European users may soon have to look elsewhere than X as its owner, billionaire Elon Musk, is considering pulling out of the EU market. The news was brought by Business Insider with reference to a source familiar with the business situation of one of the world’s richest people.
According to the source, Musk is bothered by the European Union’s Digital Services Regulation (DSA), which Brussels adopted in August and which sets out rules for limiting hateful or harmful content. In addition, the Union prohibits or restricts certain techniques for targeting users or sharing internal data. Musk, who bought X a year ago for $44 billion, is considering removing the app’s availability in the European region or making it unavailable to users in the EU, according to the source.
Considerations of leaving most of the countries of the old continent have begun, as the X platform is likely to violate the rules of the DSA, mainly due to the wave of hateful or misleading posts caused by the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict after the attack by the militants of the Hamas organization on October 7. Last week, the European Commission formally called on X to demonstrate that its activities are in compliance with the DSA by October 31. If this did not happen, the Commission could initiate administrative proceedings against X.
However, Musk denied the report when he wrote in a post on X that Business Insider wrote “completely false”.
X could face a fine of up to 6% of its global sales, which would be a significant hit for a company struggling with falling revenues. Since taking over, Musk has been looking for ways to cut costs in X, which has resulted, among other things, in the departments that are supposed to monitor and moderate the content published on the network, from where Musk has fired hundreds of employees.
Europe accounts for about nine percent of X’s global monthly active user base, according to data from Apptopia.
