Report: Musk is considering withdrawing Twitter successor X from the EU

The trigger was the tech billionaire’s dissatisfaction with the DSA digital law, the website “Business Insider” wrote on Thursday night, citing a person familiar with the company. The DSA Act (Digital Services Act) obliges large online platforms to take consistent and quick action against, among other things, hate speech.

X recently received a list of questions from the EU Commission, which wants to know more about how the service meets its obligations. The reason was evidence of the spread of calls for violence and misinformation following the attack on Israel by the Islamist Hamas.

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton referred, among other things, to reports of manipulated images and recordings from video games that were passed off as real recordings. Musk showed incomprehension about the questions. There are high penalties for DSA violations.

Half of the workforce laid off

According to Business Insider, Musk discussed making X no longer available in the EU or blocking access for users in the region. After buying Twitter for around $44 billion, Musk laid off more than half of the workforce. The teams responsible for content control were also severely affected. The tech billionaire, who represents political views on the American right, claimed that before the takeover, Twitter had placed too many restrictions on free speech.

Musk initially did not respond to the report – and X generally answers press inquiries with the brief sentence that they are busy at the moment. After the takeover, he suggested reducing the service only to the USA in order to save costs, wrote “Business Insider”.

The Facebook group Meta does not allow its Twitter competitor service Threads, which was launched this year, to be used in the region, citing EU digital laws. In the case of Threads, however, observers tend to assume that the restrictions on combining data from different services, even under the umbrella of a group, are the reason for this. The rules stipulate that the express consent of the users is necessary.

info By clicking on the icon you can add the keyword to your topics.

info
By clicking on the icon you open your “my topics” page. They have of 15 keywords saved and would have to remove keywords.

info By clicking on the icon you can remove the keyword from your topics.

Add the topic to your topics.