1y ago

EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation

www.theguardian.com EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation

Musk is told his platform, now known as X, must comply with new laws designed to combat fake news and Russian propaganda

The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.

The report analysed the ratio of disinformation for a new report laying bare for the first time the scale of fake news on social media across the EU, with millions of fake accounts removed by TikTok and LinkedIn.

Facebook was the second worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.

Nevertheless, Facebook and other tech giants, including Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to the code of practice the EU drew up to ensure they could get ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws.

Twitter left the code of practice but it is obliged under the new law to comply with the rules or face a ban across the EU.

World News @lemmy.ml

EU warns Elon Musk after Twitter found to have highest rate of disinformation

www.theguardian.com /technology/2023/sep/26/eu-warns-elon-musk-that-twitter-x-must-comply-with-fake-news-laws

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59 comments

All journalists should get off of it today. Right now. Not tomorrow but now.
- Honestly, yesterday. As soon as the rebranding changed the past form of tweeting from twat the last thing of value on that platform was lost.
  
  All the ones that have stayed have told everyone exactly what their real priorities are.

I liked to follow certain niche content creators on Twitter but the platform has become unusable since Elon took over. Genuinely sad.
- I'm really disheartened that most of the people I follow on twitter haven't moved to other platforms, or if they did they decided to go to bluesky that is the same shit as twitter (or is bound to be in a few years).
  
  So what you're saying it that you're intolerant of opposing viewpoints and those that don't childishly use cancel culture against somebody they disagree with...cool! At least you own it!
- There are Twitter-->Fedi bots you can follow for most "notable" figures. Obviously you can't interact with them and you'll only see replies from other "notable" figures, but I see that as a bonus.

Melon Husk will probably treat that as a win. It's confirmation that what he is doing is working and he's aggregating the right (not as in "correct") people on his platform.

Can someone give me an example of when a country warned a company about their behavior/practices that actually made a change? Because to me, it seems the companies (Amazon/Twitter etc.) do whatever they want regardless of what country doesn’t like it.
- The new laws under the DSA will enable "structural remedies" for consistent non-compliance, and it requires fighting disinformation. This is the EU telling him to shape up or risk forced divestment.
  The question is whether they will make good on it, or who blinks first.
  
  Berlaymont doesn't blink. They also don't bluff. It's a civil service born as the administrative arm of a trade cartel, as a company you can safely assume that anything they're saying is an offer you can't refuse.
- Apple has been taking a rightful beating by the EU, for one.
- the EU has been making a change for many years now.
  in the EU we now have free roaming, standardized charging ports (you're welcome, by the way) to which even apple had to follow suit, standardized charging bricks, protection from unwanted cookies, data safety laws, online purchase protection, right to return, and so on.... i can make the list longer but i think you get the picture.
- Only when a large enough market passes legislation that actually has teeth. Look at the GDPR.
- True, and that's the kind of enterprise to which in Italy we gave the collective name of mafia.

Musk has already left millions of dollars in advertiser funds on the table in the name of "free speech". He's not going to comply.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
The EU has issued a warning to Elon Musk to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda, after X – formerly known as Twitter – was found to have the highest ratio of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.
Facebook was the second worst offender, according to the first ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force in August.
Nevertheless, Facebook and other tech giants, including Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to the code of practice the EU drew up to ensure they could get ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws.
The 200-page report is an account of the work the large platforms have done in the first six months of 2023 to prepare for compliance with the new law and lifts the lid on the behind-the-scenes efforts made by Facebook and others to crack down on Russian propaganda, hate speech and other disinformation.
“The Russian state has engaged in the war of ideas to pollute our information space with half truth and lies to create a false image that democracy is no better than autocracy,” said Jourová.
YouTube, owned by Google, told the EU it had removed more than “400 channels involved in coordinated influence operations linked to the Russian-state sponsored Internet Research Agency”.
The original article contains 788 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 70%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- The original article contains 788 words
  Damn this must be Elon's favourite article

oh this'll really do it this time. disinformation. galling.

NOTE:
We all probably want Musk to 'Shut it down', or EU to force him to shut it down.
But isn't that exactly what certain countries have been asking for, for a long time now??
Protests are usually coordinated via Twitter,
- There are far better platforms to organize a protest on, like basically anything with e2e encryption.
  
  "Better" is not always quite as easy.
  Sometimes large public reach is incredibly important (and sometimes even more important than e2e encryption). So yes, for many things having a private medium is the way better choice, but for others the tradeoff between that and having a large reach works differently (and yes, obviously a super-secure, unmonitored medium with huge reach would probably be the best for many things, but I'm not aware of such a thing).
  As an example, the 2011 Egyptian revolution was to a large degree organized over Twitter. There's a lot to be said about the suboptimal tool you can use versus the perfect tool that doesn't help.
  
  How do you figure E2EE will do anything for you on platforms where you're publically posting content?
- WERE. Twitter is dead.

Why is it bad when China does this but laudable when the EU does it
- How are they similar?
  
  bOth SidEs BaD
  
  Well for one they both have laws that social media must remove what they consider disinformation. It was a huge controversy when reddit et al agreed to abide by Chinas rules, and now people are attacking them for not abiding by the same rule from the EU.
- Even if we ignore the bad faith shit you tried to pull: Because the EU is cool and China is a dictatorial piece of trash.

Oh no, people are saying stupid shit on a discussion platform. Someone bring in the government to shut it down!!!!

59 comments