By Kelvin Chan, Business Writer
LONDON (AP) --The European Union said Friday that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk's X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements, the first charges against a tech company since the bloc's new social media regulations took effect.
The European Commission outlined the preliminary findings from its investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, under the 27-nation bloc's Digital Services Act.
The rulebook, also known as the DSA, is a sweeping set of regulations that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting their European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.
Regulators took aim at X's blue checks, saying they constitute "dark patterns" that are not in line with industry best practice and can be used by malicious actors to deceive users.
Before Musk's acquisition, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts. After Musk bought the site in 2022, it started issuing them to anyone who paid $8 per month for one.
"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," the commission said.
An email request for comment to X resulted in an automated response that said "Busy now, please check back later." Its main spokesman reportedly left the company in June.
"Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information," European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement. "Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA."
The commission also charged X with failing to comply with ad transparency rules. Under the DSA platforms must publish a database of all digital advertisements that they've carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience.
But X's ad database isn't "searchable and reliable" and has "design features and access barriers" that make it "unfit for its transparency purpose," the commission said. The database's design in particular hinders researchers from looking into "emerging risks" from online ads, it said.
The company also falls short when it comes to giving researchers access to public data, the commission said. The DSA imposes the provisions so that researchers can scrutinize how platforms work and how online risks evolve.
But researchers can't independently access data by scraping it from the site, while the process to request access from the company through an interface "appears to dissuade researchers" from carrying out their projects or gives them no choice but to pay high fees, it said.
X now has a chance to respond to the accusations and make changes to comply, which would be legally binding. If the commission isn't satisfied, it can levy penalties worth up to 6% of the company's annual global revenue and order it to fix the problem.
The findings are only a part of the investigation. Regulators are still looking into whether X is failing to do enough to curb the spread of illegal content — such as hate speech or incitement of terrorism — and the effectiveness of measures to combat " information manipulation," especially through its crowd-sourced Community Notes fact-checking feature.
TikTok, e-commerce site AliExpress and Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms are also facing ongoing DSA investigations.
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More