Brussels accuses X of violating EU law with verified accounts, threatens large fine

The European Commission today charged social network X (formerly Twitter) with violating the Digital Services Act for its misleading practice of using verified accounts and lack of transparency, threatening a fine of 6% of its annual turnover.

“Today, the Commission informed X of its preliminary finding that it violates the Digital Services Act in the areas of dark patterns, advertising transparency and researchers’ access to data,” the agency said in a statement released today.

With transparency and accountability around content and advertising moderation at the core of this new community legislation, the community leader notes that following an in-depth investigation into X that began last December – during which internal company documents and several experts were heard – he now has “preliminary findings of non-compliance on three complaints.”

“First, verified accounts are deceiving” Internet users.

At the same time, “X fails to meet the required advertising transparency because it does not provide a searchable and trustworthy advertising repository, but instead has created design features and access barriers that make the repository unsuitable for achieving the goal of transparency towards users,” he added.

Moreover, the former Twitter “does not provide researchers with access to its public data in accordance with the terms established” by the law.

Now he must gather information from around the world and order “remedies” to be taken to correct the violation.

Since the end of August last year, and after a period of adaptation, the EU has become the first jurisdiction in the world to introduce rules for digital platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram, which are now required to remove illegal content.

Companies that fail to comply with this new legislation could face fines proportionate to their size, with larger companies facing penalties of up to 6% of their global turnover.

These obligations follow the EU’s Digital Services Act, under which the Commission has identified 19 very large online platforms with 45 million monthly active users that will have to comply with the new rules.

Due to its large size, X was declared compliant with this Community legislation in April 2023.

The new Digital Services Act was created to protect the fundamental rights of online users and is an unprecedented law in the digital space that holds platforms accountable for illegal and harmful content, namely disinformation.