Elon Musk’s social media platform X submitted a plan to the European Commission late on Thursday explaining how it proposes to amend its “blue checkmark” system to bring it in line with the bloc’s rules outlawing deceptive design.

In December, the Commission hit X with a €120 million fine for breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA), including finding that its system for verifying accounts was unlawfully misleading.

X also has until 16 March to pay the DSA penalty, the Commission said on Friday.

Prior to Musk buying the platform formerly known as Twitter, blue checks had denoted verified accounts in a bid to tackle account impersonation. Celebrities, government officials, journalists and others were duly granted blue checks.

But under Musk’s tenure, the system was changed in 2023 to become ‘pay to play’ – meaning users could obtain the mark if they subscribed to X’s premium (paid) service. Though the company’s help page for blue check verification does now list additional “eligibility” criteria.

The DSA bans larger platforms like X from using so-called dark patterns or deceptive design practices. “On X, anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified’ status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account,” the Commission found in December.

At the time, X was given 60 working days to propose changes to bring the system into compliance – and the deadline for submitting this plan was yesterday, as Euractiv reported earlier.

Late on Thursday, Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier confirmed that X had submitted “remedies” for the blue checks, without detailing its proposal. “The Commission will now carefully assess the proposed remedies,” he added.

Other transparency obligations X was found to have breached in December – related to researchers’ access to platform data and the accessibility of its ad repository – have a longer compliance timeline (90 days); so it must send in a fix by 28 April.

The Commission has previously warned X that failure to deliver compliance plans could lead to daily fines of up to 5% of its average daily turnover.

The company is challenging the enforcement, filing an appeal to the General Court of the EU last month – and claiming the decision resulted from “an incomplete and superficial investigation”.

The case against X also remains a lightning rod for Washington’s grievances about the EU’s tech rules, with US Vice President JD Vance branding last year’s decision “garbage”.

(nl)