Elon Musk Lobs A Bombshell: The European Commission Offered X A “Secret Deal” To Evade Fines In Exchange For Censorship

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In a dramatic turn of events, Elon Musk has effectively turned the proverbial tables on the European Commission (EC) by lobbing grave allegations in response to the EU's executive arm opening a pathway for imposing punitive measures against the X social media platform earlier today.

As a refresher, the European Commissioner Thierry Breton commenced a broad-based investigation into X's potential breach of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) rules in December 2023.

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The EU's executive arm was particularly interested in evaluating X's efforts to counter hate speech, misinformation, and glorification of terrorism. As part of its investigation, the Commission tried to gauge the efficacy of X's much-touted Community Notes feature that uses crowd-sourced fact-checks to combat misinformation. It also probed the effectiveness of the platform's user-facing tools designed to flag illegal and sensitive content. Finally, the European Commission wanted to look into X's blue checkmarks that now accompany a paid subscription and whether these marks were indicative of a deceptive design.

Well, earlier today, the European Commission publicized the results of its preliminary investigation that found that X uses "dark patterns" to deceive its users. It also raised concerns around advertising transparency and data access for researchers.

The Commission believes that there is evidence of "motivated malicious actors" abusing their verified status - indicated by X's blue checkmarks - to deceive users. The European Commission further believes X did not maintain "a searchable and reliable advertisement repository," as mandated under the DSA. The platform also reportedly blocked researchers from accessing its publicly available data in contravention of EU rules.

If the