The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has emerged as a leading voice in US politics.
Brussels:
The EU’s top digital official wrote to Elon Musk on Monday to remind him of his legal duty to stop the spread of “harmful content” on X, hours before the tech billionaire was scheduled to interview Donald Trump live on the platform.
“With a large audience comes greater responsibility,” the bloc’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, posted on X, alongside the letter outlining Musk’s obligations to combat illegal content and disinformation under EU law.
The European Union has an ongoing investigation into X, formerly Twitter, under its landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires digital companies to effectively police online content to protect users from harm.
“DSA obligations apply without exception or discrimination to the moderation of the entire user community and content on X (including you as a user with over 190 million followers),” Breton wrote to Musk.
Breton said the warning was motivated by the “risk of amplification of potentially harmful content in the EU,” citing Musk’s upcoming interview with Trump and also referring to his recent inflammatory comments about far-right riots in the United Kingdom.
“We are monitoring potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that could incite violence, hatred and racism in conjunction with major political – or social – events around the world,” he wrote.
“My services and I will be extremely vigilant to any evidence pointing to violations of the ASD and will not hesitate to make full use of our toolbox, including through the adoption of interim measures, if warranted to protect EU citizens from serious harm “, Breton wrote.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has emerged as a leading voice in US politics, but is accused of turning the platform formerly known as Twitter into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories since acquiring it in 2022.
New analysis from the Center for Countering Digital Hate shows that Musk’s false or misleading claims about the US election have been viewed nearly 1.2 billion times on X.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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