The Dutch government says it has no intention of stopping using social media channels X, Instagram and Facebook to spread information, despite calls from internet development organisations to do so.

Bits of Freedom and Waag Futurelab are among the agencies which have called on the government to drop Big Tech platforms because they are a “danger to the rule of law and to freedom”.

“Never before has it been so clear,” their statement said. “These companies are only interested in filling their pockets and in political power.”

The call follows the decision by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta to stop fact-checking in the US, and X owner Elon Musk’s backing for German far right leader Alice Weidel. Musk has also called for the removal of British prime minister Keith Starmer.

However, Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof said on Friday that the government would lose an important line of communication if it left Meta or other platforms.

He did say the government was “keeping a finger on the pulse” and that he expected the social media companies to toe the line in Europe and keep to the terms of the EU’s Digital Services Act which requires firms to act on illegal content.

On Friday, Dutch liberal party Volt said it would no longer use X as a medium.

Europe

Dutch MEPs have also sounded the alarm and urged the European Commission to take action against Musk for trying to influence politics.

“Now, in particular, the EU should be standing up and defending democratic values in the public debate,” GroenLinks-PvdA MEP Kim van Sparrentak said.

VVD MEP Bart Groothuis said on X that Musk “calls himself a free speech absolutist but he has accepted more than 80% of censorship requests from authoritarian governments”.

Before the Turkish elections, for example, he blocked accounts critical of president Erdoğan, Groothuis said.