Musk given 24 hours to address graphic images of Hamas attacks

Elon Musk has until the end of Wednesday to respond to demands from Brussels to remove graphic images and disinformation linked to the violence in Israel from his social network X — or face the full force of Europe’s new social media rules.

Thierry Breton, the European Union commissioner who oversees the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) rules, wrote to the owner of X, formerly Twitter, to warn Musk of his obligations under the bloc’s content rules.

If Musk fails to comply, the EU’s rules state X could face fines of up to 6 percent of its revenue for potential wrongdoing. Under the regulations, social media companies are obliged to remove all forms of hate speech, incitement to violence and other gruesome images or propaganda that promote terrorist organizations.

Since Hamas launched its violent attacks on Israel on October 7, X has been flooded with images, videos and hashtags depicting — in graphic detail — how hundreds of Israelis have been murdered or kidnapped. Under X’s own policies, such material should also be removed immediately.

grayman,

Freedom of speech must stand. If it’s not true, counter it with more speech. Governments shoulder never have the power to block speech nor curate speech.

Arthur_Leywin,

So what’s slander?

ano_ba_to,

A porn actress was made accountable for similar actions in less time and with more impact.

skozzii,

It’s almost as if billionaires are untouchable?

Wilibus,

Any phrase, request or threat in the from of “do X or be subject to the rules” is inherently flawed.

Why not skip the asking part and go straight to the enforcing the rules part because they’re, you know; the fucking rules.

Zevlen,

^ sue em n block em

NekoKamiGuru,
@NekoKamiGuru@ttrpg.network avatar

Purging the images off social media will make it easier to deny that the atrocities ever happened. Keep them there in all their gory uglyness , perhaps put a spoiler tag over them to prevent someone with a feeble constitution from accidentally stumbling onto them and accidentally being triggered , but leave them there as evidence of the evil that happened.

Zevlen,

It should be archived and put somewhere people can go and access it for historical and educational purposes, but that’s it. It’s horrible, and even knowing what’s happening is ALREADY bad enough.

NekoKamiGuru,
@NekoKamiGuru@ttrpg.network avatar

There are already people denying it ever happened , this why it is needed.

Grant_M,
@Grant_M@lemmy.ca avatar

Has it been 24 hrs yet?

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

End of Wednesday in Brussels was ~7h ago. So, yes.

Honytawk,

So, what is the followup?

Smacks,
@Smacks@lemmy.world avatar

He won’t, we all know he won’t. He’d sooner get Twitter banned from Europe than actually try to improve his platform.

Honytawk,

That is such a win though.

Although the powers that manipulate Elmo won’t like it when they can’t manipulate the politics in the EU anymore.

dangblingus,

The intent is to ruin twitter. That was why he used $22B of Saudi money to buy it.

some_guy,

He’s gonna fuck this up, too.

atetulo,

Umm… why? Why are they censoring the truth?

This is how people don’t take war seriously. All they do is hear about it, but don’t see the gruesome reality.

SpaceBishop,

Why are they censoring the truth?

Oh, that must be really embarrassing, but…

graphic images and disinformation

Maybe work on your reading comprehension to make sure you don’t embarrass yourself like that again.

atetulo,

What are you talking about?

I’m specifically referring to the videos and images.

gruesome reality.

other gruesome images

Maybe work on your reading comprehension to make sure you don’t embarrass yourself like that again.

Oh the ironing.

BreakDecks,

Child sex abuse is a reality we have to confront head-on, but we don’t share images of it for awareness.

Likewise, you shouldn’t be sharing images of the slaughtered bodies of civilians to draw awareness to terrorism.

atetulo,

Woah, child sex abuse isn’t the same as war though. People already take it plenty seriously and nobody is glorifying it (out in the open.)

Your analogy isn’t a 1:1 representation of the topic at hand. All it does is pivot from the actual topic to something that’s easier for you to argue against.

BreakDecks,

I never said it was the same, it’s called a comparison. We ban images of sex abuse because of the harm sharing those images does to victims. Hamas has gone through a lot of effort to film and disseminate what they did in Israel online, and they are doing so with the intent of doing harm to the victims’ families. While there may not be laws in the USA prohibiting the sharing of this content, I would still argue that it is morally reprehensible given that you are participating in something intended to do harm.

atetulo,

What it’s ‘intended’ to do doesn’t really matter. If you notice, people aren’t supporting Hamas. They see these videos and they’re rallying behind them in support for Israel.

Wow. It’s almost like, exactly how I said, showing people instead of telling them causes them to take war seriously.

rainerloeten,
@rainerloeten@lemmy.world avatar

Traumatizing ≠ making people take war seriously.

Believe it or not, journalism and educating people is much more than uploading graphically disturbing images to some website and leave it as is.

atetulo,

Traumatizing ≠ making people take war seriously.

