Blue checkmarks deceive users, European Commission tells Elon Musk’s X

The European Commission has informed X, formerly known as Twitter, that it seems to be in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a finding that may trigger huge fines if the social messaging network does not convince in its defence.

The Commission’s preliminary view is that X, owned by Elon Musk – of Tesla and SpaceX fame – falls afoul of the landmark legislation on three separate counts.

First, the blue checkmark alongside usernames, that once meant that the account is owned an operated by the real individual it represents, now “deceives users”, according to the Commission.

The blue checkmark used to be a coveted mark of prestige on Twitter, indicated that an artist, politician, journalist, or anyone of some public standing is in fact who they claim to be. This prevented people from setting up accounts pretending to be famous individuals.

However, Mr Musk turned it into a revenue-generating mechanism soon after taking control of the company in 2022.

“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,” said the Commission, noting that “there is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to deceive users.”

Ultimately, the Commission is of the belief that the interface for “verified accounts” with the blue checkmark is “designed and operated in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users.”

“Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,” said Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market. “Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA.”

Secondly, 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, the Commission said.

“In particular, the design does not allow for the required supervision and research into emerging risks brought about by the distribution of advertising online.”

Finally, X also fails to provide access to its public data to researchers, in line with the conditions set out in the DSA.

The Commission called out the social messaging network for prohibiting eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service.

“In addition, X’s process to grant eligible researchers access to its application programming interface (API) appears to dissuade researchers from carrying out their research projects or leave them with no other choice than to pay disproportionally high fees.”

The findings are the result of an in-depth investigation that included, among others, the analysis of internal company documents, and interviews with experts.

In a statement, the Commission said that “transparency and accountability in relation to content moderation and advertising are at the heart of the DSA.”

X can now reply to the preliminary findings.

However, if they are ultimately confirmed, the penalties are significant.

Such a decision could entail fines of up to six per cent of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover

Since the introduction of the DSA, the European Commission has taken a tough stance against breaches by very large online platforms.

It also opened formal proceedings against TikTok in February and April 2024, AliExpress in March 2024, and Meta in April and May 2024.