Musk’s Twitter Expected to Face the Strictest EU Content Rules

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Elon Musk's Twitter Inc. is expected to fall under the European Union's stricter rules for content moderation despite doubts that the platform was big enough to qualify.

Twitter and the EU's executive arm are gearing up for the company to be designated a “very large online platform” under the bloc's new Digital Services Act, according to people familiar with the matter. That means the company has enough monthly active EU users that it will have to report on how it's reducing harmful posts and could even be forced to change its algorithms by the European Commission.

For Musk, it means that his stripped-down company will be subject to a much more intrusive regulatory system and could face significant penalties — up to 6% the company's revenue or even a ban from operating in Europe — if it doesn't comply. The EU, meanwhile, would avoid the embarrassment of having one of the world's most influential platforms escape its efforts to tame online content.

Tech companies regardless of their size have to follow the fundamental rules of the DSA and take down illegal content in all the EU's 27 countries. The EU's largest platforms — with more than 45 million monthly active users — will be designated as very large online platforms, or VLOPs, and will face centralized, tougher scrutiny by the EU's executive arm in Brussels.

Some EU officials had been concerned that Twitter might not have enough users to be designated a VLOP, allowing Musk to dodge the most significant changes to the EU's content moderation rules. At the end of October before Musk bought the social media site, some internally believed the company would fall short of the 45 million user threshold now that the UK has left the EU, according to former employees familiar with