X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, may have broken the European Union’s tough new Digital Service Act rules, regulators said as they announced the opening of an official investigation today.
In a press release, the European Commission said it’s focussing on four areas: the spread of illegal content, the effectiveness of X’s measures to combat the spread of disinformation, the transparency of X, and the potential “deceptive design” of X’s user interface.
“The higher the risk large platforms pose to our society, the more specific the requirements of the Digital Services Act are,” said Margrethe Vestager, EU Executive Vice-President. “We take any breach of our rules very seriously. And the evidence we currently have is enough to formally open a proceeding against X.”
We have opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the #DSA in areas linked to:
risk management
content moderation
dark patterns
advertising transparency
data access for researchersMore information on next steps: https://t.co/VHJjIsVftY pic.twitter.com/oygKah5GIq
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) December 18, 2023
“Today’s opening of formal proceedings against X makes it clear that, with the DSA, the time of big online platforms behaving like they are ‘too big to care’ has come to an end,” said Thierry Breton, EU commissioner for Internal markets.
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