The European Commission informed X, formerly Twitter, that it may be the first company found to be in violation of the European Union’s Digital Services Act in areas “linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers.”
On Friday, the commission announced its preliminary findings of X’s potential violations of the DSA in a press release, noting that it may be “using dark patterns to deceive users.”
The commission said X, which is categorized as a Very Large Online Platform under the DSA’s rules, may have violated the regulation in three areas.
First, its user verification system, the blue checkmark, could be deceiving users since changing to a subscription model under owner Elon Musk. The change “negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with. There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to deceive users,” the commission alleged.
Second, the DSA requires companies to maintain a “searchable and reliable advertisement repository,” but the commission alleged X’s system lacks the law’s requirement for transparency.
Third, the DSA also requires that researchers be allowed to independently access its public data. The commission alleged X’s policies regarding research “dissuade researchers from carrying out their research projects or leave them with no other choice than to pay disproportionally high fees.”
Musk responded on X that, “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.”
Should the commission confirm its findings, it could fine X up to 6 percent of its annual turnover and order the social media giant to “take measures to address the breach.”
“A non-compliance decision may also trigger an enhanced supervision period to ensure compliance with the measures the provider intends to take to remedy the breach,” the commission added.
The commission also opened formal proceedings about potential violations of the DSA against TikTok in February and April, AliExpress in March, and Meta in April and May, the regulator noted.
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