Rumbling away throughout 2024 was EU threats to take action against Twitter/X for abandoning fact-checking. The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is clear on its requirements - so that conflict will escalate. If X won’t change, presumably ultimately it will be banned from the EU.
Meta have decided they’d rather keep EU market access. Today they announced the removal of fact-checking, but only for Americans. Europeans can still benefit from the higher standards the Digital Services Act guarantees.
The next 10 years will see the power of mis/disinformation accelerate with AI. Meta itself seems to be embracing this trend by purposefully integrating fake AI profiles into its networks. From now on it looks like the main battle-ground to deal with this is going to be the EU.
Maybe some US “Twitter broadcasters” will move to EU analogues when it turns into such a wasteland. If Twitter’s base hates them anyway, there’s no point in being there, and they can still get some traction overseas.
I fear regular users are “stuck” in the US though. Old friends or grandmas are not moving off of Facebook. And small businesses (or anyone small enough not to be amplified by news outlets and other sources) is stuck on US Twitter, where the audience they’re actually trying to reach is.