The European Commission Accuses Elon Musk’s X of Violating Digital Services Act
Key Takeaways:
- Elon Musk’s X was accused by regulators of violating Europe’s Digital Services Act with its policies around verification, advertising transparency, and data access.
- The European Commission said that X’s verification system, which was overhauled under Elon Musk’s ownership, “deceives” users by letting anyone pay to receive a blue check, removing the legitimacy that came with the check previously.
- European regulators said the company also fails to provide an adequate advertising repository to comply with transparency laws, and its policy of charging researchers to access data violates the law as well.
Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, was accused by European regulators of violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) with its policies around verification, advertising transparency, and data access.
“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,” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said.
What the EU’s Complaints Mean for X
Among three grievances cited, the European Commission said that X’s verification system, which was overhauled under Elon Musk’s ownership, “deceives” users by letting anyone pay to receive a blue check, removing the legitimacy that came with the check previously.
The Commission also found violations with regard to X’s policies around advertising and who can access its data. The company falls short of the transparency in advertising portion of the DSA because it “does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository,” the Commission said.
X fails to provide adequate access to its public data to researchers as well, the Commission said, as the company has raised prices to access company data and outlawed the “scraping” of data on the platform, which Musk previously reportedly said was to avoid X content being used to train artificial intelligence models without the company being compensated.
“Busy now, please check back later,” the company responded when reached for comment by email. X will have a chance to respond to the issues raised by the Commission but could face significant fines if it fails to comply with the law in the future.
Friday’s announcement is the latest in a recent string of actions against big tech from the Commission, which has used the Digital Markets Act (DMA), another tech-related law that went into effect this year, to challenge policies of tech “gatekeepers” like Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Meta (META), among others.
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