That’s actually not true, and most people who watch these videos aren’t ‘traumatized’, so it’s not really an argument.

Believe it or not, journalism and educating people is much more than uploading graphically disturbing images to some website and leave it as is.

Who said it isn’t? They should include the footage with their articles. This way people can see instead of just being told.

If they don’t want to look, then there should be explicit content warnings.

BreakDecks,

There have been plenty of studies about gore and death content that suggest they cause trauma similar to PTSD. Some people are affected more than others. On X you’re pretty likely to be presented with some extremely violent images right now if you go looking for information about what is happening, so you can’t really avoid it other than to avoid X entirely. Plenty of these images and videos aren’t even related to this conflict, and are just misinformation / ragebait.

atetulo, (edited )

Can you show me what studies you’re talking about?

I have a feeling you’re referring specifically to studies that focus on people who are paid to moderate this content. If you share what studies you’re talking about we can know for sure.

BreakDecks,

You really don’t need to look further than the clinical data on PTSD. A sufficient amount of any form of trauma can cause mental health issues including but not limited to PTSD. Watching an execution video has a large potential to cause a severe trauma response, especially if the victims are people you know or love, or are members of your community.

Plenty of real world examples of content moderation teams at social media companies suffering from their exposure to extreme content.

Traumatizing people is one of the core goals of terrorism, because it does damage.

atetulo,

Thanks for not linking to a single study like I asked.

Sorry, but I won’t take you seriously until you do. You mentioned ‘studies.’ Show us them.

I’ve seen studies that disprove your studies.

SuicideTime,

They will downvote u to hell here.

mojo,

Or what lol. Rich people are above the law.

kamenlady,
@kamenlady@lemmy.world avatar

Sorry, completely off topic and not the place, but …

your comment is perfectly complemented by your username above it.

Spedwell,

I’m glad to see for once the fines are proportional to revenue, and not a fixed amount. 6% hurts.

Garbanzo,

Will it hurt though? How are they going to collect the 6%? Do US based banks cooperate with the EU on this kind of thing? What happens if Musk just tells them to go fuck themselves?

uis,
@uis@lemmy.world avatar

Probably a lot of Xi tter customers headquatered in EU. They can say to their own banks to not send money.

Dr_Cog,
@Dr_Cog@mander.xyz avatar

I assume EU-based ISPs will be forced to ban access to the website for noncompliance, otherwise it would have literally no teeth whatsoever

piecat,

That’s actually pretty scary for the Internet.

viking,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Nah it’s pretty good for the internet. We also blocked Russian propaganda outlets and shit in the EU. It’s much nicer.

piecat,

Oh right, I forgot you Europeans didn’t have a first amendment

Sternout,

Guess what
We don’t even have the american constitution

piecat,

Amazing

Enjoy your censorship

Sternout,

Censorship is illegal

You are clearly missing something.

Maybe basic education can help you

Honytawk,

Our laws are older and much more robust than the ones in the US.

They also adapt with the times.

But that just might have to do with the fact that EU politics don’t cater that much to corporations but instead to the people that elected them.

MaxVoltage,
@MaxVoltage@lemmy.world avatar

how can settle for that?

when normal people spend years in single cell rooms for small offenses Lmao 🇺🇸🦅😎

Sanctus,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

This is in the EU, so your emojis don’t make sense. But you are right, rich people get off way too easy the world over.

HughJanus,

Xitter is a corporation that doesn’t live in the EU

RedEyeFlightControl,
@RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world avatar

Or else what? Small fine? You’ll never see him.

Cethin,

Did you even read the text post? 6% of revenue, because some places have reasonable laws that charge percentages of revenue.

RedEyeFlightControl,
@RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world avatar

I read it. I was asking a rhetorical question. 6% of X revenue is not 6% of elon revenue, fwiw. Impact is still limited.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

They don’t have the legal right to take money directly from Musk as nice as that would be.

_stranger_,

Well, it’s revenue not profit, so theoretically it could be money out of his pocket that the social media platform formerly known as Twitter perhaps wouldn’t be able to pay by itself.

Cethin,

Of course impact is going to be limited. The alternative being unlimited? I don’t think Musk deserves most of his wealth, but for the penelty of something like this to be taking literally all of it away would be insane. It’s always going to be limited. That’s basically what laws do. They should be proportional.

RedEyeFlightControl,
@RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world avatar

The alternative? What alternative?

My only point here is this isn’t going to have any major impact on his day to day operations regardless of how you try to spin my comments. Not sure why this is such an argument for you.

Cethin,

The alternative to them being limited is unlimited. There’s no in between for those words. It’s either limited or it isn’t and is unlimited.

