Brussels has expanded the investigation it already had open on X (former Twitter) in the midst of a challenge from technology billionaire and far-right activist Elon Musk, owner of the platform. The European Commission has extended the investigation it was already carrying out on the social network X, whose owner is a close ally of the president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, consisting of determining whether the company does enough to moderate the content it offers. This measure comes after the reactions of several European governments and parliamentary groups in the European Parliament against the richest man on the planet with accusations of interference in the German elections, for his support of the extremist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), and with the suspicion of that his attitude has stimulated challenging attitudes on the part of other technological giants such as Meta.
The step that the Commission takes this Friday consists, specifically, of expanding on three fronts the file that it has already had open on X since December 2023. The first is to require that it send documentation on the recommendation system before February 15 of content to its users and the recent changes that it may have added to that mechanism. The second involves an order to preserve internal documents and information about changes in the algorithms used between January 17 – that is, this Friday – and December 31, 2025. The last one seeks to understand and investigate how the content moderation and the virality of their accounts.
The measure adopted this Friday by the department headed by Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen will probably delay the resolution of the already open investigation. This file was already in the final phase, since Brussels had presented preliminary conclusions in which it accused the company of failing to comply with the European digital services regulation (DSA, for its acronym in English) due to “how the platform manages the risks for civic discourse and electoral processes”. The American company had presented its allegations and had even defended them this summer in front of the investigation instructors.
The expansion of the file opened to several European governments (Germany and the United Kingdom). The South African billionaire’s sustained support for Eurosceptic parties with little democratic pedigree had raised many suspicions in the EU.
And this was even more accentuated when another technological giant, Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, announced that it was abandoning its policy of monitoring and contrasting hoaxes to move to a model in which it is the community of its social networks (Facebook, Instagram and Threads) who would do that job, a system similar to the one X already has. In addition, Zuckerberg went so far as to accuse the EU of institutionalizing censorship in the video that announced his turn.
“Fair, secure and democratic digital environment”
“Today [por este viernes] we take further steps to shed light on the compliance of X’s recommender systems with DSA obligations. “We are committed to ensuring that all platforms operating in the EU respect our legislation, which aims to make the digital environment fair, safe and democratic for all European citizens,” Virkkunen said in the statement informing of the decision taken.
The same text indicates that with these measures the Commission intends to evaluate whether X complies with the standard and adopt remedies regarding the possible risks that its activity may have. This is one of the requirements of the digital services regulation for large digital platforms: be transparent and evaluate the risks that their activity may have for civic and democratic discourse to adopt the necessary remedies if problems are detected.
If the conclusion of the European authorities were that X does not comply with its legal obligations, the sanction could amount to 6% of the social network’s global turnover. And if after that, the company continued to rebel against the rule, then it could go so far as the European Commission would demand the suspension of the company’s activity before a judge.
In the EU this step has not yet been taken, which a judge did order in Brazil a few months ago. The battles that Brussels has with big technology, so far, have fallen more within the scope of market rules and competition. In this field, the fines imposed so far have been billions (the highest so far has been imposed on Google, more than 4,000 million euros). But that has not deterred them in many cases from continuing to seek the limits of the norm and even go further.
For the latter, the EU approved the digital markets regulation (DMA) and also the DSA. Although the object of control is different in the two regulations – one is responsible for monitoring the markets and the other for ensuring that the contents of the platforms are legal and do not put minors or democracy at risk – their concept is similar. They reverse the burden of proof in the case of large digital operators so that the files that are opened do not end up taking forever and losing effectiveness.
