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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
European democracies are confronting a brand new on-line affect and disinformation menace — not from autocracies resembling Russia, however emanating from the US. Elon Musk, the X proprietor and Donald Trump ally, is utilizing his community to denigrate leaders he dislikes and promote far-right views and politicians. Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in the meantime shifting to a Musk-style method that prioritises “free speech” over impartial fact-checking on his Fb and Instagram platforms. European leaders could worry that in the event that they conflict with these US billionaires in making an attempt to safeguard their democracies, they may now face retribution from the White Home itself.
The facility conferred by Musk’s immense wealth and social media attain has been amplified by his closeness to the US president-elect. The X boss appears intent on political rabble-rousing overseas. He has backed the far-right AfD occasion forward of German elections and can on Thursday host a livestream with its chancellor candidate Alice Weidel. He has baselessly accused UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer of being “complicit in mass rapes” — referring to a decade-old scandal over baby rape gangs — viciously smeared a feminine minister, and known as to launch a jailed hard-right activist. He requested his 211mn X followers whether or not the US ought to liberate the UK from its “tyrannical authorities”.
Meta’s Zuckerberg isn’t, up to now, utilizing his platforms to advertise his personal or extremist views. However changing impartial fact-checking with X’s mannequin of “neighborhood notes” — counting on customers to flag misinformation — even simply within the US raises questions on whether or not content material might be correctly policed elsewhere. It additionally seems a craven try to curry favour with Trump after previous frictions. In addition to aligning explicitly with Musk’s — and Trump’s — concept of “free expression”, the Meta boss stated he would work with the incoming president to oppose “institutionalised censorship” of on-line platforms in Europe. That units up a conflict between a laissez-faire method by US social networks and EU and UK necessities to control content material.
In responding to Musk, particularly, democratic leaders in Europe and elsewhere ought to keep away from a panicked overreaction that performs into his fingers. Starmer hit the proper notice this week by declaring, with out naming the X proprietor, {that a} “line has been crossed” by these spreading lies and misinformation on-line. Musk has succeeded, nevertheless, in setting the UK political agenda by thrusting a historic scandal, nevertheless surprising and iniquitous, artificially again into the highlight.
Some forbearance might also be warranted by the uncertainty over how sturdy the Musk-Trump friendship will show; splits are exhibiting within the pro-Trump coalition. A falling-out would considerably reduce Musk’s clout — and the dangers for politicians elsewhere making an attempt to comprise him.
European leaders ought to clarify, nonetheless, that there are guidelines that Musk’s, and Zuckerberg’s, networks are required to play by. The EU’s Digital Companies Act and the UK’s On-line Security Act each threaten hefty fines for large on-line platforms that fail to curb illicit content material, together with types of disinformation. An EU probe final summer time issued preliminary findings that Musk’s X breached the DSA in areas together with allegedly misleading methods to control person behaviour, promoting transparency, and information entry for researchers.
The EU and UK guidelines are removed from good. Each jurisdictions must take care that tech regulation doesn’t, as Zuckerberg charged this week, stifle innovation. However accusations of leftwing bias in European content material moderation function a smokescreen for the political and private agendas of Trump, Musk and Zuckerberg. Europe’s democratic values are so elementary that its leaders mustn’t shy from imposing guidelines designed to guard them — even when that dangers clashing with the X or Meta bosses, or the returning US president.
