On Monday 5 June, the European Commissioner for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, expressed her regret at the decision taken by the social network Twitter, on 26 May, to withdraw from the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation (see EUROPE 13190/35).
“We think this is a mistake. Twitter has chosen confrontation, that has been noted”, said Věra Jourová, adding that this would not prevent examination of its compliance with the provisions set out in the Digital Services Act (DSA), which will come into force on 25 August (see EUROPE 13185/5).
“Commitment to the code is voluntary, but make no mistake, by leaving the code, Twitter has attracted a lot of attention. Its actions and compliance with European law will be scrutinised vigorously and urgently”, she added.
The European Commissioner also felt that the changes in Twitter’s management since it was bought by the American billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk (see EUROPE 13060/16, 13071/4) were playing an important role in the way the company manages and moderates problematic content online.
“We had a good working relationship before. The previous management understood that much greater responsibility was needed on the part of the platforms”, she declared.
On Monday, the Commissioner also met representatives of the forty or so signatories to the Code of Practice on Disinformation, including Meta, Google, Microsoft and TikTok. On this occasion, the stakeholders, who took part in drafting the Code of Practice themselves and made voluntary commitments, addressed the issue of content moderation concerns for languages with the fewest speakers within the EU, among other issues.
“There must be the same capabilities in all Member States, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where countries are the most targeted by disinformation. We also need to understand why, in some Member States, the ground has been laid to absorb disinformation”, stressed Ms Jourová. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)