Brussels, 8 January 2025
Axel Voss, MEP of the EPP Group and a leading digital policy expert, commented in a LinkedIn post on the role of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg in politics:
“During the US election campaign, we have already seen disturbing interference from Elon Musk on X, pushing algorithms with his own political beliefs. Together with colleagues across party lines we have sent several requests to the European Commission to assess such behavior against the rules of the EU Digital Services Act.
In the last weeks, Elon Musk has publicly supported the right-wing populist party in Germany, thereby also influencing the upcoming German federal election in February. This support included arguments based on fake news, collaboration with large media outlets and an upcoming X live broadcast with the lead candidate.
Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg also announced that he would stop working with fact checkers and get rid of content moderation rules.
With these developments that will resonate across the globe, we will be moving to a post-factual world. While these changes are argued to be in favor of free speech, it is a quote by Barack Obama that will always resonate with me:
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”
The DSA will fall short of dealing with this massive paradigm change, we can save ourselves that discussion. As a European Union we need to stand up against platform owners that interfere in our free elections. We need to stand up against fake news. And we cannot accept for social media platforms to become a legal vacuum.
In fact, we are already facing a reality where social media content not only influences political decisions based on post-factual arguments but it literally rots our brains. Many youngsters and adults have a screen time of up to 12 hours through algorithms with addictive design, seeing content that is either illegal or harmful and that has a largely negative effect on their ability to focus and their mental health.
We need to react to these developments fast and regulate social media platforms in a clear way.”
Source – Axel Voss on LinkedIn