According to media reports, Elon Musk's social media platform X (formerly known as "Twitter") will receive an official warning from the European Union and may become the third technology company to be targeted by the EU in the near future.
Insiders have revealed that Thierry Breton, the European Union's internal market commissioner, may announce this upgrade before the summer recess, ultimately paving the way for a global annual revenue fine of 6% for Company X.
Insiders added that if X company does not make necessary changes to the preliminary investigation results of the European Commission, regulatory authorities may make a formal decision before the end of the year. Afterwards, X company may face economic penalties for non-compliance.
As early as December last year, the European Union announced an investigation into X, stating that it may have violated the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) and disseminated illegal content in the context of the conflict between Hamas and Israel. This is the first time that the EU has initiated formal procedures under the Digital Services Act.
Caixin News previously mentioned that Musk "violently laid off employees" after taking over Twitter. There are reports that he cleared nearly two-thirds of the 7500 employees within three weeks, including cutting the company's trust and security team.
It is understood that the EU's Digital Services Act aims to strengthen user online security and encourage relevant enterprises to bear legal responsibility for harmful content, false information, advertising tracking behavior, and anti competitive behavior.
Compared to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which focuses on antitrust, DSA focuses more on user privacy and other rights. After the approval of DSA and DMA, the European Union is increasing its enforcement efforts against technology companies through these two bills, and the speed of action is becoming faster and faster.
In the past two weeks, the European Union has accused US technology giants Apple and Meta Platforms of monopolistic behavior based on DMA. Among them, the European Commission believes that Meta's "pay or agree" advertising model does not meet the requirements of DMA.
Meanwhile, Meta is also under investigation by the DSA as its social media platform did not have effective third-party real-time speech and election monitoring tools prior to the European Parliament elections.