The European Union (EU) has accused X (formerly Twitter) of breaching social media rules with the changes made to the platform’s blue verification badge after billionaire Elon Musk bought the company, according to a statement.
The “verified” blue checkmark, which previously indicated the authenticity of an account belonging to a politician, celebrity, company, and other prominent figures, was monetised by Musk after he acquired X, then known as Twitter, in October 2022.
Musk’s acquisition, worth about $44 billion, led to a series of structural changes at X, including the incorporation of paid subscriptions. One of the changes that received broad scrutiny and concerns was the monetisation of the verification status and its availability to regular users. With verification available to any user who paid for it, X witnessed a dramatic rise in imposter accounts and the spread of disinformation.
The approval for the blue checkmark was previously subject to verification of the account that sought it. However, it can now be obtained as part of X’s premium subscription.
The European Commission has found that the changes introduced by Musk for verification violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), which categorises networking spaces with over 45 million users a month as “very large online platforms” and requires tech companies to adopt more effective measures to counter potentially harmful content.
“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,” the commission said in a statement on Friday. “There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to deceive users.”
Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive officer (CEO), hit back at the findings and defended the monetisation of the verification checkmark. She said “a democratized system, allowing everyone across Europe to access verification, is better than just the privileged few being verified”.
The commission is also investigating the dissemination of illegal content on X and the efficacy of its content moderation mechanisms to counter related challenges and threats.
Musk, on the other hand, claimed that the European Commission offered X a “secret deal” to censor content, saying the platform did not accept it. “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us,” Musk wrote on X. “The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.”
In response, Thierry Breton, one of EU’s top officials for tech, rejected the claims of any “secret deal” and said there will never be one with any tech platform.
