Ads on Musk-owned social media site risk causing ‘reputational damage’ to the EU, its executive says in internal note.

The European Commission has decided to stop advertising on social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, over “widespread concerns relating to the spread of disinformation,” according to an internal note obtained by POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook.

In a note sent to all heads of service and directors general, the Commission’s Deputy Chief Spokesperson Dana Spinant said disinformation on X, especially in relation to the Israel-Hamas war, had led the institution to “recommend to temporarily suspend advertising on this platform until further notice to avoid risks of reputational damage to the Commission.”

X has been under growing scrutiny in Europe as a result of the bloc’s new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission, which enforces the law, in October sent a formal request for information to the company to explain how its handling of illegal content and disinformation connected to Hamas’ October 7 attack complies with the DSA.

  • avater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1675·
    1 year ago

    Get fucking rid of twitter. I will never understand why people still cling to this platform, not in general, not after all the news, the bots, the right winged dipshits and everything else…what is so hard about it?

    • FoundTheVegan@kbin.social
      3910·
      1 year ago

      Destroying Twitter was Elons plan for the get go. If he just closed the doors a year ago there would be outrage, now people are begging for it to die. Musk is still a moron, but all the Saudi money he got to buy Twitter was used to destroy the biggest platform of their critics.

      • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.mlEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        I really think he’s just that stupid. Everything he’s done at Twitter and at every other company he’s run has been due to the same fundamental error - thinking that he’s smarter than anyone else in the room, including people who are experts in fields he’s never even heard of. He has every indication of clinical narcissism, exactly like Donald Trump. He’s wrong, and when it becomes obvious that he’s wrong, he becomes infuriated and doubles down - exactly like Donald Trump.

        I think that Twitter is going to become the canonical example of Hanlon’s Razor. Elon at Twitter is going to be our version of Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra, except it’s going to mean someone not just shitting but having explosive diarrhea in the bed, and then showing it off like it’s something to be proud of. And still having a legion of followers who can’t help but say what a visionary position it is to shit in your own bed.

      • GreenMario@lemm.eeEnglish
        22·
        1 year ago

        Naw. He’s addicted to it. He just got sick of all the lefties (anyone left of Hitler) on it. If Twitter shuts down he’s gonna have severe DTs.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      20·
      1 year ago

      I will never understand why people still cling to this platform

      I don’t have a Twitter account, but there isn’t really anything else comparable for when there’s a major incident, like a natural disaster. Random people from all over post video or relevant information, and Twitter’s search engine and hashtags are a pretty potent tool for connecting them quickly.

      The Reddit or Threadiverse model isn’t really great for that – that uses pre-established communities.

      I also don’t use Mastodon, but my understanding is that there isn’t a search engine there with the same instant global visibility as Twitter. If you want to follow individuals, I suppose it’s fine for that, but that’s really not something that I’m generally interested in doing. And it looks like Mastodon only even got full-text search very recently, like, last couple months.

      At least for my use case, the Threadiverse is a much better replacement for Reddit than Mastodon is for Twitter.

      • Reality Suit@lemmy.oneEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        This is what gets my conspiracy mind going. It feels like he is intentionally ruining it to reduce the flow of information. Yes, it’s a shit site, but people were able to organize pretty easily through it. Not so much anymore, unless you’re racist or a nazi. Maybe something will replace it, but the hindrance is already happening.

      • Salix@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        And it looks like Mastodon only even got full-text search very recently, like, last couple months.

        Also, this only works if the user opts in to being able to be searched/indexed. It makes it much harder to find content. If you’re looking for more content from a hashtag, you’ll only see people who knew to opt in

        On Twitter, anyone’s content can be searched as long as they are not private. If you search a hashtag, you’ll see every public post that uses that hashtag.

        Another annoying thing with Mastodon is that you have to go to the person’s instance to fully check their profile. Annoying when you’re using a Mastodon app, then it makes you open a web browser to go to that person’s instance

    • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      I tried it and left it many years ago. It was obvious, not having downvotes made it easy to agree, but more effort to disagree with posts and comments. In order to disagree, you have to write a comment, which also could be buried if many people responded. To agree you just press a button, which also conveniently shows a counter. The author of a Twitter post may never see the 2000 disagreeing replies behind the 100 first agreeing by his followers. He looks at the likes and sees 500 “wow nice”, but he can’t see thousands of people who didn’t have time to reply and didn’t have a downvote button.

      • blackbelt352@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You’re right that performi g agreement and disagreement are certainly not equal on Twitter, but there is also the concept of ratio-ing where tons of quote tweets and replies compared to few likes is usually a good indicator that people are disagreeing.

        • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          This actually says a lot about Twitter engagement.

          The only way to disagree on Twitter is to publicly call people out, while Lemmy and Reddit allow you to disagree without repeating and amplifying what they are saying.

    • Voli@lemmy.mlEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      Porn most likely, um waiting for some artists to. Join mastodon or bluesky even if I’m doubtful about that

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.eeEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        So many journalists, particularly human rights activists and Ukrainian conflict centered osint types use Twitter. Blows my mind.

      • avater@lemmy.worldEnglish
        104·
        1 year ago

        People are willingly supporting an antisemtic, right-winged idot like Musk and his platform for porn? i mean it’s the internet there is plenty of porn outside of twitter…

    • MeanEYE@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      1 year ago

      It has its appeals. Being able to mention anyone publicly in your messages gives people feeling of empowerment. This also made companies react far faster to tech support than they would otherwise because people would see others complaining and join in. So fuckups would be obvious and publicly available. There was a merit to it, but for the most part those benefits only provided fertile ground to cancerous behavior.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    234·
    1 year ago

    “Temporarily suspend.”

    Of course. Just like Apple and IBM. Wait for the furor to die down and then go back to giving money to the Nazi.

    • tsuica@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      “Temporarily suspend” in corpo speak is “we’ll consider coming back if you change the current leadership”.

      They’re sending a message that they’re willing to work with the company if it (re)stabilizes.

  • uis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    I didn’t know EC even had ads. Not that I used X11 Xitter in last few years. And not that I used it more than few times.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    52·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The European Commission has decided to stop advertising on social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, over “widespread concerns relating to the spread of disinformation,” according to an internal note obtained by POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook.

    X has been under growing scrutiny in Europe as a result of the bloc’s new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).

    POLITICO reported this month that the institution’s home affairs department had targeted ads in September at groups of X users based on their religious and political beliefs, including users categorized as “anti-Christian” or those interested in Italian leader Giorgia Meloni or Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin.

    The advertising campaign aimed at propping up support for the Commission’s controversial proposal for a law that could force social media and messaging platforms to scan all user content for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) — a proposal that critics say would violate privacy and would effectively break encrypted communications.

    Spinant’s letter warned services that buying ads which target user profiles based on sensitive personal data would be in breach of the DSA.

    “It is essential that our advertising respects scrupulously the spirit and the letter of the rules that we seek to enforce as regulator for very large online platforms,” the official wrote.

    The original article contains 396 words, the summary contains 209 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!