Twitter will respect an upcoming European law intended to crack down on misinformation and hate speech, billionaire owner Elon Musk said in an interview broadcast on French public television Monday evening.
"Twitter will follow the law. If a law is enacted, Twitter commits to comply with it," Musk said in response to a question about the European Union’s new content moderation rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), which are due to come into effect on 25 August.
Musk was speaking to presenter Anne-Sophie Lapix in a rare media interview recorded at the VivaTech convention in Paris last week, broadcast on Monday evening on France 2 public television.
The DSA will require platforms to “promptly” remove illicit content, and imposes fines of up to six percent of global profits.
Letter of the law
Musk said that Twitter will follow the law, but not go any further. Musk is a proponent of absolute freedom of expression, and he insisted that the definition of hate speech should not be too broad or it could lead to censorship.
Musk said hate speech on Twitter had dropped by 20 to 40 percent since he took over, despite pushback from Lapix, who showed him statistics showing the opposite, including a March 2023 study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue that found a 105 percent increase in antisemitic posts.
When she showed him tweets about last week’s migrant boat disaster off Greece saying the fish would be happy to eat the bodies, Musk called them “distasteful” but not illegal.
At the end of May, Twitter pulled out of the EU’s voluntary code of practice against disinformation – a move criticised by European Commission vice-president Vera Jourova, who said Musk had chosen “confrontation” over the issue.
French digital transformation minister Jean-Noël Barrot threatened to ban Twitter from the EU.
Tesla moves
While there is tension over Twitter, Musk’s electric car company Tesla is being courted heavily by France.
In the interview Musk it is “very likely that Tesla will do something very important in France in the years to come”.
He stopped short of confirming the location of a battery factory, which President Emmanuel Macron has been hoping will be built in France.
France, Spain and Italy are competing to host Tesla’s second European factory.
Musk said he is interested in local production because "importing cars consumes vast amounts of energy".
(with wires)
