The fallout between US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, along with the expansion of the Digital Services Act (DSA) on July 1st, could make the law easier for the European Commission to enforce.
Experts told Euronews Next that while Musk worked as a special employee at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), it is possible that he was perceived as an official voice of the administration.
Musk’s former position could have made it harder for the Commission to put penalties on Musk’s social media network X because they were worried about a larger “spillover effect” with the Trump administration, said Oreste Pollicino, professor of digital constitutionalism and artificial intelligence at Bocconi University in Italy.
“Musk was seen not only as the owner of X but as a part of the US administration; this will not be the case anymore,” he said, adding that “the political cost of targeting Musk could decrease”.
‘They worry about the fallout’
The DSA is a piece of legislation that regulates the spread of illegal and harmful online activities on platforms such as marketplaces, social media sites and app stores.
On July 1st, a voluntary code of practice on disinformation will be folded into the DSA, which means platforms will have to abide by it going forward. (Twitter had signed the code in 2018 under previous leadership but withdrew in 2023 after Elon Musk bought the platform and renamed it X.)
There’s no proof that the Commission is avoiding taking action against X due to Musk’s ties with Trump at the time because that would make it look “very bad, ” said Jan Penfrat, senior policy advisor with European Digital Rights.
However, he said that one of the major indicators that the Commission was worried about the Trump-Musk relationship is the fact that there is not yet a decision in its initial investigation into X, which was launched over 500 days ago.
Last July, preliminary findings from the Commission found that X was in violation of the DSA in areas of “dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers”.
“There’s tonnes of evidence. The Commission said so themselves. So why are we still waiting on [a] binding decision against X?” Penfrat told Euronews Next.
“One good explanation would be that yes, they are hesitant because they worry about the fallout … so if Trump and Musk aren’t getting along anymore, [it could] lead to stronger and more decisions [under the legislation]”.
How could the Commission prevent future enforcement issues?
In the wake of the Trump-Musk fallout, Pollicino said there could be additional appetite from EU lawmakers to introduce complementary “instruments” to close certain enforcement gaps.
One of the things these instruments could focus on is refining a “more precise criteria” for what might constitute a “systemic risk” for harmful content, he added.
The DSA currently evaluates four categories of systemic risks: the dissemination of illegal content, negative effects for the exercise of fundamental rights, negative effects on civic discourse, and negative effects on the protection of minors, gender-based violence and public health.
“If X is no longer perceived as an ideological instrument for a powerful United States political actor, it might recalibrate how systemic risks are assessed vis-a-vis … platforms like Meta, TikTok, [and] YouTube,” Pollicino said.
The instrument could potentially address platform capture risk, Pollicino added, when a service becomes “functionally aligned with a political actor or agenda [to] undermine democratic discourse.”
Penfrat said that while the DSA is a “solid” piece of legislation, more investment needs to be made into how to enforce it at the national level.
What’s next for the DSA investigation into X?
The most recent update of the X investigation is that the Commission asked for more information about the algorithms the platform uses to push some content over others.
Euronews Next reached out to the Commission to see if there have been any additional steps taken on the DSA investigation but did not receive an immediate reply.
Pollicino said he believes the scope of the investigation that the European Commission already launched under the DSA into X should be expanded to include any harmful commentary or content that Musk would’ve perpetrated on the platform during his time as DOGE special government employee.
“For sure, there was a bigger impact when there was this alliance between Musk and Trump,” Pollicino said.
Musk could eventually be charged with up to six per cent of X’s profits in Europe under the DSA, but Penfrat argued that the penalty should be applied to Musk’s entire net worth instead.
“If you limit it to X, then there’s not much to fine,” he said. “X doesn’t have a huge revenue compared to how rich Elon Musk is … you’ll end up with a fine that’s, you know, less than pocket money [for him],” he said.
Euronews Next reached out to X but didn’t get an immediate reply.