Elon Musk has agreed that Twitter must continue to combat “disinformation” ahead of coming EU censorship plans, a German minister has claimed.
Volker Wissing, Germany’s Federal Minister for Transport, has claimed that he and Elon Musk have agreed that Twitter must continue to fight “disinformation” in the lead-up to EU censorship controls coming into force.
While Musk has openly said that he wants Twitter to become a platform that is more friendly towards free speech, he has since publicly insisted that he will bow to EU demands for further censorship, with senior bloc officials threatening to ban the platform from the union should he refuse.
Although the Twitter CEO’s true intentions on the matter remain unknown, Wissing has claimed that a meeting with Musk has shown that they are on the same page when it comes to “disinformation” being tackled on Twitter.
In a post thanking the tech billionaire for the meeting in San Francisco, the German minister said that the pair agreed on the need for Twitter to keep up its “commitments” regarding disinformation before the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) — which will heavily regulate what content and moderation is and is not allowed on social media platforms — comes into effect.
“My stance is clear: the platforms’ commitment to [disinformation] must be strictly adhered to until [the DSA] comes into force,” the Free Democratic Party politician wrote on Twitter. “Elon Musk agreed with me.”
Although Wissing did not share what opinion — if any — Musk expressed in regard to the EU’s DSA censorship plan itself, the Twitter owner has made a habit of committing himself to implement the will of Brussels on his platform.
For instance, shortly after Musk acquired Twitter and began to implement his pro-freedom of speech reforms, the European Union’s Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, threatened to have the social media platform removed from the bloc should the union’s demands for censorship not be met.
Despite branding himself a “free speech absolutist“, Musk ended up conceding his position to Breton, promising the commissioner that he was “exactly aligned” with the bloc’s aims to control speech during a meeting in Austin, Texas.
“I very much agree with… it’s been a great discussion… I really think… I agree with everything you said, really,” Musk remarked in a video with Breton that was posted online. “I think we are very much of the same mind and anything that my companies can do that will be beneficial to Europe, we want to do that.”
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