EU accuses Elon Musk’s X of misleading users

London
CNN
 — 

European regulators have charged Elon Musk’s X with breaching its sweeping Digital Services Act, accusing the platform of misleading its users among other violations.

“Today we issue for the first time preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act,” Margrethe Vestager, a senior official at the European Commission, said in a statement Friday. “In our view, X does not comply with the DSA in key transparency areas, by using dark patterns and thus misleading users, by failing to provide an adequate ad repository, and by blocking access to data for researchers.”

The company’s approach to so-called verified accounts “does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users,” the European Union’s executive arm added in the statement. Anyone can subscribe to obtain the “verified” status, it noted and pointed to evidence of “malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to deceive users.”

If the Commission’s preliminary findings are confirmed, it could impose a fine on X, formerly Twitter, of up to 6% of its annual turnover.

CNN has contacted X for comment.

This is a developing story and will be updated.