The European Union announced on Friday that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk’s platform, X, are misleading and that the company lacks transparency and accountability, marking the first charges against a tech company under the bloc’s new social media regulations. The European Commission detailed its initial findings from the investigation into X (formerly Twitter) under the 27-nation Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA is a comprehensive regulation requiring platforms to better protect European users and remove harmful or illegal content, with significant fines for non-compliance.
Regulators criticized X’s blue checkmarks as “dark patterns” that can deceive users, deviating from industry standards.
Before Musk’s acquisition, blue checkmarks were verification badges for celebrities, politicians, and other influential accounts. After Musk’s purchase in 2022, anyone could obtain a checkmark for $8 per month.
The commission stated that this practice undermines users’ ability to make informed decisions about account authenticity.
” The main spokesman reportedly left the company in June. European Commissioner Thierry Breton commented, “BlueChecks used to signify trustworthy information sources. Now with X, they deceive users and violate the DSA.”
The commission also accused X of not complying with ad transparency rules. The DSA mandates platforms to maintain a database of all digital ads, including payer details and target audiences. X’s ad database, however, is not “searchable and reliable” and has “design features and access barriers” that hinder transparency and researcher access to online ad risks.
Furthermore, the commission highlighted X’s shortcomings in providing researchers access to public data. The DSA requires platforms to allow researchers to examine platform operations and online risks. However, X restricts independent data access and complicates the data request process, often imposing high fees.
X has an opportunity to respond and make necessary changes to comply. If the commission remains unsatisfied, it can impose penalties up to 6% of the company’s annual global revenue and mandate problem resolution.
These findings are part of a broader investigation into whether X is adequately addressing illegal content like hate speech and terrorism and the effectiveness of its crowd-sourced fact-checking feature, Community Notes. Other companies under DSA investigations include TikTok, AliExpress, and Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
