The EU's top internet enforcer took to X, the rebranded Twitter, on Wednesday to trumpet a rival platform, as a duel with Elon Musk over disinformation ratcheted up.

Thierry Breton, the European Union's commissioner for industry and the digital economy, joined the Bluesky network in a move designed to further rile Musk, who is fighting to keep X relevant but out of Brussels' regulatory sights.

It came a day after Breton warned Musk that X was spreading "illegal content and disinformation" in relation to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Breton pointed out that X was now being held to account under a new EU law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which carries penalties of up to six percent of global turnover if a big online platform is found in breach of rules on moderating content.

On Wednesday, Breton posted on X that "even though the grass is not (always) greener on the other side, the sky is sometimes… bluer".

In case anybody missed the allusion to Bluesky, Breton also posted his new Bluesky profile on his X feed, giving his Bluesky handle and a bio description of "EU Commissioner. Digital enforcer. Father."

Over on Bluesky — a rapidly-growing US platform led by former Twitter executives — Breton so far has posted just once: a copy of the letter he sent to Musk giving the X owner 24 hours to respond with details on what he is doing to curb disinformation.

The move by Breton is a public challenge to Musk, who is sensitive to references on his platform to the competitors that are syphoning off X/Twitter users upset with the direction the billionaire is taking his platform.

– 'Open and transparent' –

For a time, Musk — a self-described free-speech "absolutist" — even had X block links pointing users to on open-source rival Mastodon.

And he has started legal action against Threads, a new alternative launched by Facebook parent Meta that is not available in Europe because of wariness over the EU's regulatory oversight.

Bluesky, yet another microblogging platform, is tiny so far compared to X because access is invitation-only from existing users, preventing bots, spammers and propaganda operatives from creating thousands of fake accounts.

Yet its board members include Jack Dorsey, Twitter's co-founder, and users say their experience with Bluesky thus far is that it has little of the trolling, spam and disinformation encountered on X or other social media.

In a public reply to Breton's warning over disinformation related to the Israel/Hamas conflict, Musk posted on X that the platform's policy was that "everything was open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports".

He asked the EU commissioner to "please list the violations you allude to on X", signing off "merci beaucoup" in a nod to Breton's French nationality.

Breton responded on X that it was up to Musk to "demonstrate that you walk the talk" and said his team was standing by to "enforce rigorously" DSA compliance.

Breton does not decide himself what constitutes illegal online content — that is defined by EU laws or legislation in EU member countries — but he plays an active role in putting attention on platforms.

– 'New sheriff' –

The commissioner has hailed the EU rules he helped bring in as an effort to tame the online "Wild West".

In a post on X last year, he said: "A new sheriff is in town — and it goes by the name DSA."

Since Musk bought Twitter in 2022 he has brought in changes that include firing many staff who had handled content moderation, allowing back figures such as former US president Donald Trump, who had been banned for inflammatory posts, and of course changing the platform's name to X.

X also left an EU voluntary code of practice on fighting disinformation and misinformation which served as a pointer towards the sort of scrutiny now imposed under the mandatory DSA.

Another EU commissioner, Vera Jourova, last month said that an analysis in three EU countries showed X had the biggest proportion of disinformation compared to other big platforms.

Advertisers have stepped back from X, causing its revenues to plummet. Several celebrities and newsmakers, too, have left.

Since Hamas militants stormed Israel's border area around the Gaza enclave on the weekend, big online platforms have been flooded with videos showing gruesome deaths, hostages and bombardments.

On X, the authenticity and veracity of many of the posts are difficult to determine because the platform has replaced its blue-tick verification system with one where any user can simply buy in.

In several posts, images from unrelated areas and incidents have been falsely presented as occurring during the Hamas raids or conflict with Israel.

And since last week, X has ceased giving links to news articles that are posted, replacing them with an image only that gives no context or description.

International news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has announced that it is taking legal action against X in France to enforce EU law relating to payments for use of online content.

Bluesky, the X rival boosted by EU's tech enforcer
Paris (AFP) Oct 11, 2023 –

Since Elon Musk hollowed out Twitter's staffing, pushed services behind a paywall and renamed it X, many users have been thrashing around for an alternative social media platform.

So far none has emerged as a clear winner, but EU commissioner Thierry Breton, alarmed at the disinformation on X, has just made a very public choice to switch to Bluesky — one of the lesser-known X rivals.

What is Bluesky?

The platform was created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as a side project in 2019.

Dorsey put five engineers aside to build a decentralised alternative to Twitter.

He said at the time that centralised attempts to police abuse and misinformation on a platform like Twitter were unlikely to work, and wanted to give users more control of personal data and content moderation.

But Bluesky did not see the light of day until earlier this year.

The current version looks and feels incredibly similar to the Musk-owned site.

But the platform is keeping itself exclusive — you need an invite from another user or you have to sign up to a "waitlist" that can take weeks to get an account.

Who is using it?

The more that Musk has set about transforming X into a realm of paywalls and petty gripes, the more popular the alternatives have become.

Bluesky is still in its experimental phase but said last month that it had already passed the landmark of one million users.

Sign-ups have spiked each time Musk has made a controversial change to his platform, according to the company's data.

High-profile early adopters include US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fashion model Chrissy Teigen.

And journalists and media organisations, frequent targets of Musk's ire on X, are moving over in numbers.

US outlets like the Washington Post and New York Times already post their stories on Bluesky.

However, the platform has not yet achieved a huge network effect and discussion of current events is limited.

Its "what's hot" function provides users with a list of the main topics at any given time, which on Wednesday featured a lot of cat pictures and very little discussion of Israel-Hamas conflict.

Can it rival X?

The field is getting crowded, with small operators battling it out with juggernauts like Meta, which launched its Threads service in July.

The numbers don't look great for the upstarts.

Threads had more than 100 million sign-ups within days of its launch, and Musk claims X has 550 million users — though his figures are disputed.

But Bluesky is pushing a very different model.

It wants users and developers to be free to interact with the platform, including via third-party applications.

It also insists it will not rely on advertising or monetising user data, rolling out a paid service for those who want their names attached to a domain name.

Early reviews of the platform have been broadly positive, with Silicon Valley tech commentator Casey Newton praising its focus on decentralisation, writing on his Platformer site it was "a near one-for-one replica of Twitter in its early days".

An editorial on the tech news site The Verge in May was equally positive.

"Bluesky has a long way to go to fully replace Twitter for me, but right now, I think it actually could," it said.