The European Parliament has invited Elon Musk, the new owner of the social networking site Twitter, to take part in a public hearing on the platform. The invitation comes after key figures in the EU warned that Twitter may be banned if it does not implement widespread censorship policies.
According to an invitation letter from European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, dated Monday, the EU body wants to have a “frank exchange of views” with the billionaire, a spokesperson for the president said.
Twitter “must not unwittingly become a vehicle for hate speech, electoral interference and misinformation,” reads the letter.
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Musk bought the social media giant at the end of October, and since then the European Union has repeatedly called on him to strengthen his protection against loosely defined terms such as hate speech, misinformation, and other so-called harmful content to avoid breaching EU laws.
In a Twitter message on Monday, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said “platforms can’t keep flip-flopping on policies,” as the EU law on digital services sets out clear rules.
He added that the law must be applied by Sept. 1 next year at the latest and asked service providers to do their utmost to fully comply with the law before the deadline, according to a report from Hungarian news outlet Mandiner.
Breton is referring to the EU’s Digital Service Act, with one of the fundamental elements of the act designed to regulate and restrict speech on the web under the guise of “combating hate speech.” The DSA offers the EU broad powers to censor political dissidents and political speech it deems a threat to the power of the left-liberal establishment.
As Remix News previously reported, it is unclear what will constitute “hate speech” or “disinformation” or who will be the arbiter of these designations, but the “fact-checkers” that often decide these issues are ideologically aligned with the left. For example, the vast majority of fact-checkers working for Facebook in Central and Eastern Europe are funded by billionaire oligarch George Soros, whose money has flowed through nearly every major left-liberal NGO and establishment figure in the West, which means those opposed to mass immigration and restrictions on freedom of speech, or supporters for traditional family values, may find themselves designated as purveyors of “hate speech” and subject to fines or censorship under the DSA.
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A day after Twitter suspended the accounts of several well-known journalists who recently posted about Musk’s flight location and the state of affairs at the company following its acquisition of Twitter, EU Commissioner for Values, Transparency and the Rule of Law Vera Jourová warned the owner last Friday, saying that EU law on digital services requires “respect” for media freedom and fundamental rights.
The warning comes after Twitter censored conservatives for years with absolutely no opposition from the left-liberal bloc in the EU. For example, Twitter’s decision to suspend the account of the New York Post for running the Hunter Biden laptop story, an event seen as a major attack on the freedom of the press, was met with silence from the European Parliament.
