The IT Nerd

Elon Musk is a guy who has 99 problems at the moment when it comes to Twitter. Well, that count could increment with a significant problem next week via a summons from the EU to explain himself and what he’s doing with Twitter:

The world’s richest man who recently bought the social media company is set to receive an invitation to come to the European Parliament in Brussels and explain himself, two Parliament officials told POLITICO. 

European Parliament President Roberta Metsola briefed top EU lawmakers in a closed-door meeting Thursday that she will invite Musk soon. The move comes at the request of lawmakers from the Liberal group Renew, a spokesperson for the group said. 

And:

“There are sound reasons to suggest that the standards applied by Twitter until now, may be weakened, at a time when the fight against election interference, misinformation and hate speech is more important than ever,” wrote Liberal lawmaker Dita Charanzová (Czech) and Sophie in ‘t Veld (Dutch) in a letter to Metsola on November 8. 

Lawmakers want Musk to show up in Brussels in person to hear about his plans and remind him of European laws governing technology.

Knowing him, he will try to brush this off. Or drop some of his questionable memes and act like this is no big deal. But ignoring the EU or flipping them off is something you do at your own peril. Even though the EU can’t directly call him to testify, he’d be smart to show up if he was called. Because if they get mad at him and pass some sort of legislation to govern the behaviour at Twitter, he’s not going to be a happy camper. Besides that, the EU has some of the strongest privacy laws on the planet. Thus if he’s smart, he’d make sure he’s on the right side of that.

This will be interesting to watch. Get your popcorn ready.

This entry was posted on November 22, 2022 at 8:58 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.