European Commission Inspects Twitter and Meta Ahead of New Regulations
On Thursday, the EU commissioner responsible for enforcing Europe’s new significant regulations on online content is traveling to San Francisco to ensure that the major platforms are prepared.
Thierry Breton’s two-day visit comes just weeks before the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) comes into full force on the world’s biggest platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, both of which own Meta, as well as TikTok and Twitter.
Breton will meet Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk, who took over the hugely influential platform late last year.
All eyes are on Musk, who since taking ownership of Twitter has sometimes abruptly changed many of the rules about what language is allowed on the site, even if it’s found to be offensive or conveys hate and misinformation — in direct contravention of new EU rules. .
Breton also plans to meet in California with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the technology company behind ChatGPT, and the boss of artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia.
EU lawmakers are in final talks to finalize the Artificial Intelligence Act, another proposed European law that could have a huge impact on big U.S. tech companies.
“I am the executive. I represent the law, which is the will of the state and the will of the people,” Breton told Politico last month when announcing the trip.
In an attempt to reassure Europeans, Musk has agreed to have Twitter undergo a “stress test” by the DSA to see if his platform meets EU standards, although the results are not public.
During a visit to Paris last week, Musk said his intention was to meet the DSA’s requirements.
But with Twitter’s pay cuts and content censoring seedlings decimated, observers doubt whether Musk will be able to stick to his commitment.
‘Easy goal’
The DSA is one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation to govern online content since the advent of social media, placing major obligations on how the world’s largest platforms deal with the free flow of speech.
Like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, the DSA is expected to become a global benchmark as governments worldwide struggle to find ways to curb social media excesses.
To comply with the new rules, Twitter, Meta, TikTok and other platforms are having to invest heavily in building compliance teams just as big tech companies are laying off staff, including their content-policing workforce.
According to the DSA, 19 platforms have been designated as “Very Large Online Platforms” and will be subject to special rules from August 25, when the regulation will come into force in its entirety.
“It’s about what the first enforcement action looks like. Who will be made an example of?” said Yoel Roth, former director of trust and security at Twitter who is now a technology policy fellow at UC Berkeley.
“I think my former employer is an easy target, but what does it look like?” he said in an interview with AFP.
Roth said DSA’s biggest challenge for major platforms will be transparency requirements.
According to the DSA, Meta, Twitter and others must provide officials and researchers with unprecedented access to their algorithms and content decisions.
This is particularly challenging for Metal, which has severely restricted third-party access to data since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, Roth said.
And to make money, Twitter and Reddit have also cut off access to data by charging high fees to outsiders — including researchers — to access their data through APIs that were free until recently.
The wide-ranging DSA contains many other provisions, including the obligation for platforms to appoint a representative in the EU to be responsible for content matters.
Users will also be given unprecedented rights to file an appeal when the platform has issued a takedown order.
For major violations of the DSA rules, tech giants can be fined up to six percent of annual turnover, and if the violations continue, they can be banned from the EU as a last resort.
