Don't Threaten Europe With a Good Time
Posted by
Reagen
Oct 18 '23, 16:44
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In recent weeks Elon Musk has suggested Twitter could stop being accessible in Europe in order to avoid new regulation enacted by the European Commission.
Musk is increasingly frustrated with having to comply with the Digital Services Act, according to a person familiar with the company. The Tesla billionaire, who acquired Twitter, now called X, a year ago for $44 billion, has discussed simply removing the app's availability in the region, or blocking users in the European Union from accessing it, the person said. This would be similar to the way Meta is currently blocking people in Europe from using its new app Threads.
The DSA took effect in August and requires large online platforms like X to have effective and transparent systems in place for the moderation and removal of false, misleading, and harmful information. With a wave of misinformation regarding the Israel-Hamas war quickly going viral on X, the platform is likely already in violation of the DSA.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said last week the Commission is officially "investigating X's compliance" with the new law and formally requested detailed information from the platform on its actions to mitigate and remove harmful or toxic information.
Cash-strapped X could face a fine if it's found in violation of the DSA. The Commission can impose "periodic penalty payments," or fines, up to 6% of a company's global revenue.
Musk has fired most of X's trust and safety team, which was once hundreds of people tasked with moderating and overseeing contention on the platform.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea of drastically limiting the app's reach. Almost immediately after acquiring the company, he suggested as a cost-cutting measure limiting Twitter's operations to only the US, two other people familiar with the company said.
"That's part of the reason he gutted international teams the first chance he got," one of the people familiar said, referring to some of the thousands of employees Musk has laid off or fired since taking over the company.
A winnowing down of Twitter's international presence came up again earlier this year, when Musk decided to close nearly all of the company's roughly two dozen global offices, including most in Europe and India, as well as those in Australia, Africa, and South Korea. At the time, Musk suggested the platform, still known as Twitter, should shift to operating only in the countries where it was most popular, so the US, the UK, and Japan.
Musk and a spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment. The platform's press line has an automatic reply stating, "Busy now, please check back later." A representative of the European Commission also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although Musk has yet to pull X out of any country, essentially no employees remain in Europe, one of the people said, as offices in Paris, Madrid, and Berlin are closed. Dublin, however, remains open. London, too, which is within the UK and is no longer part of Europe, and has proposed separate obligations for large platforms.
Europe accounts for about 9% of X's global monthly active user base, according to Apptopia data, although daily usage has dropped significantly in the last three months, falling between 10% and 40% throughout the region. Downloads and usage are down in almost every country the app operates in.
X employees have come to understand that any idea from Musk, no matter how illogical it may seem, can quickly become a reality. Charging people to use the platform was also one of his earliest ideas, and is now being rolled out. And Musk is known to be mercurial and reactive. Although Musk has met at least twice this year with Commissioner Breton about what X needs to do to comply with the DSA, he's lost patience with the situation, one of the people familiar said.
On X, Musk seemed to reply sarcastically to a post from Commissioner Breton on X's DSA compliance and insisted he did not understand what was being asked of him. He then said he wouldn't engage in "backroom deals."
"He's very quick to drop the hammer on anyone who he doesn't like," one of the people familiar said, "or who says something that he views as challenging him."
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