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.
TikTok is prime example of political influence via social media. Unlike twitter where influence comes from a lax content policy, TikTok bans undesirable content.
Not to mention the security implication of having the location habits/sexual pref/interests of all your population in the hands of a foreign dictator (TikTok) or oligarchal megalomaniac (Elon,Zuck).