Under guardianship? Germany pressures Europe to put Twitter under surveillance


Samir Rahmoun

December 22, 2022 at 5:00 p.m.

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Twitter application on a tablet © Souvik Banerjee/Unsplash

© Souvik Banerjee/Unsplash

A call from Germany asks the European Union to put Twitter under direct surveillance.

It was Sven Giegold, the Secretary of State in charge of competition policies within the German Ministry of the Economy, who launched the hostilities with a post… on Twitter.

A problem posed “to freedom of expression”

He thus addressed a letter to the two European commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton to expose the urgency that there would be to put an end to what he considers to be the ” anti-competitive behavior from Elon Musk’s Twitter.

Several of the recent controversies that have punctuated the news of the social network are reported there, including the sudden change in policy on live locations, or even a few days later, the suspension of the accounts of several journalists.

Terms and conditions that change almost every hour, erratic justifications for extensive restrictions on links and the blocking of journalists threaten freedom of competition and pose a risk to freedom of expression, information and the press “, he thus detailed.

Twitter subject to the same regime as Facebook and Google?

Sven Giegold’s objective is to apply to Twitter the new regime that the European Commission wants to put in place for digital giants, such as Facebook and Google. Regime which currently only applies to very large platforms.

A hitch in the request of which the German politician is aware, who remarks that ” Twitter is not yet ranked as a dominant digital platform, partly because the company’s sales are still too low “.

But for all that, according to Sven Giegold, the still intermediate size of the network bought by Elon Musk for 44 billion dollars should not justify more tolerant treatment on the part of the European authorities. And this, because Twitter exerts a great influence on the formation of public opinion in the world and also in Europe “.

Source : Reuters



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