X is breaking EU regulations. Big penalties are coming
The European Commission is accusing X, formerly Twitter, of violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) in several ways. Among other things, account verification fees.
Paid verification of accounts? Someone should bang their head
One of the main criticisms is the platform’s approach to paid account verification. EC officials claim that this practice does not meet industry standards and misleads users. After all, as the EC points out, anyone can pay to get a blue token, in The Commission has evidence that dishonest people are using them for fraud purposes..
Another problem that the EU raises is lack of advertising transparency. The Commission found that Company X does not have a reliable, searchable ad repository. And this in practice makes it impossible for researchers to analyze new threats arising from the distribution of online advertising.
Blue checkmarks once marked credible sources of information. Now, in our preliminary view, they mislead users and violate the DSA. We also believe that Company X’s ad repository and terms of data access by researchers do not comply with the DSA’s transparency requirements. Company X now has the right to defend itself—but if our position is confirmed, we will impose fines and require significant changes.
– says Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner for Internal Market
X doesn’t make the controllers’ job any easier either
The EU says Platform X also violates the DSA by not providing researchers with sufficient access to public data.
In particular, X prohibits authorized researchers from independently accessing its public data, e.g. through scraping, in accordance with its regulations.
– we read in the statement of the European Commission
Tools for analyzing the macro data publicly available from X are available, but any researchers are discouraged by the disproportionately high fees associated with the unfavorable configuration of the APIs.
X faces huge penalties
If found guilty, Platform X could be fined up to up to six percent of its global annual revenue. The EU can also legally require that the X platform takes all necessary steps to ensure compliance with the DSA, and impose further periodic fines if Elon Musk’s company defaults.
DSA is currently a hot topic for American IT companies operating in Europe, with Meta and Apple potentially at risk of multi-billion dollar fines if initial investigations into them confirm violations.
