LONDON (AP) 鈥 The European Union said Friday that from Elon Musk's X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements, the first charges against a tech company since the bloc's new social media regulations took effect.
The European Commission outlined the preliminary findings from its investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, under the 27-nation bloc's .
The rulebook, also known as the DSA, is a sweeping set of regulations that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting users and cleaning up their sites, under threat of hefty fines.
Regulators took aim at X's blue checks, saying they constitute "dark patterns鈥 that are not in line with industry best practice and can be used by malicious actors to deceive users.
After Musk , it started issuing the verification marks to anyone who paid $8 per month for one. Before Musk's acquisition, they mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts.
An email request for comment to X resulted in an automated response that said "Busy now, please check back later." Its main spokesman reportedly left the company in June.
鈥淏ack in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,鈥 European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement. 鈥淣ow with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA.鈥
The commission also charged X with failing to comply with requirements on ad transparency. Under the DSA platforms must publish a database of all digital advertisements that they've carried, with details including who paid for them and the intended audience.
But X's ad database has 鈥渄esign features and access barriers鈥 that make it 鈥渦nfit for its transparency purpose,鈥 the commission said.
The company also falls short when it comes to giving researchers access to public data, as required by the DSA, the commission said.
The Associated Press