{"id":25580,"date":"2023-03-08T22:41:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T22:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2023\/03\/08\/twitter-blues-quiet-rollout-in-eu-frets-watchdog-over-lack-of-notice\/"},"modified":"2023-03-08T22:41:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T22:41:53","slug":"twitter-blues-quiet-rollout-in-eu-frets-watchdog-over-lack-of-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2023\/03\/08\/twitter-blues-quiet-rollout-in-eu-frets-watchdog-over-lack-of-notice\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Blue\u2019s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/07\/twitter-blue-eu-dpc-concern\/<\/a><\/br>
\nTwitter Blue\u2019s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice<\/br>
\n2023-03-08 22:41:52<\/br><\/p>\n

\n

Twitter has ruffled more<\/a> regulatory<\/a> feathers<\/a> in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahead of time \u2014 despite previously saying it would.<\/p>\n

The product, known as Twitter Blue, lets users pay to get a blue check mark on their account \u2014 mimicking the look of the legacy verification feature the platform offered prior to Elon Musk\u2019s takeover of the company last year \u2014 as well as access to a suite of additional features, such as the ability to edit tweets, undo tweets and get prioritized ranking in conversations.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Reuters<\/a>, the Irish data protection commissioner Helen Dixon said: \u201cWe\u2019re a little bit more concerned this week now that we see that the blue tick subscription service is rolling out here in EU countries having been reassured that it wasn\u2019t going to roll out in the EU and certainly not before there have been discussions with our office.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) told TechCrunch it\u2019s continuing to engage with Twitter on the matter but declined further comment.<\/p>\n

The revised subscription product launched<\/a> soon after Musk\u2019s takeover of the company last fall \u2014 after the new billionaire broom said he would open up access to the blue check marks for a fee. However Musk was quickly forced to pause the launch after verification chaos ensued<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The product was then relaunched in December<\/a> \u2014 initially in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand \u2014 with manual checks in place aimed at combating the rampant impersonation that had greeted v1.<\/p>\n

Since then Twitter has continued to expand access to Blue. In January<\/a> the subscription offering was made available to users in Japan. Then, in early February<\/a>, it was opened up to more paying users<\/a> \u2014 including the first countries in the European Union, as well as additional international expansions, including to users in Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil and Indonesia. So it appears to have taken the DPC about a month to realize that an EU rollout was happening without it being given the promised notice.<\/p>\n

Rollouts of Twitter Blue to EU countries have amped up considerably over the past month. So the regional rollout is clearly not an oversight by a \u2018hardcore\u2019 Twitter staffer. (Per this list on a Twitter product page<\/a>, the subscription offering is now available in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus.)<\/p>\n

A key issue with Musk\u2019s approach is that turning the blue check mark into a paid feature undermines the usefulness of it as a verification signal. It also risks turning the platform into a megaphone for those willing and able to pay for reach \u2014 since they get greater amplification of their replies in conversations versus non-paying users, whose views they may be drowning out.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s important to note that Musk refined the initial (total) chaos of his relaunch of Blue \u2014 by launching a range of additional<\/a> free (different colored) check marks and symbols, including to denote business accounts and company affiliations or government accounts. (But good luck trying to distinguish verified journalists on Twitter \u2014 some of whom do now appear to have had legacy check marks affirmed as \u201cnotable\u201d under the new regime; while others have not and if you click on one of these legacy blue checks (indistinguishable from paid blue checks) you can still encounter a useless note that reads: \u201cThis is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable.\u201d)<\/p>\n

While there is no legal obligation on Twitter to forewarn its lead EU data protection regulator of incoming product launches, it is considered best practice \u2014 at least where concerns exist (as they have from the start of Musk\u2019s reboot of verification) \u2014 and Twitter rowing back on an explicit pledge to do so is clearly being viewed dimly in Dublin.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an additional important consideration here \u2014 related to Twitter\u2019s ability to keep streamlining its regulatory risk under the EU\u2019s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as it does currently, by (mostly) dealing only with Ireland\u2019s watchdog on issues of data protection, rather than having to field inbound from every concerned DPA across the bloc where its service is in use.<\/p>\n

Twitter can do this because it claims a \u201cmain establishment\u201d in the EU, in Ireland \u2014 allowing it to tap into the GDPR\u2019s one-stop-shop mechanism. However, as we\u2019ve reported previously<\/a>, maintaining this status quo requires it to keep satisfying the bloc\u2019s regulators that a decision-making function vis-\u00e0-vis EU users actually exists<\/em> in Ireland. And any unilateral decisions taken by Twitter\u2019s US-based leadership which push risky products out across the EU without keeping the DPC in the loop risk undermining the status of its Irish entity. So if Musk keeps up this authoritarian modus operandi<\/em>\u00a0it could bring the whole carefully constructed legal facade crashing down \u2014 landing him with a whole host of expensive GDPR problems.<\/p>\n

It will certainly be interesting to see whether the DPC\u2019s \u201cheightened state of contact with Twitter\u201d (as Dixon put it to Reuters), over the un-notified Blue rollout, leads to a meaningful reboot of Twitter\u2019s approach in the EU \u2014 or, er, not.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/br><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n

Science, Tech, Technology<\/br>
\n<\/br>
\nSource:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/07\/twitter-blue-eu-dpc-concern\/<\/a><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/07\/twitter-blue-eu-dpc-concern\/ Twitter Blue\u2019s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice 2023-03-08 22:41:52 Twitter has ruffled more regulatory feathers in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahead of time \u2014 despite previously saying it would. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-tech","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nTwitter Blue\u2019s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice - Science and Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2023\/03\/08\/twitter-blues-quiet-rollout-in-eu-frets-watchdog-over-lack-of-notice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Twitter Blue\u2019s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice - Science and Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source:https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/03\/07\/twitter-blue-eu-dpc-concern\/ Twitter Blue\u2019s quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice 2023-03-08 22:41:52 Twitter has ruffled more regulatory feathers in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahead of time \u2014 despite previously saying it would. 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