(LifeSiteNews) — Elon Musk has said that the European Union (E.U.) offered his social media platform X an “illegal deal” to quietly censor speech so the company would not get fined.
“The European Commission offered 𝕏 an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us,” Musk wrote on X on July 12.
“The other platforms accepted that deal. 𝕏 did not,” he added.
The tech billionaire posted these comments in response to a post by Margrethe Vestager, the Vice-President of E.U.’s Digital Commission. She wrote that X “doesn’t comply with the DSA [Digital Service Act] in key transparency areas.”
Musk announced he will take the E.U. “to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.”
Thierry Breton, the E.U.’s Commissioner for Internal Market, responded to the tech billionaire, denying the existence of a “secret deal” offered to X and other social media platforms.
READ: EU minister says European Commission can ban social media in cases of civil unrest
“There has never been — and will never be — any ‘secret deal.’ With anyone,” Breton insisted.
“The DSA provides X (and any large platform) with the possibility to offer commitments to settle a case.”
“To be extra clear: it’s *YOUR* team who asked the Commission to explain the process for settlement and to clarify our concerns.”
“We did it in line with established regulatory procedures,” he continued. “Up to you to decide whether to offer commitments or not. That is how rule of law procedures work.”
The E.U. introduced the Digital Service Act (DSA) in August 2023. It grants the E.U. Commission the power to impose heavy fines on large social media platforms operating in the E.U. if they do not comply with its rules on so-called “disinformation” and “hate speech.” Back in August last year, Breton even threatened to shut down social media platforms if they do not comply with the rules in the case of civil unrest, like the riots in France at the time.
As former Trump State Department official Michael Benz pointed out, the E.U. collaborated closely with the left-wing, globalist news rating organization NewsGuard, whose personnel is entangled with the U.S. intelligence agencies and other parts of the U.S. government.
In 2021, the Department of Defense awarded NewsGuard $750,000 for its project “Misinformation Fingerprints,” which aims to combat what it calls “a catalogue of known hoaxes, falsehoods and misinformation narratives that are spreading online.”
READ: Elon Musk slams leftist rating group NewsGuard as ‘scam’ that ‘should be disbanded immediately’