The European Union (EU) is ramping up pressure on Elon Musk as the bloc demands that the Twitter boss censors users on his social media platform.
The EU disagrees with Musk’s plans to use volunteer Twitter users and AI to moderate content on the platform.
In response, EU regulators have told Musk to hire more human censors and so-called “fact-checkers,” according to a report by The Financial Times.
Musk has been looking for ways to salvage the loss-making business he acquired for $44 billion last October.
One of Twitter’s main problems was its ongoing attacks against the free speech of the platform’s users due to the company’s relentless pursuit of the “woke” agenda.
Shortly after taking over, Musk terminated over half of Twitter’s staff and gutted the company’s censorship department.
Like many other social media platforms, Twitter uses a mix of AI and human moderators to police content.
However, unlike Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, it does not rely on sleazy left-wing “fact-checkers.”
In place of “fact-checkers,” Twitter has a volunteer moderators feature called Community Notes.
Community Notes allows other Twitter users to counter misleading information.
The EU is concerned that Twitter might not be able to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA requires large platforms to be more proactive in the censorship of content.
Twitter and other large platforms are expected to comply with the new censorship law by September 2023.
In meetings with Twitter, EU regulators have acknowledged that Community Notes could flag misleading information, the same way Wikipedia editors achieve the same result.
In a statement, the European Commission said: “We believe that ensuring sufficient staff is necessary for a platform to respond effectively to the challenges of content moderation, which are particularly complex in the field of hate speech.
“We expect platforms to ensure the appropriate resources to deliver on their commitments.”
