x social media – Photo by Julian Christ on Unsplash
(BRUSSELS) – The Commission opened an in-depth investigation Monday into whether X, formerly Twitter, has breached legal obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act on illegal content and disinformation.
The possible breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA) concern areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.
The EU executive’s opening of formal infringement proceedings follows analysis of X’s risk assessment report submitted to the EU in September, a November ‘Transparency report’ and X’s replies to a formal request for information, which, among others, concern the dissemination of illegal content in the context of Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel.
The Commission says its proceedings will focus on the following areas:
- Compliance with DSA obligations related to countering the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, notably in relation to the risk assessment and mitigation measures adopted by X to counter the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, as well as the functioning of the notice and action mechanism for illegal content in the EU mandated by the DSA, including in light of X’s content moderation resources.
- The effectiveness of measures taken to combat information manipulation on the platform, notably the effectiveness of X’s ‘Community Notes’ system in the EU and the effectiveness of related policies mitigating risks to civic discourse and electoral processes.
- Measures taken by X to increase its platform’s transparency. The investigation concerns suspected shortcomings in giving researchers access to X’s publicly accessible data as mandated by Article 40 of the DSA, as well as shortcomings in X’s ads repository.
- Suspected deceptive design of the user interface, notably in relation to checkmarks linked to certain subscription products, the so-called ‘Blue checks’.
EU Official Journal text on the DSA
Very large online platforms and search engines under the DSA
