European regulator Thierry Breton shared a stern letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Thursday, claiming his office has “indications” that the platform is being used to distribute disinformation and illegal content around the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Breton serves as the European commissioner for the internal market. He said TikTok must be “timely, diligent and objective” about removing misinformation, particularly since minors often turn to the platform as a source of news.
Breton issued similar letters to X owner Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week.
“First, given that your platform is extensively used by children and teenagers, you have a particular obligation to protect them from violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos which are reportedly widely circulating on your platform, without appropriate safeguards,” Breton wrote in the letter.
While we’re waiting, did musk respond? His 24 hours are over
Auto-replied with a poop emoji probably. That’s a thing the twitter press office does apparently.
In Musk’s defense, it would be hilarious if twitter’s response to the EU, the German authorities and others is a poop emoji, and this is the final straw that results in the EU handing out the maximum fine of 300 million dollars, and Germany handing out the potential maximum fine of 30 billion euros under NetzDG legislation for the 600 cases that had been reported by april.
30 billion euros fine
Holy shit, I want to see this happen. It’d probably be the final nail in the coffin for twitter.
That’d put him, like, $70B underwater overall on his purchase of Twitter
Lmao :D
Maybe a bit unrelated, but where does the $30bn go if it is fined and paid?
Shared between EU countries I’d guess, if not then hopefully to my pocket lol.
nope. The 30B are from the NetzDG, which s a uniquely German law, so the Money will go to Germany.
now the 300M from the EU law:
i have only read the Law a bti, but as far as i understand it, the EU itself doesn’t fine Twitter, but instead just allows iits Member States to collect fines (that collectively don’t go above 6% of annual revenue)
maybe you can understand it a bit more: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?toc=OJ%3AL%3A2022%3A277%3ATOC&uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2022.277.01.0001.01.ENG
EU handing out the maximum fine of 300 million dollars
eurodollars?
C’mon, choom, get with the times.
A few of the Germans I regularly speak to keep calling them bucks so maybe?
probably because you’d be confused if he called them “Mäuse” lmao
He is behind seven proxies on Starlink somewhere deep in Nevada, they can’t get him if they wanted
They can stop him doing business in Europe.
Not for long.
Imagine the uproar when EU citizens can’t get their addiction fix.
All EU needs to do is spin-up national mastodon instanstance. Germany AFAIK already did it.
That would be nice, but I don’t think they’re ready to give that much power over to free technologies.
Multiple EU governments already did.
The Netherlands as well for example.
We would be grumbling, but alternatives would pop out of the woodwork in record time.
After which Xitter would be regarded the same as MySpace.
but alternatives would pop out of the woodwork in record time.
No they wouldn’t. But I guess we’d have to test to see.
This is true. My manager is an idiot and a social media addict.
For those wondering how much this would cost, here’s a techcrunch article about similar threats to twitter:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/06/elon-musk-twitter-germany-hate-speech-takedowns/amp/
Key points:
- The EU could fine twitter up to 6% of global annual turnover, which would amount to roughly 300 million.
- But that’s just the EU. National governments can also issue fines. For example, NetzDG fines can be as high as 50 million per case(!!!), which means twitter’s facing a fine of up to 30 billion for the 600 cases they were dealing with in april. Almost certainly more since then.
TLDR: stuff like this is potentially an existential threat for social media companies. Not just a cost of business and something they can ignore.
I feel like this is the first time in almost 20 to 30 years that I’m seeing a regulatory body impose serious consequences for non compliance to a private corporation. I’m not holding my breath that anything changes.
GDPR has been used to similar effect with comparable penalties - https://dataprivacymanager.net/5-biggest-gdpr-fines-so-far-2020/
The EU does it quite a lot. That is what happens within a system where corporations don’t have free range.
Or else ? Give another 24hours?
A fine of about 6% of their global revenue (not just profit)
Can you please share the source ? I can’t find anything about the 6% fine.
Chinese ultimatum
You have hurt the feelings of 448 million Europeans.
Misinformation? On TikTok? A platform full of idiots who will believe anything?
Say it ain’t so!
I’m interested in what misinformation they are referring to.
Hopefully all of it
Posting Arma 3 videos. Israel don’t have F22 Raptors; yet…
Probably the same as Xitter:
Mostly the video’s of atrocities from other wars and videogames that claim to be from this war.
deleted by creator
Seconded
Yay, an other 24 hour deadline.
I’m loving these. Really makes them sweat because they can’t put hundreds of lawyers on it in order to spin their answer however way they want. There just isn’t enough time. So they will need to be truthful.
Yeah, EU casually handing out demands for to anyone around. Kinda glad they do.
I’m just waiting for the Twitter from Elon and friends threatening to coup the EU…
and what about newsroom?
