X, formerly Twitter, is being probed by the European Commission for permitting "violent and terror-related material" connected to the Israel-Hamas conflict on its platform. The EU's Industry Chief, Thierry Breton, cited a new digital media law to give X a 24-hour ultimatum to stop the spread of misinformation. X CEO Linda Yaccarino published a letter Thursday informing of steps being taken to rectify the situation.

University of Buffalo Communications Professor Yotam Ophir joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the probe and situation at hand.

Ophir outlines the dire situation and challenge of misinformation on the platform and whether or not individuals could help: "The amount of misinformation on X is beyond something that individuals like you and me can fix. It's a systematic problem that has to do with regulation in the United States... At the moment, putting the burden of identifying truth and false during the conflict, full of uncertainty, on individuals, on citizens, on users is just not reasonable in my view."

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Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is being probed by the European Commission over the spread of, quote, "violent and terror-related material" connected to the war in the Middle East. The EU's industry chief has given X a 24-hour ultimatum to stop the spread of misinformation, citing a new digital media law. X CEO Linda Yaccarino says it is taking action to delete accounts or label thousands of posts related to the conflict that was incited by Hamas over the weekend.

Joining us now is Yotam Ophir, University of Buffalo communications professor. Obviously, this has been a persistent problem for social media companies, Yotam. And you could argue it has only gotten worse under Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino. And now this conflict even more highlighting it. How does X even begin to sort of try to fix this problem?

YOTAM OPHIR: I don't think that X, or Twitter before that, are even trying to fix the problem. I think that the flow of information in an unfiltered way was one of the things that Elon Musk was aiming for. Since he took over the company, content moderation had been non-existent, with a sharp rise in antisemitic, racist, misogynistic content, and, these days, misinformation connected to the conflict in the Middle East.

JOSH LIPTON: Yotam, would X say in response, what about community notes as a way to correct misinformation?

YOTAM OPHIR: The amount of misinformation on X is beyond something that individuals like you and me can fix. It's a systematic problem. It's a problem that has to do with the lack of regulation in the United States. And I'm happy to hear that other countries, including the European Union, are moving towards doing more. But at the moment, putting the burden of identifying true and false during a conflict, full of uncertainty, on individuals, on citizens, on users is just not reasonable in my view.

JULIE HYMAN: Do you think then that the US does need to regulate this as well?

YOTAM OPHIR: Absolutely. For many years, we decided to treat technology companies like Twitter and Facebook as if they have nothing to do with media. We basically due to something called Section 230. We decided that they are not responsible for anything that's happening on their platforms.

The result was that the only motivation that big companies, tech companies, have these days to moderate information is if it hurts their bottom line financial interests. We must do more to regulate the flow of information in today's information reach and misinformation reach environment.