Elon Musk’s X has landed itself it hot water with European regulators over alleged breaches of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), designed in 2022 to hold big tech to account.
Demanding greater transparency from the big web and social media players, the DSA makes companies directly accountable for the content that they host, offers safeguards for young people online and bans targeted ads that use illegally gathered information.
Having tentatively opened proceedings against the social media platform, the European Commission has set a clear precedent for the future of online regulation across the European Union.
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The Commission alleges that X is failing to comply with the DSA in a number of key areas, namely in terms of advertising transparency and so-called ‘dark patterns’, i.e. deliberately deceptive design.
X has also been accused of not complying with rules around data access with the European Commission’s executive VP Margrethe Vestager saying: “In our view, X doesn’t comply with the DSA in key transparency areas.”
The platform’s new ‘blue tick’ policy was also strongly criticised by the Commission, who in a statement said: “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.”
