More Trouble For Elon Musk As EU Says Selling Verified Blue Ticks On X Violates The DSA
We first saw tech billionaire Elon Musk remove the historic blue ticks from his X app in 2023.
It was a controversial move as Musk felt only paying members with Premium subscriptions would have the feature opened up to them.
A lot of critics held tightly on to the concern of this behavior, adding how it would become so much more difficult to differentiate real from fake accounts, putting scams at an all-time high.
Today, the EC rolled out a new investigation and informed the company how its sales of verified blue ticks would no longer be allowed as it violated the Digital Services Act.
They further elaborated on this front including how anyone and everyone could get the verified status with ease. It negatively impacted people’s ability to make informed decisions regarding how authentic such accounts were from the start including the kind of content they’re interacting with.
Even those with verified ticks might have people with malicious intentions behind them.
We already know how X got rid of the blue ticks and soon after that, scammers were bombarding its Premium subscriptions and posing as famous names. This put pressure on Musk to make the right decision and he chose to reinstate the ticks for accounts that were high profile.
This had a lot of users upset because they failed to understand what was going on here. Why were they paying Musk when the X app couldn’t keep tabs on whose real and whose fake. It was clear that gone were the days where blue ticks meant verified account because now, no one could be trusted.
Thankfully, the DSA and DMA came into play and that meant many tech giants would now be scrutinized for their online behavior. Meanwhile, search engines would also be checked for recommendations and content moderation as well as privacy and ads. This coupled with more scrutiny means stricter and harsher regulation in general for those operating in the EU.
X is being taxed for not providing the right and reliable repositories and stopping searchers from accessing data belonging to X. Clearly, it was not being transparent and hence worked against the DSA via the use of dark patterns.
Elon Musk has mentioned in the past how it feels the DSA and DMA aren’t informed well and vowed to go to court if he had to settle the matter fairly. Whether or not that turns out in his favor, only time can tell.
Image: DIW
Read next: New Bipartisan Bill Introduced To Combat And Monitor Increasing AI Content And Deepfakes
