Washington cries censorship (again), X/Twitter raid and TikTok mods talk legal action
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by members like you.
This year was always going to be about regulators knocking at platforms' doors — but I didn't expect that to be literally. Mike and I discuss what the raiding of X's French offices mean for transatlantic policy relations in this week's Ctrl-Alt-Speech.
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Here's your Week in Review for this bleak and dreary February week (in London, at least) — BW
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Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
French authorities raided the offices of X/Twitter this week and summoned Elon Musk to appear at a “voluntary” hearing in April as part of an investigation that started about biased algorithms and has been extended to include the proliferation of NCII and CSAM.
The move sparked a furious response from the presidentially certified “bullshit artist”, who called it a “political attack” while former X/Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino and Telegram CEO Pavel Durov jump to his defence. Safe to say that France is not making many friends among platforms right now. And Spain is following suit.
It came as Ofcom provided an update on its investigation into X/Twitter under the Online Safety Act (OSA), which it said was progressing “as a matter of urgency”. However, it noted that it wouldn’t investigate xAI — which owns and provides access to Grok — because it is not a user-to-user service, search service or produces pornographic content (which some may dispute).
Who’s after who? Although the Online Safety Act does not allow Ofcom to pursue a case against xAI, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced this week that it will — and also has X/Twitter in its sights according to the release. It follows the European Commission opening an investigation into Elon Musk’s social platform last week. So the ICO and France are going after xAI and the EU, Ofcom and ICO investigating X. Got that? Good.
Meanwhile in Washington, the US House Judiciary Committee published a ‘report’ (if you can call it that) accusing the European Commission of a “decade-long campaign” to censor American speech. The framing — eagerly amplified by blue checks on X/Twitter — positions EU tech regulation as geopolitical interference but suggests effects of recent enforcement are being felt across the pond.
None of this will shock long-time EiM readers. But what might be more surprising is the tone of industry association NetChoice’s praise for the House Judiciary leadership for which it described as “foreign censorship of Americans”. The group has long argued that regulation amounts to censorship so that’s not new. But the geopolitical framing — and its fawning tone — feel fresh.