Elon Musk Will Test the EU’s Digital Services Act

Gabby Miller is Staff Writer at Tech Policy Press. X owner Elon Musk, left; European Commissioner Thierry Breton, right. Source Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, has once again ramped up attacks meant to silence his critics, this time while bolstering an online movement with ties to white nationalists and antisemitic propagandists. His latest target is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an anti-hate organization focused on combating antisemitism, which he threatened with legal action via Tweet early last week. Musk blames ADL for the exodus of advertisers from his rapidly deteriorating social media platform.  At the same time, X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) is now legally compelled to begin its first yearly risk assessment to prove compliance with the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which went into effect for designated Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Search Engines (VLOSEs) like X earlier this month. One of the Act’s goals is to mitigate against the same types of disinformation that Musk continues to amplify across his own platform.  Musk may well be on a collision course with EU regulators newly armed with the assessment and enforcement mechanisms of the DSA. It’s as yet unclear how far Musk is willing to go to test the new law, or how punitive EU officials are willing to be should he fail to comply with it. But regulating one of the world’s most influential social media platforms – led by an impulsive billionaire with near unilateral decision-making powers – will likely bring…Elon Musk Will Test the EU’s Digital Services Act