Pressure is mounting around Elon Musk.
“Today we are taking further steps to shed light on the compliance of X’s recommendation systems” with the European Union’s Digital Services Regulation (DSA), said the European Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen.
Brussels is under pressure from MEPs and member states to act firmly, while the boss of X is suspected of manipulating its algorithms to support the far right in Europe.
In the run-up to the elections at the end of February in Germany, Elon Musk has regularly shown his support for the AfD, the German far-right party. But the new European measures are “independent” of its positions which relate to freedom of expression, the EU clarified.
The Commission on Friday asked the American microblog network to provide before February 15 “internal documentation on its recommendation systems and on any recent modifications made to them”. In addition, it announced a “preservation order”, which requires the platform to “preserve internal documents and information regarding future changes in the design and operation of its recommendation algorithms, for the period from January 17, 2025 by 31 December 2025”, unless the Commission’s ongoing investigation is concluded before this date. This investigation was opened in December 2023.
Finally, the Commission issued a “request for access to certain commercial APIs of X”, technical interfaces allowing direct access to content to verify the moderation and virality of accounts.
Assessment of “systemic risks”
“These measures will allow the Commission services to take into account all relevant facts in the complex assessment of the systemic risks” of the platform and the way in which it mitigates them, explained the European executive in a press release.
Since the opening of this investigation into
On the other hand, the social network was formally implicated last July for three alleged offenses: deception of users with blue checkmarks supposed to certify the sources of information, insufficient transparency around advertisements, non-compliance with the access obligation data from the platform by approved researchers. For each of them, and for lack of compliance, the Commission could impose heavy fines on Elon Musk.
Ideological battle
For his part, the billionaire, close to American President-elect Donald Trump, is waging an ideological battle, in line with the American right, against the DSA, which he describes as an instrument of censorship to which he refuses to submit. This new regulation, which fully entered into force last year, aims to enforce within the EU limits to freedom of expression, generally defined by national law, and which already existed, such as the ban on racist insults in France or the diffusion of Nazi symbols in Germany.
“We are determined to ensure that all platforms operating in the EU comply with our legislation, which aims to make the online environment fair, safe and democratic for all European citizens,” underlined Henna Virkkunen.
Around thirty MEPs expressed their “deep concerns about Elon Musk’s ‘interference’ and ‘smear campaigns’ in Europe on Thursday, urging the Commission to act. ‘Elon Musk is not only a foreign billionaire, he is a future member of the Trump administration who attacks, without batting an eyelid, the best allies of the United States”, alerted these elected officials from the right, left and center, in a letter addressed to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. A debate is planned for Tuesday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on the accusations against the boss of X and how to respond to them.