CTO and chairman Elon Musk recently made headlines by accusing the European Commission (EC) of offering an “illegal secret deal” to social media platform X. Musk claimed that this deal involved the censorship of speech in exchange for avoiding fines in the EU. These allegations were made in response to the EC publishing preliminary findings of an investigation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which highlighted X’s non-compliance in key transparency areas.
The EC’s investigation revealed that X breached the DSA in several areas, including dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers. One specific issue mentioned in the report was X’s use of “Blue checkmarks” and verified accounts, which were found to deceive users as anyone could obtain them. Furthermore, the report stated that these systems were often abused by bad actors on the platform.
In addition to the issue with verified accounts, the EC pointed out that X lacked a searchable and reliable advertising repository, making it difficult for supervision and research about risk. The platform also faced criticism for not providing eligible researchers access to public data in compliance with the DSA. X’s terms of service banning scraping and its allegedly discouraging API access process further exacerbated the compliance failures outlined in the report.
The preliminary findings suggest that X could face fines of up to 6% of its worldwide annual turnover for its compliance failures. Additionally, the platform may be required to address these issues to continue operating in the EU. The decision could also involve an enhanced supervision period and periodic penalty payments until the compliance issues are resolved.
Overall, Elon Musk’s claims of an “illegal secret deal” with the European Commission have brought X’s compliance failures under scrutiny. The platform’s alleged lack of transparency and data accessibility for researchers raise concerns about its operations in the EU. It remains to be seen how X will respond to these allegations and whether the final decision will lead to significant consequences for the social media platform.