PARIS — Twitter will respect the EU’s content moderation rules, known as the Digital Services Act, the company’s owner Elon Musk said on French TV.
“If a law is enacted, Twitter commits to comply with it,” he told star presenter Anne-Sophie Lapix in a pre-recorded, sit-down interview broadcast in dubbed French on France 2.
Twitter is considered a very large platform under the EU’s content-moderation law, meaning the company will have to put in place mitigation measures against fake news from August 25 onwards. Earlier this month, Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he was “concerned” the platform wouldn’t be able to comply with the rules.
Later this week, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and his team will visit Twitter’s U.S. headquarters and stress-test the platform.
Twitter will abide by the law but will not go further, Musk said during the interview. He claimed hate speech had decreased by 30 percent since he took over, even as Lapix presented him with statistics saying the opposite — including a study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue exposing a 105 percent increase in antisemitic posts.
Pressed by the interviewer, the billionaire, a self-proclaimed freedom of expression absolutist, said the definition of hate speech shouldn’t be too broad or it could lead to censorship. Shown tweets rejoicing about the migrant boat disaster off Greece last week, Musk conceded they were “distasteful” but should remain online as long as they’re not illegal.
A lot of advertisers who left the platform after he took over said they would come back, Musk claimed.
French policymakers are wary of how he handles Twitter, but much more enthusiastic when it comes to Tesla, the electric car company which made Musk his billions.
It’s “very probable” Tesla will “do very important things” in France in the coming years, Musk said — but stopped short of committing to building a gigafactory in the country. On Friday, he met with French President Emmanuel Macron — whom he praised as a “smart” leader — as EU states including France, Spain and Italy are competing for Tesla investments, all hoping to host the company’s second European factory.
Musk backed governments that want to localize production because “importing cars consumes vast amounts of energy.” Down the road, electric vehicles should be profitable without subsidies, he said, although public money is good in the beginning to help the industry scale.
Asked whether he’d like to become U.S. president one day, Musk said no because he has more power and leeway in his current positions.
