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The European Union announced today <\/a>it is opening an investigation into X for allegedly spreading illegal content and disinformation, including terrorist and violent content and hate speech. This comes a few days after the EU warned X<\/a> for failing to take action on illegal content on its platform after Saturday\u2019s deadly attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n This is the first investigation<\/a> opened under the EU\u2019s Digital Services Act (DSA). Per the DSA, X is obligated, as as \u201cvery large online platform\u201d to reduce risks caused by disinformation and act on reports of illegal content. Since the attacks, posts identified as false by by fact-checkers have circulated on X, purporting to show footage from the attacks inside Israel and Israel\u2019s retaliation on targets in the Gaza Strip. These include footage filmed last month in Egypt and a clip that claims to show Hamas missile attacks on Israel but is actually from a video game.<\/p>\n Many employees overseeing content moderation at X<\/a>, including its human rights team, were eliminated during X\u2019s mass layoffs last year, as part of Elon Musk\u2019s bid to improve the platform\u2019s profitability.<\/p>\n In his warning to Musk on Tuesday, EU\u2019s internal market commissioner Thierry Breton wrote that the EU has \u201cindications\u201d that X is being used to spread illegal content and disinformation in the EU and reminded X of its need to moderate content. He added that when the company get notices of illegal content in the EU, it has be to \u201ctimely, diligent and objective\u201d in removing the content and that the EU had \u201cfrom qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite flags from relevant authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n The EU asked Musk to contact relevant law enforcement authorities and Europol, giving him a deadline of 24 hours to respond to requests, including one about DSA compliance. Breton warned that an investigation may be opened and penalties imposed.<\/p>\n In response to the warning, X CEO Linda Yaccarino released a letter saying that a leadership group had been convened to consider X\u2019s response and \u201ctens of thousands\u201d of pieces of content had been removed, along with \u201cthousands\u201d of posts and \u201chundreds\u201d of accounts linked to terrorist groups, violence or extremism. She also said that the company formerly known as Twitter is responding to law enforcement requests, but that it had not received any requests from Interpol at the time.<\/p>\n X said on its safety account<\/a> that there had been more than 50 million posts globally over the past two days that referenced the weekend\u2019s terrorist attack, underlining the scope of content generated. By Thursday afternoon<\/a>, Hamas\u2019 attack had killed more than 1,200 people, said the Israeli Military, and at least 1,537 people had been killed in Gaza by Israel\u2019s retaliatory strikes, said the Gaza Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n Now that an investigation has been opened, X has until October 18 to provide information about \u201cthe activation and functioning of X\u2019s crisis response protocol\u201d to the EU, and until October 31 to respond to its other requests. The EU can impose finds for disinformation and impose period penalties for failures to respond by its deadlines. The EU is investigating X\u2019s compliance with the DSA, including its policies on notices about illegal content, complaint handling, risk assessment and what measures it is taking to mitigate risks identified.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Musk pulled out of the EU\u2019s Code of Practice<\/a> on online disinformation. In a response, Breton said \u201cTwitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation. But obligations remain. You can run but you can\u2019t hide.\u201d<\/p>\n TikTok and Meta have also been warned by the EU over disinformation<\/a>, but in September, the EU said X is the worst for spreading disinformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n