BREAKING: Elon Musk says EU offered X ‘illegal secret deal’ to censor speech before ruling that platform ‘deceived users’

Elon Musk posted on Friday in response to accusations from the European Commission, saying that the EU body offered X an illegal secret deal promising not to fine the company if it censored speech on the platform. A report from the Commission accused X of deceiving users with "verified accounts” that have the “Blue checkmark," a change that took place when Musk bought up the platform. It also took issue with public data on the platform not being shared with “researchers."

In response to the report from the Commission, Musk posted, "The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not."

Musk had quoted a post from Margrethe Vestager, the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission. The commission accused X of breaching "the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers." The press release on the report stated, "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."

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market with the EU commented on the findings from the report, saying, "Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information. Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA.”

Users on X can buy premium services from X and will be given the Blue Checkmark in response. However, legacy checkmarks as well as the indication of government organizations provide a way to differentiate between larger sources of information.

The report also accused X of not complying with "required transparency on advertising" on the platform. Thirdly, the Commission accused X of failing to "provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA."

Mike Benz, Executive Director for the Foundation of Freedom Online, posted to rebut the "researchers'" accusation and Vestager's comments on the matter, saying, "They’re NOT researchers. They’re censorship activities & political operatives. This has been their plan the whole time — to use the DSA to force X to restaff the censorship squad fired when Elon took over."

The Commission's findings were preliminary, however, it stated that if the findings are "confirmed" then X would be "in breach of Articles 25, 39 and 40(12) of the DSA."

"Such a decision could entail fines of up to 6% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the provider, and order the provider to take measures to address the breach," the press release on the report added.