Under the bloc’s regulatory structure, European commissioners, who are nominated by national leaders, have a say in how rules are implemented, but typically do not meddle in how officials enforce the law. Last year, just as Europe’s social media rules came into force, Breton also urged enforcers to focus on potential harm at both X and TikTok, according to four officials with knowledge of those discussions.
California love lost
Breton and Musk were once tech bros-in-arms.
The two have met repeatedly to discuss Europe’s social media rules, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA). Those laws include fines of up to 6 percent of global turnover if tech giants like X fail to quell hate speech and other online harms on their platforms. The Commission — with Breton leading the charge — has visited X’s offices in San Francisco at least twice to check how Musk is complying with the laws.
In 2022, the men met at a Tesla factory in Austin, Texas and posed for an awkward video, posted on X, where Musk was dressed in casual T-shirt and jeans, while Breton — ever the European bureaucrat — sported a suit and tie. In the three-minute clip, the European commissioner spoke about how he had discussed the bloc’s new social media rules with the tech mogul.
But the camaraderie fizzled out, and Brussels charged Musk’s social network in late July for failing to uphold the bloc’s social media laws — the first-ever such investigation under the DSA.
Europe’s enforcers claimed that X’s so-called “blue checks,” which any user can now buy, had misled others about the potential trustworthiness of online content. The company also was not transparent about how groups bought online advertising on the platform and had not given outsiders access to its public-facing data — charges that would amount to infringements under the DSA.