I get wanting more, but what percentage is “right” for you. There has to be a percent that’s acceptable, and anyone can always say it isn’t enough, unless it’s unlimited which would be rediculous.

RedEyeFlightControl,
@RedEyeFlightControl@lemmy.world avatar

The alternative to them being limited is unlimited. There’s no in between for those words. It’s either limited or it isn’t and is unlimited.

Mind… blown

Hyperreality,

6% of revenue is apparently 300 million. IRC last year, twitter had 1.2 billion in interest payments, but only 1.1 billion in cash flow. Unless twitter has suddenly increased cash flow or repaid loans, a 300 million dollar fine may mean it's impossible for twitter to repay interest payments. It's potentially an existential threat and could tip twitter into bankrupcy.

It's not nothing and it's certainly better than nothing. And that 6%? That's just the tip of the shit berg.

For example, Germany NetzDG fines can be as high as 50 million euros... PER CASE. Tech Crunch:

Even just in Germany if the BfJ were to act on the 600+ illegal hate speech cases that have already been reported to it that could sum to fines of up to €30 billion for Twitter, based on the maximum penalties set out in the NetzDG law. ... Of course a theoretical maximum outcome is unlikely. But there’s clearly no shortage of cases the BfJ could enforce — meaning fines for Musk-owned Twitter’s failures to purge hate speech could nonetheless quickly stack up. ... “The law expects fines of up to €50 million for each case. It is possible that at first they will not take the full amount. There’s actually a table… that states the intensity of the failure. So I would expect something between €5M and €20M to be the first fine,”

Obviously Musk is a top tier genius with a full legal department, and I'm sure twitter clamped down on illegal hate speech in the past half year so that only 600 cases are reported to German authorities, but that 300 million may just be the trickle of shit before the pipe fully bursts.

In Musk's defense:

Twitter’s press office auto-replied with a poop emoji in response to an emailed request for comment.

postmateDumbass,

Is his goal to get the app banned from Europe?

I could see that being the business plan.

tiziodcaio,

It would be great! Europe will be better without x

turbonewbe,

X ? You mean X, formerly known as Twitter.

Garbanzo,

No, they just hate algebra

flossdaily,

Getting rid of misinformation is great.

Getting rid of accurately reported, gruesome images because of a government mandate flies in the face of the core principles of free speech. And it would cause real damage to the world.

Remember that it was only when the world actually saw images of the Nazi concentration camps that the world actually believed it. They’d heard about it for years, but it was largely ignored.

qyron,

I respect that but the images presented to the public were selected to denounce and illustrate horrendous acts commited.

Here, I’d risk there is a very high risk/probability whatever may be leaked/posted is for pure shock value, with no intention to inform or contextualize.

davysnavy,

Intent doesn’t matter. People should be allowed to document and post crimes committed against humanity

Cethin,

I’m not sure, but I believe this is only for social media sites. You can still document it, but social media isn’t the place. I assume you’d be able to link to that, but not to the images directly, but I’m just guessing.

Jax,

The pictures are old and don’t relate to what’s happening currently.

Also, what do you think the differences between pre-meditated murder and manslaughter are? Intent absolutely matters.

qyron,

Intent does matter. It is so inportant it is even relevant in courts of law.

You want the images of the barbarism raging in Israel as we speak to be known to the world and that is a good thing. People need to see the acts being commited there.

Yet twitter is not, in any way, the platform for it, as those same images are very easily twisted out of context and thrown out in a fashion that will only serve to further entrench extreme positions and used for sheer shock value.

These are human lives being laid to waste, not a social media circus for browny points.

flossdaily,

Yeah, I see denouncing and illustrating terrorist attacks as a good thing.

qyron,

Yes, which requires an unbiase position, supplying all possible information.

Nowadays, and even more when considering twitter, that is hardly the case.

Jax,

The pictures are old and unrelated to what’s happening currently.

qyron,

Which makes it even worse, I’d risk? If the said pictures are unrelated, why are those being pushed forward? Are we voluntarily trying to dumb ourselves?

Jax,

I should have replied to the person you responded to, you are clearly on the same page I am.

Tarte,
Tarte avatar

Getting rid of misinformation is great.

That is the goal. The OP article and especially the headline here is misleading.

This is what is in the original letter regarding violent images: „repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that actually originated from video games“.

The issue is not violent images per se. The issue is misinformation through violent images that are unrelated to the current events.

atetulo,

and other gruesome images or propaganda that promote terrorist organizations.

Seems to me like this is a sly way to remove any videos where Hamas is successful.

Which is weird, because seeing those videos usually gives more support for Israel.

This whole law is fucked. Leave freedom of speech alone.

Tarte,
Tarte avatar

Freedom of speech is mostly an American concept. In most European states we „only“ have freedom of expression and opinion (a human right). Deliberately spreading propaganda, agitation and fake news is not covered by freedom of expression and opinion. On the contrary, it can be a criminal offense.

