X CTO and chairman Elon Musk claimed the European Commission (EC) allegedly offered the social media platform an “illegal secret deal” to censor speech if it wanted to avoid being fined in the EU.
Musk made the claims on social media on July 12 in response to the EC publishing the preliminary findings of an in-depth investigation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which claims the platform does not “comply with the DSA in key transparency areas.”
According to Musk, the EC offered to refrain from imposing a fine if X “quietly censored speech without telling anyone.” He added:
“The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.”
In a separate tweet, Musk said X “look[s] forward to a very public battle in court.”
Blue check, data access concerns
The European Commission’s investigation findings state that X breached the DSA in areas related to dark patterns — sometimes called deceptive design patterns — advertising transparency and data access for researchers.
The report asserted that the platform’s so-called “Blue checkmarks” and verified accounts deceive users, as anyone can obtain them. It added that these systems are often abused by bad actors.
The report also said that X does not provide a searchable and reliable advertising repository and includes barriers that prevent supervision and research about risk.
Additionally, the social media platform does not provide eligible researchers access to public data in compliance with the DSA. X’s terms of service ban scraping, while its API access process allegedly dissuades researchers from using the data and includes high fees.
Potential fines
The EC said X can now exercise its rights of defense through a written response and added that it will consult further on the issue with the European Board for Digital Services in tandem. The final decision has yet to be made.
The preliminary findings point to compliance failures that could result in heft fines of up to 6% of the platform’s worldwide annual turnover. Additionally, the platform would have to address the issue to continue operating in the EU.
The decision could also include an enhanced supervision period and periodic penalty payments.
