'He is familiar with European rules on automotive, and will quickly adapt to the Digital Services Act.' That includes the Digital Services Act, a forthcoming law Breton and other policymakers announced last week governing social media and other tech platforms. Thierry Breton, an EU commissioner and a leading digital regulator, tweeted Tuesday that all companies operating in the EU have to play by the bloc's rules. Under Elon Musk, Twitter must abide by Europe's heightened new standards for content moderation or else risk fines or even a possible ban, according to a top European Union official. Twitter's agenda-setting power seems to be precisely what interests Musk, and what makes his control of the platform so potentially disruptive.

More than two-thirds of Twitter's US users say the platform is an important - if not the most important - source of news, according to the Pew Research Center. So why, exactly, do the stakes feel so big? The answer boils down to the outsized influence of Twitter on public discourse, and the uncertainty of what happens when the world's richest man - who revels in his unpredictability - gains singular control over that influence.Īlthough Twitter reported just 217 million active daily users last year, a far cry from the billions reported by rival Meta, its users include highly influential politicians, business leaders, entertainers, activists and intellectuals - public figures with large followings who in turn shape the public discourse surrounding politics, media, finance and technology. And prior to this month, Twitter's stock was below the closing price from its first day of trading more than eight years ago.īut Musk's bid to take Twitter private has inspired unsolicited input from US lawmakers, rampant speculation about its impact on the 2024 US presidential election, and even breathless, hyperbolic comparisons to the last days of Weimar Germany. Its total revenue last year was roughly the same as Western Union. The company's user base and market value are less than a tenth the size of Meta, Facebook's parent company. Twitter may seem rather ordinary on paper.

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