"EU grills Elon Musk’s X about content moderation and deepfake risks", 8 May 2024

The European Union has deepened the investigation of Elon Musk-owned social network, X, that it opened back in December under the bloc’s online governance and content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA). Confirmed breaches of the regime could be expensive for Musk, since enforcers are empowered to issue fines of up to 6% of a company’s global annual turnover.

...the Commission said it had sent X a formal request for information (RFI) under the DSA, seeking more details about aspects of the ongoing probe. The investigation is on illegal content risks, manipulative design, shortcomings in ads transparency, and platform data access for researchers.

The RFI also targets some fresh concerns, and the EU is asking X about its content moderation activities and resources in light of its latest Transparency report (another DSA requirement). The report revealed X has slashed the headcount of its content moderation team by almost one-fifths (20%) since the previous report in October 2023.

The new report also revealed X has reduced linguistic coverage of content moderation within the EU from 11 official languages to seven. That’s a particular bugbear for the Commission, which has raised the issue before in longer standing efforts pressuring platforms to tackle content harms.

Another fresh EU concern relates to X’s approach to generative AI. The Commission said it’s seeking further details on “risk assessments and mitigation measures linked to the impact of generative AI tools on electoral processes, dissemination of illegal content, and protection of fundamental rights.”

The latest RFI to X gives the platform until May 17 to respond to its questions about content moderation resources and generative AI. It must get the other requested information to the Commission by May 27.

X did not respond to requests for comment.