- European Commission believes that the blue tick system deceives users
- X and its owner, Elon Musk, have hit back angrily at accusations
- Other social media companies are also being investigated by the Commission
The European Commission and social media platform X have become embroiled in a row after the former accused the latter of deceiving users.
Deception accusation
The claim of deception came after the Commission informed X – previously Twitter – of its preliminary view that it is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) after an in-depth seven-month investigation involving internal company documents, expert interviews and others.
The DSA was introduced in 2022 with the aim of making tech companies take action to stop the publication of illegal content and safeguard the public.
Three areas of non-compliance were reported by the Commission. One centers on the ‘verified accounts’ – those that have a blue checkmark next to the users’ profile name, which users by $8 for the privilege. The Commission said this does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users as anyone can subscribe to obtain ‘verified’ status, which negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with. It adds there is “evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to deceive users.”
In addition, X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising and fails to provide access to its public data to researchers, in line with conditions set out in the DSA.
Coming out fighting
Predictably, X has come out fighting against the allegations. Owner Elon Musk – who bought the platform for $44 billion in 2022 – posted on X: “The DSA is misinformation.” He added that the DSA rules amounted to censored speech.
X’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, also came to the platform’s defence. She posted: “A democratised system, allowing everyone across Europe to access verification, is better than just the privileged few being verified.”
As well as X, other social media giants are also being investigated, including Meta, which runs Facebook, and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.
