The rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), will be debated in the European Parliament Tuesday, as dozens of lawmakers pile pressure on Brussels to enforce measures aimed at taming the worst excesses of social media.
But the law’s detractors — including hard-right members of the EU parliament itself — support Musk and Zuckerberg’s argument, and accuse Brussels of censoring free speech.
The DSA does not define what is legal or illegal online in the European Union.
What it does is force digital companies, big and small, to ensure there is an effective system in place to report and remove content that breaches existing national or EU laws.
In other words, it makes sure that if it is forbidden in the real world, it is banned on the world wide web too.
For example, Nazi symbols are outlawed in Germany while several European countries including France and the Netherlands prohibit denying the Holocaust.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen categorically rejects the censorship charge.
“Free speech is a fundamental value of the EU. The aim of the DSA is the protection of fundamental rights,” she said on X Saturday.
The DSA does not force platforms to use fact-checking to moderate online content.
The EU does however support such initiatives, considering fact-checking to be a useful tool to combat misinformation and disinformation.
At the heart of the law is a requirement for companies to subdue the risks their platforms pose, for example to children and vulnerable adults.
When Zuckerberg announced the end of Meta’s US fact-checking programme, he said he would turn to “Community Notes”, like those used by Musk’s social media platform X.
Rather than professional fact-checkers, this model hands over the duty of debunking falsehoods to ordinary users, who can add comments and links to posts.
It is not yet known if the EU believes this system complies with the law as European regulators are currently probing its effectiveness as part of an investigation into X launched in December 2023.
Since his outbursts against European leaders and an online chat this month with German far-right party leader Alice Weidel, Musk has attracted concerns from dozens of EU lawmakers about his “interference” in Germany’s elections.
Musk’s actions are allowable under EU rules protecting freedom of speech.
But the world’s biggest platforms have a duty to analyse what risks their systems pose for public debate and elections, and to take steps to reduce the dangers.
The EU last month opened an investigation into TikTok following allegations it was used by Russia to sway the result of Romania’s later annulled presidential election.
There are also suspicions X’s algorithms are boosting far-right messages, but proving such potential biases and their impact on elections is “very difficult”, said Alexandre de Streel, an expert at the Centre on Regulation in Europe think tank.
