The European Commission today accused the social network X (formerly Twitter) of violating the Digital Services Law for misleading practices with verified accounts and lack of transparency, threatening a fine of 6% of annual turnover.
"The Commission today informed X of its preliminary opinion that it is violating the Digital Services Law in areas related to dark patterns, advertising transparency and researchers' access to data", says the institution in a statement released today.
With transparency and responsibility in relation to content moderation and advertising being at the heart of this new community legislation, the community executive points out that, after an in-depth investigation into X that began last December -- in which internal company documents were verified and several experts were heard --, it now has "preliminary conclusions of non-compliance in relation to three complaints".
"Firstly, of the verified account to deceive" Internet users.
At the same time, "X does not meet the required advertising transparency as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertising repository, but instead has created design features and access barriers that make the repository unsuitable for its objective of transparency towards users", he adds.
And, furthermore, the former Twitter "does not provide researchers with access to its public data in accordance with the conditions established" by law.
It is now up to total worldwide and order it to adopt 'remedies' to correct the infraction.
Since the end of last August and after a period of adaptation, the EU has become the first jurisdiction in the world with rules for digital platforms such as X, Facebook and Instagram, which are now obliged to remove illegal content.
Companies that do not comply with this new legislation may face fines proportional to their size, with larger companies being subject to sanctions of up to 6% of their global turnover.
These obligations are due to the entry of the Digital Services Law into the EU, within the scope of which the Commission defined 19 very large online platforms, with 45 million monthly active users, which will have to comply with the new rules.
Due to its large size, X was designated in April 2023 as having to comply with this community legislation.
The new Digital Services Law was created to protect the fundamental rights of online users and has become unprecedented legislation for the digital space that holds platforms responsible for illegal and harmful content, namely disinformation.
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