Technology

• Researchers identified hundreds of posts violating EU sanctions on the social media platform X.
• X is categorised as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) under the Digital Services Act (DSA), and as such is legally obligated to mitigate systemic risks on their platform and investigate illegal content reports from users.
• A sample dataset of 125 clear sanction-violating posts were reported to X using the “Report EU Illegal Content” form on the platform. These included, for instance, programmes from the Russian state broadcaster RT. Only 57% of the reports of illegal content received acknowledgement receipts, breaching DSA obligations.
• Only one of the reported posts was removed, and for the remaining cases, X responded via email, stating that no violation of EU law was found, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
• There were 7 responses made by the platform within 2 minutes or less, potentially indicating automated reviews.
• In the case of content from the sanctioned Russian influence operation Doppelgänger, posts were deleted despite the platform’s initial response claiming no action would be taken.
• The results of this reporting experiment suggest that X’s current moderation mechanisms are insufficiently equipped, or that the platform is potentially unwilling to enforce sanction-related policies at scale.