After months of investigation by the European Commission, the owner of Twitter has responded (and said something shocking, if true).

The European Commission’s investigation found that Twitter is in violation of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). In December last year, Thierry Breton, a member of the European Commission, said he was launching an investigation into Twitter because he felt it was not doing much to combat hate speech and support for terrorism. They evaluated the Community Notes feature, which relies on crowd-sourced fact-checking; looked at the tools used to flag illegal and sensitive content and the platform’s response to them; and finally, the Commission investigated the blue tick, a badge previously reserved for authenticated users and now subject to a subscription that can hide a deceptive design or dark pattern.

Breton has now said that, based on the preliminary results of the investigation, Twitter is in violation of the DSA. It is deceiving users with dark patterns, and advertising transparency and access to data for researchers is also questionable. Twitter has failed to maintain a searchable and trustworthy advertising data repository, despite the DSA requiring Musk’s social platform to do so. Researchers have been denied access to the publicly available data, which also violates EU law.

Back in the day, #BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information✔️🐦

Now with X, our preliminary view is that:

❌They deceive users

❌They infrige #DSA

X has now the right of defence —but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines & require significant changes. pic.twitter.com/M9tGA5pYQr

— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) July 12, 2024

Twitter can now contest these allegations. If the Commission’s preliminary opinion is ultimately upheld, the platform could face fines of up to 6% of its annual global revenue. The Commission could also require Twitter to make specific changes to its operations (which would likely result in the platform being pulled from the European market). Meanwhile, Twitter could prepare to charge a small annual fee for basic features (bookmarking, replying, liking).

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. https://t.co/4lKsaRsYoA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2024

Musk has also responded to the European Commission’s investigation. He says he was offered an illegal secret deal: if they censored in secret, they would not be fined, but Twitter refused, and the other platforms did…

Source: WCCFTech, WCCFTech, AP, CNBC