The EU Commission has ruled that X’s (formerly Twitter) blue verification checkmark “deceives users” and represents a type of “dark pattern.”

Elon Musk changed the meaning of X’s blue checkmark, making it so anyone could get a checkmark by signing up for a Premium account. The EU investigated the change and has ruled that it is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which governs advertising, transparency, and dark patterns (the term for UI/UX practices meant to trick or deceive users).

The EU found X is non-compliant in three areas:

• First, X designs and operates its interface for the “verified accounts” with the “Blue checkmark” in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users. 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. There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the “verified account” to deceive users.
• Second, X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising, as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository, but instead put in place design features and access barriers that make the repository unfit for its transparency purpose towards users. In particular, the design does not allow for the required supervision and research into emerging risks brought about by the distribution of advertising online.
• Third, X fails to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA. In particular, X prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service. In addition, X’s process to grant eligible researchers access to its application programming interface (API) appears to dissuade researchers from carrying out their research projects or leave them with no other choice than to pay disproportionally high fees.

X now has the opportunity to defend its position. If the initial ruling is upheld, however, the company could face fines up to 6% of its worldwide annual revenue.

“Today we issue for the first time preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act,” said EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager. “In our view, X does not comply with the DSA in key transparency areas, by using dark patterns and thus misleading users, by failing to provide an adequate ad repository, and by blocking access to data for researchers. The DSA has transparency at its very core, and we are determined to ensure that all platforms, including X, comply with EU legislation.”

“Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information,” added Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market. “Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA. We also consider that X’s ads repository and conditions for data access by researchers are not in line with the DSA transparency requirements. X has now the right of defence — but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines and require significant changes.”