Elon Musk, in response to accusations from the European Commission of digital content infringement, said the Commission offered his company an “illegal secret deal” that would allow it to avoid an alleged fine.
Today we issue, for the first time, preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act. 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, according to Margrethe Vestager, a senior official at the European Commission, in the Friday statement.
On Friday, the European Commission formally accused X of failing to comply with EU social media law. The body’s preliminary opinion holds out the possibility of X breaking rules on dark patterns, advertising transparency and access to data for researchers. X’s use of a blue check for verified accounts is not in line with industry practice, as anyone can sign up and get verified status, according to the Commission.
“Back in the day, blue checks used to mean trustworthy sources of information. Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA,” Thierry Breton, another senior Commission official, said in the statement. “X has now the right of defence – but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines & require significant changes,” he added.
The Commission as well accused X of introducing design features and barriers that hinder transparency in advertising. The Commission’s statement also said the company does not provide researchers with access to its public data as required by the DSA. Thus, if the Commission’s preliminary findings stand up, it could fine X up to 6 per cent of its global annual turnover
Elon Musk, for his part, responded to the allegations as follows, saying the European Commission had offered the company a deal that would allow it to avoid the fine if anything happened. The company rejected the Commission’s offer. Musk stated:
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.
Brussels has been clashing with Musk’s X since the billionaire took over the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022. X is accused of allowing misinformation and illegal hate speech to spread, introducing misleading authentication features. However, in addition to Musk’s company, the Commission is also investigating TikTok, Alibaba, AliExpress and Meta, all of which have similar concerns.
The European Commission oversees X and two dozen of the world’s largest online platforms, including Facebook, YouTube and others. The EU executive’s investigation into Musk’s firm began in December 2023 and was the first official enquiry. Concerns have also stemmed from what appears to be the presence of Hamas-linked accounts on the platform following the group’s attacks on Israel on 7 October.
