Twitter will “respect European law”, says Elon Musk

Twitter “will respect the European law” intended to fight against misinformation and online hatred, assured the controversial boss of the social network, Elon Musk, in an interview broadcast Monday evening on France 2. “Twitter will obey the law. If a law is enacted, I repeat myself, Twitter undertakes to respect it”, hammered the billionaire in response to a question on the new EU legislation on digital services (DSA), during a recorded interview. Friday on the sidelines of the VivaTech show in Paris.

The DSA (Digital Services act), which will come into force on August 25, must in particular require platforms to act "promptly" to remove any illegal content and provides for fines of up to 6% of their global turnover. . At the end of May, Musk kicked Twitter out of the EU's code of practice on disinformation, a series of voluntary commitments launched in 2018. European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova went on to lament that Twitter had chosen "the confrontation”, while the French Minister of Digital Jean-Noël Barrot threatened to “ban” the social network.

“We are not going to be more royalist than the king” and go beyond “legal provisions” in terms of censorship and freedom of expression, tempered the boss of Tesla and Space X, citing the difficulty of placing the “cursor on this which is good or bad, acceptable” or not. "On the other hand, if a law is promulgated, because the law in a democracy represents the will of the people (...) it must be respected".

Asked about the massive layoffs among Twitter teams since its takeover in the fall, “we haven't reduced moderation activity per se. Moderation is carried out by around 4,000 employees (…) and the work has remained more or less the same”, assured Elon Musk, even evoking a “decrease” in hate speech, contradicted by certain studies. “Almost all advertisers have returned or said they will return” after leaving the platform since its takeover, he further claimed, stating that “the main thing” for his company was to “not have any financial losses.

Signer of a petition calling for a six-month break in research on generative artificial intelligences because of their risks for humanity, the businessman pleaded to “slow down” AI and not “stop it”. ". The man who founded X.AI, a new company specializing in this field in March, also prefers to be a “participant” than an “observer”.