EU warns X it may face fines for 'deceptive' blue-tick system | Hacker News Reader

EU warns X it may face fines for 'deceptive' blue-tick system

theguardian.com

29 pointsnemoniac42 comments

The argument about blue ticks being deceptive seems dumb as a reason for a fine, they had always been a popularity/insider contacts game, now they're available to anyone willing to tie their account to a credit card. Nothing about them back when X was still called Twitter made people with checkmarks more trustworthy.

It was pretty common to run into checkmarks who were actually literal nobodies, and it was common for popular content creators who do not show their face or real name to not be able to get it despite suffering from impersonators, especially for creators who were not based in the West.

Being verified made you trustworthy in the sense that it signified that Twitter trusted the account. If you trusted Twitter, then you could sort of infer a kind of trust relationship with that account, in that it was trusted by an authority you trust.

Getting verified was just a popularity/insider contacts game, for sure. But now that trust relationship is sort of up for grabs, and there are a litany of people who (at a glance) will trust accounts with that mark if they see posts from them. This is ripe for exploitation by bad actors.

> It was pretty common to run into checkmarks who were actually literal nobodies

Why does that matter? It was a guarantee that the account was verified. The word "verified" meant that the account belonged to the actual person. Now it means nothing except that the user is a suscriber who gets their posts boosted in replies.

Even if the old Twitter only verified exactly one person ever, it would still be better than the current state.

What does "the account belonged to the actual person" mean if they're a literal nobody? If a literal nobody happens to have my same name and know someone on the inside to verify them, does that mean they're the real me as far as Twitter is concerned? and on the other hand, lots of popular creators don't use their real identity on their Twitter profile, do they not deserve to be 'verified' because they aren't the actual person?

The checkmark now is better because it's no longer an arbitrarily handed down status symbol, it indicates that the user has enough of a presence on the account to pay for it and wait the couple of days it takes for the checkmark to show up.

Honestly I don’t care. I can tell the difference between old blue check and new blue check, but by retaining the exact same representation can be considered deceptive whatever the merits or otherwise of the previous system.

Official EU release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40945767)

So will Meta face the same? You can also pay for a blue checkmark there: https://about.meta.com/technologies/meta-verified/

Meta says they verify you with a government ID on that page, while X doesn't anymore (just a credit card, IIRC). That might make a big difference in the EU's eyes for a system meant to "prove" you are who you say you are.

X does have an optional government ID verification once you subscribe to premium, which adds an additional 'verified' indication and is necessary for additional features like revenue sharing and enabling subscriptions.

Admittedly, I'm not too sure how it works, I only subscribed to premium yesterday, it seems like they review something manually since I haven't received a checkmark yet, or maybe it does require the ID verification step, which I don't intend to do for now since all I wanted is editing and higher message length.

The irony is that it was the pre-musk system that was deceptive. Previously bluechecks where given out capriciously at the whim of staff, including to people with no particular merit other than that they paid substantial bribes.

Now its just a publicly documented feature denoting people who have paid accounts. One could debate if the opaque and graft laden former system was more or less useful on the whole (on account of the inappropriate awards due to corrupting being relatively rare), but I think there isn't a serious argument that the current system is deceptive or that the former system wasn't deceptive.

In that light, I think it's difficult to not view this action as retaliation for removal of a feature which granted the EU a more substantial platform for spreading their own influence materials than they'd otherwise have, which they have absolutely no legal basis to demand, and where any such mandate would violate X's free speech rights.

Blue ticks weren't previously ways to "signal an account's reliability". They were a way to deceive people into thinking the account was realiable, while in fact it was a signal that the account was a vetted source of approved propaganda, the party line, the official narrative.

Finally.

Its insane that all of a sudden everyone that pays a bit money can have a "verified" checkmark, while claiming to be someone else.

The same EU that doesn’t allow any public agencies to collect statistical data that goes against their narrative in social sensitive areas, is now threatening to fine a private company because they don’t provide them access to their engagement and advertisement data.

The hypocrisy.

This seems like the EU is really overstepping.

Yes, the EU does have a right to decide how they do business in their borders.

However, the American people also have a right to re-evaluate their level of friendship and support for a government that is constantly abusing American companies.

Why are consumer protections abuse? Do you also think organizations like the FDA are abuse?

FDA not letting you import essential medications just because it is cheaper is actually a huge issue, call it indirect abuse.

"Consumer protections" in this context is cynical doublespeak for censorship.

How dare we citizens know what our governments are doing in our name, with our money?

In most cases it's not even censorship -- it's just some combination of an attempt to squeeze these non-EU companies for as much as they can get and good old fashioned virtue signaling about protecting consumers from things that most people couldn't care less about.

A recent article filled with examples: https://stratechery.com/2024/the-e-u-goes-too-far/

It's worth noting that this article was flagged off the front page of HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40907899

Reply on news.ycombinator.com