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Elon Musk in January 2023 in San Francisco, California.
London
CNN
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European regulators have charged Elon Musk’s X with violating the Digital Services Act, alleging that the platform misled its users, among other things.
“Today, for the first time, we are publishing preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act,” Margrethe Vestager, a senior European Commission official, said in a statement Friday. “We find that X does not comply with the DSA in key areas of transparency, by using dark patterns to mislead users, by not providing adequate ad storage, and by blocking researchers’ access to data.”
The company’s approach to so-called verified accounts “does not match industry practice and misleads users,” the European Union executive added in the statement. Anyone can sign up to gain “verified” status, it noted, pointing to evidence of “malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to mislead users.”
If the Commission’s preliminary findings are confirmed, it could impose a fine of up to 6% of its annual turnover on X, formerly Twitter.
CNN has contacted X for comment.
This is a developing story and will be updated.