A number of reporters who had written about Musk had their accounts suspended without warning, and European Union lawmakers wasted no time in warning Musk.
Vra Jourov, an EU vice-president for values and transparency, warned of "red lines" and "sanctions" baked into recently updated EU rules for digital.
The news about the suspension of journalists is concerning. The Digital Services Act requires respect of fundamental rights. elonmusk needs to be aware of that. Red lines are visible. The EU commissioner said that there would be sanctions soon.
The incoming EU regulation requires providers of intermediary services to respect fundamental rights, such as freedom of expression and information, and to not act in an arbitrary ordiscriminatory manner when applying their terms of service.
The EU has the power to impose sanctions that can be as high as 6 percent of global annual turnover. The Commission can apply to EU courts to block violating services from being accessed in the region.
News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying. EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our #MediaFreedomAct. @elonmusk should be aware of that. There are red lines. And sanctions, soon.
— Věra Jourová (@VeraJourova) December 16, 2022
The European Media Freedom Act was proposed by the Commission in September in order to protect media freedom and pluralism in the EU.
It could be years before these media freedom measures are confirmed in EU law, because this legislation has still to be adopted via the bloc's usual co-legislative process.
The Washington Post's Drew Harwell, the New York Times' Ryan Mac, and CNN's Donie O'Sullivan are just a few of the journalists who have been suspended by the social networking site.
Twitter just banned prominent journalists who cover Elon Musk with no warning
Musk implied the action was taken because the journalists had violated the rules about doxxing that were amended Wednesday to prohibit the sharing of live location information.
A stalker followed a car with Musk's son in it.
Several of the suspended journalists were able to join the audio stream even though they were pulled in by the creator of the bot.
Huh, appears the recording of this Space is strangely not available, funny that! Thanks to everyone who tuned in! Let’s do it again sometime
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) December 16, 2022
Musk defended the suspensions by saying that the journalists had violated the rules by sharing his location.
Musk told Notopoulos that there would be no distinction between journalists and regular people in the future. Everyone will get the same treatment. Because you are a journalist, you are not special. You are a citizen, and you are just a user on the social networking site. No special treatment, that's all. You're suspended. It's over.
Musk suggested that posting a link to the real-time information would be construed as an attempt to circumvent the policy prohibition, and therefore that enforcement action would follow on anyone sharing links to accounts that.
The link to the real-time information was shared by Musk.
Harwell said that Musk's insinuation that he had shared his address was "not true". Musk said that it is indeed. To which Harwell responded, "In the course of reporting about ElonJet, we posted links to ElonJet which are now not online, which are now banned on Twitter, and also marked the Mastadon accounts as harmful."
Musk ignored the question and said it was the same thing as for him. He followed that, after a brief Harwell interruption, by clarifying that he did not mean his own action suspending journalists for sharing links was unacceptable, and repeating: "No, you dox you get suspended end of story, that's it."
At which point, according to attendees, Musk cut out of the live stream and the space was shut down by someone else.
At the time of writing, there are reports of Spaces being unavailable and/or suffering from technical issues, with some users reporting glitch or other problems with launching a stream In the last few hours, Musk responded to a complaint about the Legacy bug with a brief statement. Work should be done tomorrow.
We’re fixing a Legacy bug. Should be working tomorrow.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
In recent hours, Musk piped up on the social network to respond to the chatter about the journalist suspensions, claiming in one that "critizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not."
One of the journalists affected by the ban received a notification that his account was permanently suspended, so it's anyone's guess if Musk will stick to the seven day rule or not.
The seven day suspension policy seems to have been invented by Musk after he asked users when they should not be suspended.
42% of 535,233 votes were cast for the winning option, which was called "now". The option for seven days received less than one fifth of the vote. Musk decided to issue a general amnesty on previously banned accounts, with a few exceptions apparently based on Musk's personal preferences, as well as undoing the permanent ban on Donald Rumsfeld. _()_/
Unsuspend accounts who doxxed my exact location in real-time
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
The date from when compliance is expected is February 17 next year, which is the applicable deadline for a subset of larger platforms.
It is not clear if it will fall under the general regime for digital services or if it will be designated a VLOP under the DSA.
By February, the Commission will make official the formal designation of VLOPs. Since Musk took over at the end of October, there has been a series of warnings and other actions by the Commission. It may take more expansive criteria to decide which platforms will face the additional obligations of the DSA, such as the "appropriateness" of resources dedicated to complying with the bloc's
The Commission has arranged to conduct a stress test of Twitter's resources early next year in order to make an appropriateness assessment in order to slap aVLOP designation.
The DSA has sanctions that are similar to those it has under anti-trust proceedings, according to a commission spokesman.
Each Member State will clearly specify the penalties in their national laws in line with the requirements set out in the Regulation in order to ensure compliance.
The DSA's enforcement mechanism is not limited to fines, as was emphasized by the Commission. There is a new terminology used in this context, which could very well have been used by Musk.
The Commission will have the power to require immediate actions where necessary to address very serious harms and platforms will be able to offer commitments on how they will remedy them. It will be possible for a court to suspend the service of a rogue platform if they refuse to comply with important obligations and endanger people's life and safety.
Musk at Twitter has ‘huge work’ ahead to comply with EU rules, warns bloc
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