Elon Musk may take X out of Europe to dodge anti-fake news EU regulation: Report

Elon Musk could take his social media platformX, formerly Twitter, off Europe to effectively make it inaccessible across the continent, Business Insider reported. Musk is reportedly considering the move in a bid to avoid a Digital Services Act, a regulation recently enacted by the European Commission.

The publication cited a person familiar with the company stating that Musk has discussed removing the availability of X from Europe entirely or blocking users in the European Union.

Does a precedent such as this exist?

Yes, there is a precedent.

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Meta's Threads is inaccessible to the people in Europe reportedly due to regulation-related issues.

What EU's Digital Services Act is about?

The Digital Services Act came into effect in August across the European Union. It requires online platforms such as X and Meta Platforms Inc. to have transparent systems in place for content moderation as well as the removal of false and misleading information.

The European Commission, as of last week, was officially "investigating X's compliance" with the Digital Services Act, according to EU Commissioner Thierry Breton

The Commission can impose "periodic penalty payments," or fines, up to 6 per cent of a company's global revenue.

Is Elon Musk feeling forced to remove 'X' from Europe?

Elon Musk has fired most of X's trust and safety team. During Twitter's pre-Elon Musk days, the trust and safety team of the platform had hundreds of people, and an overwhelming of them were fired soon after the billionaire business magnate bought the platform in October 2022.

The Business Insider report added that Elon Musk deliberated upon the idea of limiting access to Twitter to certain geographies almost immediately after taking over the company.

"That's part of the reason he gutted international teams the first chance he got," one of the people familiar was quoted as saying by Business Insider, in reference to the thousands of Twitter employees Musklaid off or fired after taking over the company.

The report adds that Musk considered the idea of curtailing Twitter's international presence when he ordered the permanent closure of the company's offices in Europe and India, as well as the ones in Australia, Africa and South Korea. Musk then reportedly suggested that the platform, then known as Twitter, should operate in the countries where it was most popular, notably, the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.

Europe accounts for about 9 per cent of X's global monthly active user base, according to Apptopia datacited by Business Insider.

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