BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) – Despite their criticism of Elon Musk’s Platform According to research by the German Press Agency, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other high-ranking politicians still do not have an official account on the platform of the German company Mastodon. The Vice President responsible for the digital independence of the EU, Henna Virkkunen, only opened an official user account there for the first time in the evening, as the EU Commission informed the dpa.
Virkkunen has decided to diversify its presence on social media and promote European companies, a Commission spokesman said. He emphasized that this step had been planned for a long time. The spokesman also referred to an existing user account of the EU Commission as an institution. In fact, the Brussels authority posts there regularly.
However, accounts for other individual members of the Commission do not initially appear to be planned. Commission circles said that Mastodon is currently less suitable for political engagement and is more suitable for in-depth exchanges on political and technical issues. In her first post on Mastodon, Virkkunen criticized X and threatened the US company with further sanctions.
Significantly more users on X – EU justifies activities
The EU’s top representatives regularly post on According to its own information, Mastodon currently has around 750,000 monthly users – at X, according to the US company, there are 100 million.
X has come under massive criticism in recent days because users can ask the AI chatbot Grok to sexualize posted images. Indonesia and Malaysia became the first countries in the world to temporarily block the chatbot over the weekend. The EU and the British authorities are investigating the company and reserve the right to impose sanctions./tre/DP/nas