WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is in breach of the Digital Services Act, the European Commission said on Friday.
The European Union said that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk's X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements.
The European Commission outlined the preliminary findings from its investigation into X under the 27-nation bloc's Digital Services Act. The agency found non-compliance on three grievances.
The Commission said that X designs and operates its interface for the 'verified accounts' with the 'Blue checkmark' in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users. Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a 'verified' status, it negatively affects users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with.
Further, the Commission said that X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising, as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository, but instead put in place design features and access barriers that make the repository unfit for its transparency purpose towards users.
Finally, the agency claimed that X fails to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA. In particular, X prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service.
'In our view, X does not comply with the DSA in key transparency areas, by using dark patterns and thus misleading users, by failing to provide an adequate ad repository, and by blocking access to data for researchers,' the European Union's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, said in Friday's statement.
In a post on X, Musk refuted the claims and said that his company was offered an 'illegal secret deal' by the Commission.
'The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not,' he tweeted.
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