Disinformation is the most active on X, says the European Union.
The Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform - which was formerly known as Twitter - has been deemed to have the largest proportion of disinformation of the six big social media companies by a study from the European Commission.
The report looked at 6,000 unique social media posts from Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and the X, which was bought by the 52-year-old billionaire last year. It focused on three countries - Spain, Poland and Slovakia - that it believed to be particularly vulnerable to false information, particularly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Vera Jourova, the EU’s Values and Transparency Commissioner, said: "My message for [X] is: you have to comply with the hard law. We'll be watching what you're doing.”
According to the study, X had the biggest “ratio of discoverability” of disinformation, while YouTube had the smallest.
The TrustLab carried out the findings in collaboration with the EU, which is seeking to turn its voluntary code on tackling disinformation into the Digital Services Act.
The EU highlighted
Ms Joura said: "Mr Musk knows that he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practice, because now we have the Digital Services Act fully enforced."
This comes after Elon faced criticism for gutting the social media site when he took the helm by getting rid of more than half the staff and making verification blue ticks a paid-for feature, which the previous administration brought in to slow the spread of misinformation and disinformation and increase trust in the information posted on the website.
