BRUSSELS: X, the online platform formerly known as Twitter, has the biggest proportion of disinformation of social networks scrutinised under a pilot analysis by the EU, a top official said on Tuesday.

The analysis, carried out over three months in EU countries Spain, Poland and Slovakia, revealed that X was falling far short of an EU code of practice on anti-disinformation standards, European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said. Twitter was one of dozens of companies running social media networks that signed up to the voluntary code of practice when it was launched in 2018.

But after being taken over by Elon Musk, who has rebranded it X, the company withdrew from the EU code.

“X, formerly Twitter, who is not under the code anymore, is the platform with the largest ratio of mis- and dis-information posts,” Jourova said.

She was speaking after the 44 companies still signed onto the code of practice — among them Facebook parent Meta, YouTube owner Google and Chinese-owned TikTok — handed in their first full reports of code compliance.

Though voluntary, aspects of the code underpin parts of new EU legislation known as the Digital Services Act, which entered force last month and which threatens massive fines of up to six per cent of global turnover for companies found in breach.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2023