On this first day of reign as Twitter owner, Elon Musk was quick to tweet “the bird is released“, this is “the bird is free“in good French. A way to reaffirm his desire to make the social network an oasis of freedom of expression, even at the cost of reintegrating controversial figures like Donald Trump.
But the wishes of “freedom of expression” by Elon Musk will collide with an unshakable wall, especially in Europe: the law. In response to the tweet from Tesla boss Thierry Breton, European Commissioner responsible for the internal market since 2019, tweeted: “In Europe the bird will fly according to our European rules “. In reality, the European commissioner and the entrepreneur have already met and discussed the subject, as demonstrated by a video published by Thierry Breton in response to his own tweet.
This booster shot from Europe is also timely, as the Digital Services Regulation (DSA) was released Thursday in Official newspaper of the EU. A text that intends to bind platforms in terms of content moderation. Except that the first signals given by Elon Musk since his acquisition of Twitter don’t seem to point in this direction. The richest man in the world has thus fired the former CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, and would like to separate himself from 75% of the driving forces of the social network, of which a significant part is linked to moderation.
