’t bluff. It’s a civil service born as the administrative arm of a trade cartel, as a company you can safely assume that anything they’re saying is an offer you can’t refuse.
the EU has been making a change for many years now.
in the EU we now have free roaming, standardized charging ports (you’re welcome, by the way) to which even apple had to follow suit, standardized charging bricks, protection from unwanted cookies, data safety laws, online purchase protection, right to return, and so on… i can make the list longer but i think you get the picture.
Apple has been taking a rightful beating by the EU, for one.
Only when a large enough market passes legislation that actually has teeth. Look at the GDPR.
True, and that’s the kind of enterprise to which in Italy we gave the collective name of mafia.
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oh this’ll really do it this time. disinformation. galling.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.
Facebook was the second worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.
Nevertheless, Facebook and other tech giants, including Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to the code of practice the EU drew up to ensure they could get ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws.
The 200-page report is an account of the work the large platforms have done in the first six months of 2023 to prepare for compliance with the new law and lifts the lid on the behind-the-scenes efforts made by Facebook and others to crack down on Russian propaganda, hate speech and other disinformation.
“The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy,” said Jourová.
YouTube, owned by Google, told the EU it had removed more than “400 channels involved in coordinated influence operations linked to the Russian-state sponsored Internet Research Agency”.
The original article contains 788 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The original article contains 788 words
Damn this must be Elon’s favourite article
Why is it bad when China does this but laudable when the EU does it
How are they similar?
bOth SidEs BaD
Well for one they both have laws that social media must remove what they consider disinformation. It was a huge controversy when reddit et al agreed to abide by Chinas rules, and now people are attacking them for not abiding by the same rule from the EU.
I never knew images of Winnie the Pooh is considered misinformation in China. Oh wait, no its not, they’re just banning it because Xi Jinping’s ego is so fragile that it can’t even handle some harmless memes making fun of him.
To me, that’s the perfect example of the difference between what China is doing and what the EU is doing.
So you’re ok with banning political speech so long as you can post pictures of a cartoon bear?
In what world is political speech considered misinformation. Misinformation by definition is something that doesn’t reflect actual facts. Political speech is just opinions.
If you believe certain political speeches overlap with the definition of misinformation, why would you even defend such a thing?
In what world is political speech considered misinformation
When someone declares it misinformation, like trump calling every story he didn’t like “fake news”. It’s really fashy and the people applauding the EU for this today will end up regretting it later.
Well, then that’s another major difference between what the EU is doing and what China is doing. No person would have the power to singularly decide what is misinformation.
Even if we ignore the bad faith shit you tried to pull: Because the EU is cool and China is a dictatorial piece of trash.
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NOTE:
We all probably want Musk to ‘Shut it down’, or EU to force him to shut it down.
But isn’t that exactly what certain countries have been asking for, for a long time now??
Protests are usually coordinated via Twitter,
There are far better platforms to organize a protest on, like basically anything with e2e encryption.
“Better” is not always quite as easy.
Sometimes large public reach is incredibly important (and sometimes even more important than e2e encryption). So yes, for many things having a private medium is the way better choice, but for others the tradeoff between that and having a large reach works differently (and yes, obviously a super-secure, unmonitored medium with huge reach would probably be the best for many things, but I’m not aware of such a thing).
As an example, the 2011 Egyptian revolution was to a large degree organized over Twitter. There’s a lot to be said about the suboptimal tool you can use versus the perfect tool that doesn’t help.Twitter is not long for this world. It’s hemorrhaging users. The majority of active accounts that remain are Elon’s fan club and bots. BlueSky will replace it as a town hall.
I agree with the demise of twitter and I hope that it will be swift. I’m just saying that technical quality is not always the deciding factor.
On a related note I see no reason to suspect bluesky to take a significantly different trajectory. Jack and Elon share a lot more of the relevant/problematic views that might be obvious at first.
Because Jack knows it’s bad business to do what Elon’s doing. Jack is more cunning and will likely cultivate this just as he did with Twitter and then sell it again. The cycle repeats
WERE. Twitter is dead.
