When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44B, he made a series of changes that saw advertisers pause or greatly reduce their spending on the platform. One big change was that Twitter verification would be available for sale as part of a Twitter Blue subscription. Musk was forced to rethink the move after it created an open season for trolls, pranksters, and scammers. At one point, Musk and the company even blocked new accounts from purchasing Twitter Blue subscriptions; that’s how bad it got. Eventually, it was later relaunched and back to business as usual. For a while, actual verified Twitter accounts retained their blue checkmarks, but those were removed last year—at which point having one became a badge of shame (rightfully so), as it showed you’d paid for it. The most enthusiastic customers were cryptocurrency scammers who took advantage of the boosted visibility of paid accounts to commit their frauds. The EU’s Digital Services Act places a number of obligations on social media companies, one of which is to take steps to avoid users being deceived by fake content. The Financial Times reports that selling X verification breaches the DSA. For the first time, we are issuing preliminary findings under the Digital Services Act.In our view, X does not comply in areas linked to:▪️ Dark patterns▪️ Advertising transparency▪️ Data access for researchersWe will ensure that all platforms comply with EU legislation.— European Commission (@EU_Commission) July 12, 2024 In preliminary findings from an investigation that began last year, the EU said…Twitter’s blue checkmarks are a total scam, says EU investigation