The European Commission will check whether the X platform promotes an interview between its owner, American entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk, and the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Alice Weidel, the body’s spokesman Thomas Regnier said on Monday, reports the Do Rzeczy news portal.
Regnier said that under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which among other things governs content moderation rules on internet platforms, platforms must respond to “potential threats to EU electoral processes,” including providing above-average visibility to content promoting political forces, including content posted on X by Musk himself, the EU official said.
The interview is taking place ahead of Germany’s snap parliamentary elections, enraging the political establishment.
“The foundation of the DSA is freedom of speech. Mr. Musk has the right to express his private views and political opinions about the EU both online and offline,” Regnier said, adding that nothing prevents Musk from conducting an interview with Weidel, which will be streamed on his platform.
However, if the conversation with Weidel gains above-average visibility on X, as part of the procedure against this platform conducted in December 2023, the European Commission will look into whether the service provided users with the option to, for example, turn off streaming and whether it used algorithms to give it greater visibility.
It is unclear what threshold the EU commission would set for “greater visibility,” as Musk’s posts tend to garner millions of views and sometimes tens of millions of views regardless of what he posts.
He does have, after all, over 200 million and followers.
In addition, both he, Weidel, and many others have been promoting the interview in the last weeks.
Last month, Musk openly expressed his opinion that “only the AfD can save Germany.”