Mike Benz, the director of a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, is sounding the alarm on the European Union’s investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, for what it claims are breakages of the multinational conglomerate’s hate speech laws.
Benz, an attorney and the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), said that the EU plans to force X into implementing a mandatory “disinformation compliance” service like NewsGuard. Such products have been termed “middleware.”
“Mark my words: The EU’s censorship probe of 𝕏 will ultimately angle to force 𝕏 to buy disinformation compliance services from an entity similar to NewsGuard in order to continue operating in the EU,” Benz said on X Monday, attaching a video he made in August predicting that the platform would run afoul of the EU’s pro-censorship laws.
Mark my words: The EU's censorship probe of 𝕏 will ultimately angle to force 𝕏 to buy disinformation compliance services from an entity similar to NewsGuard in order to continue operating in the EU. https://t.co/DGjoKJL7uf pic.twitter.com/tvWZoQUjmM
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) December 18, 2023
“One thing to really be on the lookout for here is something around disinformation compliance,” said Benz in the August video. “Now this is gonna be big, because on August 25 … just weeks away, the EU is going to kick into motion these new rules requiring compliance with EU disinformation rules for Twitter to continue to do business in the EU market. NewsGuard is already billing itself as a disinformation compliance service to comply with these new EU disinformation laws.”
Benz explained the “middleware” industry for The Tennessee Star in August.
“The reason that they call it competitive middleware is because they’re trying to create a competitive industry around middleware compliance to avoid any antitrust situations that could arise,” he said.
“One of the things that I find most grotesque is that there is nothing natural about NewsGuard,” said Benz. “This is not a market that would exist without government pressure.”
NewsGuard currently operates as an “independent” “fact-checking” website that scores news websites based on trustworthiness. It received a Department of Defense (DOD) grant worth $750,000.
Elon Musk, who owns X and has been harangued by the political left for not censoring enough speech since his takeover, once called NewsGuard a scam.
“What a scam! ‘Newsguard’ should be disbanded immediately,” Musk said in October in response to independent journalist and podcaster Tim Pool, who complained that NewsGuard was haranguing his operation.
What a scam!
“Newsguard” should be disbanded immediately.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2023
“Newsguard gave us a strike because we ran 5 stories out of nearly 5,000 that quoted Trump,” Pool said at the time. “They claimed that reporting on Trump’s statements was irresponsible because we should be fact checking him instead and Trump was wrong.”
“They now claim we dont correct errors because we didnt respond to their false claims last month The “nutrition label” they wrote contained so many errors they had to repeatedly correct it and have refused to correct additional false statements while claiming we don’t correct errors despite doing so all the time. Meanwhile WSJ, NYT, and more ran fake stories out of Gaza and get 100%.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter/X.
