After the departure from Twitter of the signatories of the European code of good practice against disinformation, the French minister responsible for digital, Jean-Noël Barrot, fears that the social network will soon be banned from the Old Continent. According to the latter, it will only take one repeat offense for the platform to be permanently banned.
Last week, European Commissioner Thierry Breton announced that Twitter has left the list of signatories to the European code of best practice against disinformation. Suffice to say that Parliament is now closely monitoring the social network, especially after Elon Musk decided to reactivate the accounts of many problematic users, some of whom do not hesitate to massively spread fake news.
This decision therefore raises the question of the future of the social network in Europe. As of today, all options are on the table. “Twitter, if it does not comply with our rules, will be banned, in the event of a repeat offense, from the European Union”, warned Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate for the Digital Transition and Telecommunications. The tone is set. “You can run away, but you can’t hide“, had warned for his part Thierry Breton during the announcement.
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Will Europe soon ban Twitter?
“Twitter plays an important role in public debate, but we cannot take the risk that a social network such as Twitter will be taken hostage by the proponents of disinformation and that, consequently, our public debate, our democracy be affected”, believes Jean-Noël Barrot. At a time when conspiracy theories and hate messages are spreading faster than ever on the platform, it’s hard not to share the minister’s fears.
In addition, it is much less virulent about AI, while OpenAI itself has made it known that its future is compromised by the severity of the GDPR. Jean-Noël Barrot rightly considers that Parliament’s position “excessive”declaring that the latter takes the risk of “bringing the European Union out of technological history” . According to the minister, we could “locked in decades of subjugation and technological dependence”in case of prohibition.