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Agadir – Spain’s government is moving toward tighter regulation of social media platforms, safeguarding children from harmful content. The initiative has sparked a dispute between Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and tech leader Elon Musk.
Spain’s proposal to curb social media use among teenagers emerged in the wake of broader European and global efforts to regulate digital platforms. Driving these moves across Europe are concerns about child safety, disinformation, and harmful online content.
Several countries, including France, the United Kingdom, and Greece, are considering or implementing similar measures restricting minors’ access to social media.
Spanish officials argue current digital platforms allow illegal and harmful content to spread without sufficient accountability. Sánchez has taken issue with what he described as a failure of platform governance, decrying that social networks have become a “failed state” where laws and standards are not properly enforced.
The Spanish government announced a package of measures focused on both content regulation and youth protection. These include a ban on social media access for users under 16, stronger age-verification requirements, and criminal liability for platform executives who fail to remove illegal or hateful content
“We will change the law in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for the many infringements taking place on their sites,” Sánchez stated.
“This means that CEOs of these tech platforms will face criminal liability for failing to remove illegal or hateful content.”
Sánchez said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai that “our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone, a space of addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation, violence.”
He warned: “We will no longer accept that. We will protect them from the digital wild west.”
The plan also includes investigations into possible legal breaches by major platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and X-related technologies.
Musk responded on his platform X shortly after the announcement, calling Sánchez “dirty.” He then bizarrely claimed the Spanish PM is a “tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain.”
In a further signal of displeasure with the new regulations, Musk described Sanchez as “the true fascist totalitarian.”
