Content rules on X

Thierry Breton, a politician in Europe, has issued a letter to X (formerly known as Twitter), asking the platform to remove posts, per law, that EU officials deem to be misinformation, or face fines and other consequences.

For a long time now, there have been only two cultural approaches to the internet: China’s approach, and (basically) everyone else’s.

Update: Reader Zac let me know this is inaccurate. Germany’s rules around content have affected Facebook and social platforms in Germany for a long time. This is true in other countries, which makes the significance really about the scope and prominence of this example.

But what this letter reveals is that so far “everyone else” has actually only meant the United States, and now different sovereign nations with different values around what is and isn’t dangerous or problematic information are willing to write and enforce laws based on those values.

Facebook, X, and other social media platforms until now have been able to operate under the values and laws of the United States almost everywhere in the world. This has created a de-facto cultural baseline: whatever we in the US think is appropriate. But the EU has different ideas about what is appropriate, and they have the ability to enforce those rules through controlling access to their population.

Issues around freedom of speech on social media platforms have been problematic from the very beginning, and they’re not going to be resolved anytime soon. But if the EU is successful in getting X to alter the content it shows in order to remain available in Europe, it means that the platforms may have to implement different rule sets for different markets.

Although this is technologically difficult, it is not beyond imagining. If China can run the great firewall, then X can show different posts to people with IP addresses that reveal they’re in different countries.

This future could mean people in some countries end up with a very different experience of the internet than people in other countries, since for most people the internet is significantly a social platform.