The European Union Tuesday issued a warning to X Corp. boss Elon Musk over possible disinformation appearing on the platform regarding the recent Hamas attack on Israel.

Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, said in a letter addressed to Musk that his office has “indications” that various people or groups are promulgating misinformation and “violent and terrorist” content on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Breton shared his correspondence with Musk on his own X account. He warned Musk that under the new Digital Services Act, or DSA — a slew of regulations that will require digital businesses working in Europe to take much more responsibility for their products –X must act and act quickly.

“You need to be very transparent and clear on what content is permitted under your terms and consistently and diligently enforce your own policies,” wrote Breton. “This is particularly relevant when it comes to violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform. Your latest changes in public interest policies that occurred over night left many European users uncertain.”

Here, he was referring to X’s decision over the weekend to leave what it called “sensitive media” up on the platform regarding the events of the war. X said this was “in the public interest,” adding that there has been an “increase in daily active users on @X in the conflict area” as well as around 50 million posts on the “weekend’s terrorist attack on Israel.”

Although some users congratulated this move, others complained that X has been moderating too much, while yet others have accused the platform of not moderating enough. Still, putting opinions aside, what’s obviously fake war content posing as real content should not have air time on any social media platform while a war is ongoing.

In his letter, Breton said there have been reports of “fake and manipulated images and facts circulating” on X, explaining that “repurposed old images of unrelated armed conflicts or military footage that originated from video games” have appeared on the platform. “This appears to be manifestly false or misleading information,” he said.

Breton explained that X must not only remove such misinformation but is expected to do so in a “timely, diligent and objective” manner. If it doesn’t, the company could be fined 6% of its global revenue or find itself banned in Europe, where there are about 50 million users.

Breton said X has 24 hours to respond, after which the response will be assessed regarding X’s adherence to DSA policy.

Photo: Alexander Shatov/Flickr