The European Union has continued its hands-on approach to all things tech; this time singling out the perversion of the Twitter/X blue ticks.
Once a means of properly verifying the identity of a public figure or supplier of important information, the blue tick has undergone a revamp in the era of Elon Musk ownership.
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Musk now offers the check marks to anyone who is willing to pay him a few quid a month for an X Premium membership (formerly Twitter Blue), along with access to tools like tweet edits and boosted visibility of tweets within its algorithm.
And the EU has taken a dim view of this practice and believes the company is in violation of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
Following an investigation that began in December 2023, the EU has preliminarily determined the way blue ticks currently work “does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users. 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. There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the “verified account” to deceive users.”
As a result, if the preliminary findings are confirmed, Twitter might face a big fine (up to 6% of the total annual worldwide turnover) and be forced to make changes that will ensure the feature complies with the DSA.
Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market said: “Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information. Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA. We also consider that X’s ads repository and conditions for data access by researchers are not in line with the DSA transparency requirements. X has now the right of defence — but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines and require significant changes.”
