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Social media is awash with information about the events in Israel and Gaza. There are concerns about how much of it is fake. The European Union has opened an investigation into the website X, formerly known as Twitter. The EU says there is an alarming amount of posts with false information on X. The EU expressed concern that X was, "being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation". X has until the end of next week to answer EU questions about this content. Failure to reply could lead the EU to a fine on X of up to five per cent of the company's daily turnover.
The EU probe into X comes under the Digital Services Act. This was set up to monitor how tech companies deal with hate speech, and how they police the Internet. The EU advised X to introduce, "proportionate and effective mitigation measures" to identify and delete disinformation. It added: "We have…reports about potentially illegal content circulating on X, despite flags from relevant authorities." Hundreds of bogus accounts have been flooding the Internet with harmful content. X has removed hundreds of these accounts. A social media expert called this, "a drop in the ocean".
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