Elon Musk's X may have breached the EU’s Digital Services Act over its alleged use of dark patterns, insufficient advertising transparency, and lack of data access for researchers, the European Commission claimed in a set of initial findings released today.
The European Commission has been investigating the platform formerly known as Twitter for months and has now “informed X of its preliminary view” on three of its key lines of inquiry.
These include the view that the company’s verified accounts and blue checkmark schemes amount to a dark pattern (design techniques intended to “steer consumers to take actions they would not otherwise have taken") since anyone can pay to achieve this “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. There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the “verified account” to deceive users,” the EU alleged in a statement.
The commission said X also failed to meet the requirements of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) by providing “a searchable and reliable advertisement repository.” This raised issues around transparency, including the difficulty of tracking misleading advertising or countering malicious actors, including foreign interference.
The EU claimed that X’s alleged failure to provide researchers with access to public data breached its transparency obligations, again making it harder to uncover interference and other malicious activity.
READ MORE: Most websites now use dark patterns
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age, said: "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. The DSA has transparency at its very core, and we are determined to ensure that all platforms, including X, comply with EU legislation."
The commission is also investigating X over illegal content and disinformation. A commission official told The Stack: “We are making excellent progress. We have received a lot of evidence also from national regulators, from third parties from civil society organizations.”
The EU is acutely concerned over potential election interference and disinformation. And with good cause.
The official went onto to say that one of the concerns around the blue checkmark scheme was the fact that X prioritized replies from these accounts.
“We think this is misleading and a breach of the dark patterns rule," they said.
The EU is not the only official organisation raising concerns about the use of dark patterns. The FTC highlighted its concerns over misleading practices earlier this week.
When it came to the ad repository issue, the official said an effective mechanism was important in countering malicious activity such as the Doppelganger campaign, in which Russia-linked actors used ads to direct users to disinformation sites posing as trusted brands like the Financial Times.
“The ad repository helps us uncover them,” he said. The lack of an effective repository also undermines authorities’ ability to counter scam ads, such as crypto scams.
It’s important to remember that these are preliminary findings and X has at least 14 days to issue its “rejoinder”, before any further action proceeds.
“In the next step, it's their responsibility to put themselves into compliance,” the official said. “They have to come forward with meaningful and, and substantial proposals to address our grievances here.”
The alternative, is for the EU to impose massive fines on the company.
We emailed X for its take on the EU’s actions. Its reply was, “Busy now, please check back later.”
