The European Union accuses Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, of breaching online content rules with its “verified” blue check accounts having the potential to “deceive” users. It also claims the site did not produce enough data for research use in regards to rules from the Digital Services Act.
Yahoo Finance Anchors Madison Mills and Seana Smith break down the latest developments from the EU and how it may move forward in its investigation of big tech companies like X.
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.
This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino
Video Transcript
All right, let’s stick with Elon Musk and talk about another headline that catching our attention here this morning.
That’s the EU is back at it again this time targeting Elon Musk’s ex the European Commission, accusing E accusing X of deceiving users and infringing digital content rules investigation.
Finding that X has broken rules regarding dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.
And I think when you take a step back, the reason big reason why we are talking about this is just the E U’s, I guess getting more aggressive with us companies.
When you talk about the targeting, what has been going on with big tech, whether whether or not it’s warranted.
I think that is out for debate up right now.
But again, this latest here coming in what has been a busy couple of weeks for the eu in cracking down on some of these tech companies here in the US this time accusing X of deceiving users here, Matty and also breaching online content rules.
Yes, that’s exactly right, Shana, I was not really familiar with the marketing term dark practices.
So just looking into that, like basically deceptively getting people to sign up for a service that’s difficult to cancel, doing something that you would not be able to or interested necessarily in doing.
That’s what a dark pattern is in advertising.
So that is what X is getting dined for.
Now.
What’s really interesting to me is the potential financial impact if the commission’s views on this are could be facing a fine of up to six percent of its global annual revenue.
And as you were mentioning, Shana, this comes on the heels of a slew of investigations from the Eu.
This commission also investigating Tik Tok Alibaba Ali Express Meta over other concerns.
And then also this comes on the heels of a slew of other investigations from the Digital Services Act that really began back in about 2022.
I would say with regards to the big tech companies that we about state side with Google Meta questions still remaining about the degree to which we might see regulatory action, state side in response to this.
I think when it comes to X and Elon Musk, this mirror is something that I heard another tech executive say to me earlier this week, which is that it’s the latest distraction for someone who this investor I was speaking with said that he just wants Elon Musk focusing on Tesla.
So another concern for Elon Musk to think about here.
Source Agencies