This is not the first time Musk thinks US laws apply to the whole world or that he is above the law of the countries his businesses operate in. A part of me hopes that he gets fined and then ignores the fine. He might just be stupid enough.

See? I called him stupid. That is an expression of my opinion. Using images of violence from 2010 and claiming that they are from 2023 is not an opinion.

atetulo,

I think he should just take X out of the EU and watch the uproar when EU citizens can’t get their fix.

Would really show who wears the pants in the relationship.

Using images of violence from 2010 and claiming that they are from 2023 is not an opinion.

I’m specifically referring to real videos accurately described in my previous comment.

Honytawk,

EU citizens would grumble a bit, but then just switch over to other services like Treads and Mastodon. Many of our governments already did.

We aren’t loyal to a specific company, we use what is the most convenient and doesn’t spit right in our faces.

atetulo,

I think the EU would change its rules to appease its citizens who are addicted to X.

Same reason why the US would never ban tiktok. There would be an uproar of average people who don’t pay attention to these things wondering where their fix went.

jarfil,

I think the EU would change its rules to appease its citizens who are addicted to X.

It would not. The EU has funded Matrix/Element, Mastodon, even Lemmy has been developed using EU funding.

Facebook, 𝕏, Google, and similar US mega corps, can play by the rules or GTFO, the EU has alternatives.

atetulo,

Are you sure?

What makes you think that EU citizens would criticize X instead of the EU if X left because it didn’t follow EU regulations?

jarfil,

Citizens can criticize, the EU hasn’t been funding alternatives just to go back on its regulations.

Smoltech,

I agree.

I also worry about who decides which category a given tweet fits into, given that this particular organization has been getting rid of them people who were originally hired to do that.

The end result is likely to be misinformation or censorship of legitimate information that gets caught up in reports.

jarfil,

You’re speaking against the propaganda fueled groupthink, that’s a bannable offense.

nbafantest,

You should read before you post.

stolid_agnostic,

Is this the thing that finally makes Musk feel some pain? You can’t wiggle out of this one, EU law is pretty tight on this stuff.

be_excellent_to_each_other,
be_excellent_to_each_other avatar

Is this the thing that finally makes Musk feel some pain?

Not if his goal is to run Twitter into the ground. (And I'm about 3 months or so into believing it is.)

stolid_agnostic,

Although I can understand that perspective, I honestly think that he’s actually just very, very dumb and completely clueless about how money actually works and how businesses function. He’s rich enough to never have had to learn any of that and spend his way through failure after failure. I am absolutely certain that he believed that he’d run in there, steer the ship right, and all would be well.

HughJanus,

No he’s very smart in that he’s using Xitter to increase his influence, and thereby his wealth in the long term. Gonna cost him but he’ll probably come out net-positive, even if Xitter doesn’t.

Buddahriffic,

steer the ship right

That was his goal but not the “right” that is usually referred to by this.

Meowoem,

Yeah absolutely, be thought that it was easy because he didn’t pause to consider any of the confounding factors - the same mistake he always makes, self drive to Mars bases he gets fixated on the fact it’s possible and doesn’t really consider the many things making it difficult.

I think he thought that he’d go in and don’ta big lever that turns it from biasing the left and amplifying people hating billionaires then when he turned it off everyone would cheer and clap. He’s the typical idiot that has shitty political options and thinks everyone else secretly agrees bit only he’s breve enough to say it.

emptiestplace,

Either you’re oblivious, or you’re being paid to prop up this “Elon’s just a big dummy” idea.

You know he had a fair bit of involvement in some other businesses, right? His destructive behaviour has been on an entirely different level from the moment he acquired Twitter.

stolid_agnostic,

On the one hand, you insult me. Then you make a comment that supports my position. Very odd.

emptiestplace,

Fine, I’ll bite. How am I supporting your position?

Honytawk,

The investors that gave him money to buy Twitter aren’t going to be happy if he intentionally squanders their money.

totallynotarobot,

Joke’s on Brussels - 6% of a negative number is not a disincentive.

Should be 6% of his personal net worth as most optimistically reported.

Squizzy,

Revenue will never be negative.

FlyingSquid,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I can think of an occasion… when the Beatles tried to open a clothing store which didn’t do well, and when it went out of business, fans ended up stealing everything in the building down to the fixtures. Having to pay to renovate the building after the business has closed… that counts as negative revenue to me.

Squizzy,

Well your counting wrong in that case, they operated at a loss judging from your story but their revenue was all the money that went through the company.

Rubanski,

Revenue =/= profit

Agent641,

Then take their servers. Just chuck them in the back of a removalist van and pay some mexicans to drive it to your garage.

Iwasondigg,

Poop emoji incoming

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