Elon Musk rubs shoulders with the richest men on the planet and his ‘X’ platform is considered the most influential in the world. The union of one and the other forms a tandem whose relevance is not comparable with almost anything known. However, the European Commission prevents the former blue bird company from sitting at the same table as other technology giants with a dominant position in their respective fields of activity. In football terms it would be like demoting Musk’s firm to the Second Division of social networks, one step below TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin.
The blow to the vanity of the South African-born businessman has been reverberating in the First World since last Wednesday. “X is not a crucial service for users,” the European Commission has indicated. While some dominate the market, with threatening positions for the rest of their rivals, X does not reach the same level. Among the first are Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Booking, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta and Microsoft. All of these giants are ‘gatekeepers’, that is, guardians or gatekeepers who allow access to their markets. Some pass and others don’t.
For this reason, these giants must submit to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the community regulation that aims to guarantee fair competition on digital platforms through obligations and compensation for competition.
In the field of online advertising there is Google, Amazon and Metawhile the search engine business is shared Chrome and Safari in the Old Continent. Regarding operating systems, the market is divided into four players: Google Android, iOS, iPasdOS and Windows PC OS. At the same time, the EU coexists with two monopolies in search engines (Google) and in streaming videos (YouTube), while the cake of messaging platforms is a matter of WhatsApp and Messenger.
On May 13, the Commission opened an investigation to assess whether X should be considered a gatekeeper. On the one hand, it met certain quantitative thresholds, but it did not exceed them with a disturbing sufficiency to be classified as an important gateway between companies and consumers. The more than 45 million monthly active users of X in Europe, the 10,000 professional users and the income of more than 7.5 billion euros in three fiscal years they are considerable magnitudes, but not so much as to endanger the healthy balance in its activity segment. The aforementioned study set a maximum period of five months to make a decision, in order to reach October. The conclusion does not allow for discussion: X’s company does not deserve to share the digital Olympus with other giants, all of them from the United States except the Chinese ByteDance.
Nevertheless, The absence of X from the gatekeeper list should be interpreted as excellent news for Musk’s platformsince it is free of fines in Europe. As the community executive explains, “in the event that a doorman does not comply with the obligations established by the DMA, the Commission can impose fines of up to 10% of the company’s total turnover worldwide, which can reach up to 20% in case of repeated violations.”
Furthermore, in the case of systematic infringements, the Commission could “take additional corrective measures, such as forcing an operator to sell a company or parts of it or prohibiting it from acquiring additional services related to the non-compliance.”
Among other obligations on European soil, the gatekeepers They must open their basic messaging functions to other players, so that they are interoperable with other platforms, in addition to informing in advance of the mergers and acquisitions they intend to undertake. The fact that X is not as relevant as other references on the website does not free the platform from other obligations that may be subject to sanctions. This occurs with the presumption of fraud from X to users with the blue verification mark, a badge called X premium that identifies the accounts that are verified. Given this icon, the European Commission warned last summer that the blue verified mark “is misleading and violates the European Union Digital Services Law.” According to the Commission, any user can pay for the badge, including criminals who roam the web and social networks.
The community executive also seeks to tickle Elon Musk by questioning the transparency of X’s advertising system, a lack that could be punished by up to 6% of the American company’s annual global turnover.
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