French President Emmanuel Macron read the riot act to Elon Musk on Friday, warning that the Twitter CEO must follow European Union regulations prohibiting misinformation and terrorist hate speech online if he plans to keep the social media platform operating across the sea.
“Transparent user policies, significant reinforcement of content moderation and protection of freedom of speech: Efforts have to be made by Twitter to comply with European regulations,” Macron said, adding that he informed Musk in a “clear and honest discussion.”
Musk’s dramatic Twitter policy changes allowing misinformation and hate speech are “a big issue,” Macron said Thursday in an interview on “Good Morning America.”
“Free speech and democracy is based on respect and public order. You can demonstrate, you can have free speech, you can write what you want, but there are responsibilities and limits,” Macron added.
Twitter’s already in trouble in Europe following Musk’s decision to allow potentially health- and life-threatening COVID misinformation to be spread on the platform.