Twitter leaves EU code against disinformation

"You can run, but not hide." The tone is not kind, after Twitter's decision to leave the EU Code of Practice against online disinformation. The social network in the hands of Elon Musk had informed the European Commission of its intentions, at the end of the week. It seems that he has taken action.

Twitter leaves EU voluntary Code of Practice against disinformation.

But obligations remain. You can run but you can't hide.

Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25.

Our teams will be ready for enforcement.

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) May 26, 2023

European Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Friday that Twitter had left the agreement, bringing together the main platforms on a voluntary basis. "The obligations remain. You can run, but not hide," the Frenchman warned in a tweet, adding that the fight against disinformation would be mandatory from the end of August 25, under the European Digital Services Act (DSA). "Our teams will be ready to enforce the law," he insisted.

The new regulation obliges platforms to make efforts to "reduce the risks" of disinformation and provides for fines of up to 6% of their global turnover.

Musk not serious about misinformation

Since buying Twitter six months ago, billionaire Elon Musk has eased moderation of problematic content, and even appears to have amplified the voices of notorious disinformation propagators on the platform. At the end of April, the Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of transparency, Vera Jourova, had also indicated that she felt "more and more uncomfortable on Twitter" because of Russian propaganda on this platform. She was also concerned that the social network would lack staff dedicated to the fight against disinformation, after the massive layoffs made by the billionaire.

Read alsoTwitter: 4 months after its acquisition by Elon Musk, the network remains unavoidable... but has changed a lot

Twitter said it prefers to use its own community of Internet users rather than fact-checkers, a European source reported. Its reporting on disinformation under the Code of Practice was very inadequate. "If (Elon Musk) is not serious about the code, it may be better that he leaves it," said an official at the European Commission, contacted by AFP.

The European Code of Practice, launched in 2018 on a voluntary basis, brings together some thirty signatories, giants such as Meta, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, TikTok, but also smaller platforms, as well as advertising professionals, fact-checkers and NGOs. The signatories themselves participated in the drafting of the text, which contains about forty commitments aimed in particular at better cooperating with fact-checkers and depriving sites disseminating fake news of advertising.

Contacted by AFP, the firm's press service responded with an automatically generated email with a poop emoji - as it has done with every question from journalists for several weeks.