European Commission finds Elon Musk's X breaches EU digital laws

Elon Musk's social media platform X is in breach of EU digital laws due to deceiving users and transparency failures, the European Commission announced on Friday in a preliminary finding.

The commission said that X's verification system for users, known as the blue checkmark system, was open to abuse by "motivated malicious actors" since anyone may purchase the status.

Before, the blue checkmark system "used to mean trustworthy sources of information," EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement.

"Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users," he said. "X has now the right of defence — but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines and require significant changes," he added.

Under an EU set of laws called the Digital Services Act (DSA), social media platforms with more than 45 million active users like X are subject to far-reaching content moderation rules.