As the Covid-19 epidemic gathers momentum, ending the fight against pandemic-related misinformation on Twitter, decided by the social network’s new owner Elon Musk, is a “big problem”, according to Emmanuel on Thursday, December 1. Macron.
During an interview with the American channel ABC on the sidelines of his state visit to the US, the President of France said: “I think we should tackle this topic head-on, I am for the exact opposite, more regulation. we doing this [en France] and we do it at the European level. »
Having recently bought Twitter for $44 billion (42.5 billion euros), the American businessman pledged to violate the moderation of content on the social network. Among those measures is an end to the fight against “false information about Covid-19” from November 23, the company announced on Tuesday.
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So the French head of state reacted on Thursday, saying that freedom of speech “implies responsibility and limitations. You can’t go and make racist or anti-Semitic remarks, that’s a point of view that’s important for me to defend.
New European rules in sight
The concept of freedom of speech is very far from that advocated by Elon Musk, an ardent supporter of free speech, who, on the contrary, believes in a very libertarian concept that the latter should not know borders.
Moreover, the American billionaire has never made a secret of his opinion about the health restrictions imposed to combat the pandemic, especially when they meant the temporary closure of his Tesla plant in California.
“Telling people that they cannot leave their homes and that they will be arrested if they do is fascism. It’s not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their fucking freedom,” he enthused in April 2020 during a conference call for financial analysts.
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Very large online platforms such as Facebook, Amazon or Twitter will have to apply “around the summer of 2023” new European Union (EU) legislation, which came into force in November, to eliminate areas of lawlessness on the Internet.
These rules include an obligation to act “immediately” to remove any illegal content as soon as the platform becomes aware of it, or an obligation to inform the judiciary when they suspect a “serious criminal offence”.
They also include prohibitions, for example, on the use of “sensitive” user data (gender, political views, religious affiliation, etc.) for targeted advertising. And commitments to transparency, such as publishing the main parameters used by recommender systems.
Twitter should ‘significantly increase its efforts’
Thus, the warning issued by Emmanuel Macron on Thursday confirms the warning sent on Wednesday by the European Commission to the billionaire in the voice of its Commissioner for the Internal Market, Frenchman Thierry Breton, during a telephone exchange. The Frenchman reminded Elon Musk that the company must “significantly increase its efforts” if it wants to comply with European rules to combat disinformation.
“Let’s be clear: there’s still a lot of work to be done” and Twitter will have to “significantly step up its content moderation, protect freedom of expression and fight disinformation resolutely,” he said, according to the exchange’s report shared with Brussels.
mm. Musk and Breton “agreed that commission services would conduct a stress test at Twitter headquarters in early 2023, allowing Twitter to assess its compliance before the legal deadline,” the commissioner said.
Following the recent takeover of Twitter, Elon Musk has also reauthorized the return of many suspended or banned accounts from the social network. Among them is former President Donald Trump, who was removed from office in January 2021 for inciting violence after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill.
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