X's Blue Checks Dupe Users, Violate European Law, Regulators Charge

X Corp.'s paid blue check verification system dupes the platform's users and violates European law, according to preliminary findings by regulators in Europe.

The paid system, implemented by owner Elon Musk soon after he acquired the company in 2022, “negatively affects users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with,” the European Commission stated Friday.

“Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,” Thierry Breton, a commissioner with the EU stated Friday. “Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users.”

The Commission specifically said in its preliminary finding that X's paid verifications run afoul of the Digital Services Act, which imposes transparency requirements on large platforms.

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The agency also preliminarily found that X violates transparency mandates in two other ways: The company allegedly fails to provide a searchable database of ads, and doesn't allow researchers to scrape publicly available data.

X can contest the preliminary finding, and Musk indicated the company will do so.

“We look forward to a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth,” he tweeted Friday.

If the finding stands, X faces fines of up to 6% of its global revenue.

Prior to Musk's acquisition of X, formerly Twitter, the platform gave blue check marks to users with large followings, who provided proof of identity. But around one month after Musk purchased the company, he rolled out a paid system that allowed people to purchase blue checks for $8 a month.

That new system almost immediately resulted in verification of fake accounts. One of the most prominent examples occurred in November 2022, when Washington Post columnist Geoffrey Fowler impersonated Senator Ed Markey (with his agreement) and obtained a blue verification checkmark for the fake account @realEdMarkey.

Currently, people can obtain blue checks by joining X Premium for $8 a month and meeting eligibility requirements -- including that their accounts don't appear to be misleading or deceptive.

1 comment about "X's Blue Checks Dupe Users, Violate European Law, Regulators Charge".
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  1. Thomas Siebert from BENEVOLENT PROPAGANDA, July 15, 2024 at 10:42 a.m.

    Elitist EU scum don't like it when the rabble are permitted to have the same things the so-called "preferred class" do. Thierry Breton owns a freaking castle in central France and is a career politician (married to a journalist of course) who has done nothing of merit in his life and deserves zero respect. 

    It's remarkable that such unbearable and arrogant failures -- and the EU is failing, there's really no question about that -- have their fascist maneuvers cheered onward against the one bastion that remains for free-ish speech. Ah well, O Hell; Malcom X warned us about the controlled corrupt corporate media a half-century ago. Fortunately, more and more of us are catching up to his wise words. 

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