Digital Services Act and Thierry Breton vs. Twitter
X designs and operates its interface for the “verified accounts” with the “Blue checkmark” in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users.
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Second, X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising, as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository, but instead put in place design features and access barriers that make the repository unfit for its transparency purpose towards users.
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Third, X fails to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA. In particular, X prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service.
Via John Gruber:
Blue checkmarks were indeed used, “back in the day”, to indicate “verified” accounts. But upon purchasing Twitter, Elon Musk eliminated that program. They don’t advertise it as “Verified” any more; they just call it “Twitter Premium” and make it very clear that blue checkmarks indicate premium account status. That’s illegal under the DSA?
I know that many Elon Musk supporters assume that my mockery of the many stupid things that Elon does means that I won’t give him a fair shake. But when he does something good, I’m happy to highlight it and give him kudos.
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We’ve been warning for many years that the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) would be abused for censorship by the government. EU officials and supporters of the DSA kept insisting that we were overreacting. But, Thierry Breton has made it clear that while the DSA is under his purview as a Commissioner, it is his own personal censorship tool for anything he dislikes online.
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Donald Trump joined Elon Musk for a conversation on “Spaces,” the extremely buggy real-time audio chat feature on ExTwitter. Before that happened, however, Thierry Breton posted one of his typically smug open letters that more or less warns Elon that if Trump said anything bad, the EU might seek to take action against ExTwitter.
Elon’s response — posting a meme telling Breton to “fuck yourself in the face” — while not exactly a masterclass in diplomatic communication, at least made his feelings on the matter abundantly clear. It also made the point that Breton appeared to be using the DSA in a manner that Europeans insisted the DSA would never enable: to order companies to censor content.
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Indeed, it appears that other EU officials agree that Breton went too far. The Financial Times covered the story by noting that other EU officials were wholly unaware that Breton was going to send that letter, and they sound displeased about it[…]
Mark Scott (via John Gruber):
Four separate EU officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Breton’s warning to Musk had surprised many within the Commission. The bloc’s enforcers were still investigating the platform for potential wrongdoing and the EU did not want to be seen as potentially interfering in the U.S. presidential election. “The EU is not in the business of electoral interference,” said one of those officials. “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”
Previously:
Update (2024-09-17): Michel Rose and Foo Yun Chee:
France picked Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne as its new candidate for the next European Commission as the incumbent, Thierry Breton, abruptly quit on Monday with tough words for the EU's re-elected executive chief Ursula von der Leyen.
Translation from bureaucratese to English: “Faced with being fired for being a jackass or resigning, I resign.”
Previously:
4 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
Totally uncalled for. You can tell companies that they have to use usb-c in the EU or whatever but they are out of their minds if they think they can tell Americans what they can say in a conversation, or else... Doesn’t matter what your politics are.
They will regret that they sent that letter soon.
"and make it very clear that blue checkmarks indicate premium account status. That’s illegal under the DSA?"
How are they making it very clear? They're using the same iconography that other sites (e.g. Instagram) use for verified accounts, and there is no obvious way to figure out what the icon means. You can't hover over it to see a description, or click on it to go to any kind of documentation.
The reason Twitter reused the verified badge for their premium accounts, instead of creating a new system, is very clearly because being verified has value, so commingling the two ideas was an intentional decision. It's meant to be confusing, because that is what gives it value.
I mean, if X actually did verify everyone who paid, but still required payment for verification, they could probably have passed muster. Just a stupid own-goal that ironically makes Twitter look less democratic, not more, under Musk's control. Not great for the populist vibe.
And yeah, sure, the DSA will be abused for censorship if there isn't a universalist conception of what harmful speech actually is. That was always going to be the rub. Although, of course, I am weary of libertarians telling us that, specially when they have such a stoic record of defending the Great and the Good and their megaphone platforms. The "Marketplace of Ideas" is a dud.
WRT the checkmarks I think both sides are being idiots. Twitter wants to sell the coveted Verified status without doing the work. Fewer people would pay for a $ symbol that just meant they were paying members than a checkmark that make them look like a Kardashian.
But the way things are headed some ISO standard iconography that means things like:
* Verified account
* AI generated image
* AI animated video based on verified image
etc
might actually be needed.
