The new "regulation of the Twitter platform, its abrupt changes and its arbitrary application" cause "great concern", writes the Secretary of State at the German Ministry of Economics, Sven Giegold (Greens), in a letter to the Commission European.

In recent days, the company recently acquired by US billionaire Elon Musk introduced a new rule prohibiting the promotion of competing social sites.

This means that Twitter wants to delete user accounts when they link to pages from Facebook, Instagram or Mastodon among others.

In his letter addressed to the European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager and the Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton, and published on Twitter, Mr. Giegold, in charge of competition issues, calls on the Brussels executive to proceed "as quickly as possible to a legal review to designate Twitter as a "gatekeeper" under the new Digital Markets Directive (DMA).

"Access controllers" are companies such as Google or Facebook that have a particularly strong position in the market, which makes them subject to special requirements such as restrictions on the processing of users' personal data.

This European classification meets objective criteria (market capitalization, turnover in Europe of the company concerned, etc.) and not a political assessment.

Twitter does not yet meet these strict criteria within the meaning of the directive, acknowledges Mr. Giegold, but the platform "exerts a great influence on the formation of public opinion in the world and also in Europe", which justifies monitor it more closely, he argues.

In his letter, the former MEP castigates, among other "arbitrary" decisions taken by Elon Musk's group, in particular the recent suspension of the accounts of journalists covering the social network.

These decisions "do not only threaten freedom of enterprise but pose a risk to democracy (..) and freedom of the press".

© 2022 AFP