EU gives Elon Musk 24-hour ultimatum to confront alleged misinformation on X about Israel-Hamas war

A European commissioner has given Elon Musk, the owner of the X social media platform, a 24-hour ultimatum to confront misinformation on the platform concerning the Israel-Hamas war, citing a potential breach of EU law.

European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton warned misinformation flooding the platform could be in violation of the bloc's Digital Services Act amid recent changes from the platform allowing sensitive and graphic media.

"Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indications that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU," Breton wrote in an open letter to Musk. "Let me remind you that the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation."

He added, "I urge you to ensure a prompt, accurate and complete response to this request within the next 24 hours. We will include your answer in our assessment file on your compliance with the DSA. I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed."

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The EU commissioner then offered Musk three actions he should take to assure his compliance with the EU law, including clearly stating X’s protocols on identifying misinformation and to be diligent in suppressing "risks to public security… stemming from disinformation."

"First, you need to be very transparent and clear on what content is permitted under your terms and consistently and diligently enforce your own politics. This is particularly relevant when it comes to violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform. Your latest changes in public interest policies that occurred over night left many European users uncertain," Breton said in the letter.

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The letter continued, "Second, when you receive notices of illegal content in the EU, you must be timely, diligent and objective in taking action and removing the relevant content when warranted. We have, from qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite flags from relevant authorities.

"Third, you need to have in place proportionate and effective mitigation measures to tackle the risks to public security and civic discourse stemming from disinformation. Public media and civil society organizations widely report instances of fake and manipulated images and facts circulating on your platform in the EU, such as repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games. This appears to be manifestly false or misleading information."

An unmoved Musk responded an hour-and-a-half later, challenging the EU statement.

"Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports," Musk responded. "Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them."

In another post, Musk again pushed back: "We take our actions in the open. No back room deals. Please post your concerns explicitly on this platform."

Community Notes, an account that regularly supplies notices and additional context to posts on the platform, also shared a post thanking contributors who are addressing "more than 500 unique notes relating to the attacks and unfolding events are being shown on X."

The post said notes that have appeared on posts "related to the attacks cover a wide range of topics from out-of-context war footage, to unrelated or outdated protest/celebration videos, to fake videos made with game simulators, to claims of US funding related to conflict, to claims about specific events having taken place in the conflict, and more."

The post does not mention any "false" information as the EU commissioner alleged.

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Musk has pushed for allowing more transparency of information on X than is allowed on other platforms or mainstream media — a reversal from the previous owners of Twitter who coordinated with the federal government to suppress or censor certain content.

"X has clear policies on content and behavior that violates X rules and we take the appropriate action against content and accounts that violate our rules," X says on its platform use guidelines. "However, we recognize that sometimes it may be in the public interest to allow people to view posts that would otherwise violate our policies."

It adds, "We consider content to be in the public interest if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern."