EU Accuses X of Deceiving Users, Elon Musk Hits Back

New Delhi: The European Union (EU) has accused Elon Musk's X of breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA) by deceiving users and not maintaining required transparency on the social media platform.

In a press release on Friday, the EU claimed that its "blue tick" accounts have the potential to deceive users, stating, "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."

Highlighting non-compliance of other grievances, the EU press release mentioned that X does not "comply" with the required transparency on advertising and it has also "failed" in providing adequate ad repository and also blocks access to data for researchers.

In a post on X, EU's Margrethe Vestager wrote, "In our view @X doesn’t comply with the DSA in key transparency areas. It misleads users, fails to provide adequate ad repository and blocks access to data for researchers. It’s the first time we issue preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act (sic)."

Her post soon received a reply from the Tesla CEO Musk. While hitting back, Musk alleged that the European Commission offered X a secret deal which he termed as "illegal". He alleged that as per the deal they would be required to censor speeches on its platform without letting anyone know. Musk claimed that X didn't accept the deal.

He tweeted, "The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not (sic)."