EU ‘closely monitoring’ X following Fico shooting as DSA disinformation investigation continues
Officials responsible for the European Union’s enforcement of the bloc’s e-governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), said on Thursday they were closely monitoring disinformation campaigns on social network Twitter), owned by Elon Musk, following Wednesday’s shooting of Slovak Prime Minister Robert. Fico.
The bloc has been officially investigating , no sanctions were taken.
Yesterday Musk personally responded to – and thus amplified – an article on world health.
Asked to respond to the developments in a Q&A session with the press, as part of a briefing organized by the EU to discuss two Meta DSA investigations announced earlier in the day, a senior Commission official confirmed that it was monitoring content on the platform and analyzing whether there was “any additional evidence” regarding the effectiveness of X’s disinformation mitigation measures – to fuel the ongoing EU investigation.
Reminder: DSA violations can result in fines of up to 6% of annual global revenue, so Musk’s penchant for shitposting could prove costly for the company in the long run, that is- i.e. throughout regulatory enforcement cycles.
Election monitoring in Grok
Thursday also X announced that premium users in the EU can finally get their hands on Musk’s generative AI chatbot, Grok – a tool that has essentially been trained to be politically incorrect (compared to the perceived political correctness of rival efforts like ChatGPT from OpenAI). Musk job briefly to trumpet the development, writing caveman-style: “Grok now available in Europe. »
It turns out that Grok is also on the EU’s DSA watchlist: the top Commission official said today that the EU was in “very close contact with X during the launch of Grok.”
The official suggested that X delayed the launch of some elements of Grok in the region until after the upcoming European Parliament elections, without specifying exactly which features were disabled. We have contacted the Commission for clarification.
“X delayed launching some of the Grok functionality until after the election,” the official told reporters. “Which I think is a recognition on their part that some of these characteristics may present risks in the context of civic discourse and elections in the context of investments that are happening.”
We also contacted X about Grok’s EU launch, but at press time he had not responded to our questions.
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