X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, may be violating US sanctions by accepting payments for subscription accounts from terrorist organizations and other groups banned from operating in the country, according to a new report.
The report, from the Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit focused on holding large tech companies accountable, shows that X, formerly known as Twitter, has received payments from accounts that include Hezbollah leaders, Houthi groups and state media in Iran and Russia. Memberships, which cost $8 a month, give users a blue checkmark — since it was limited to verified users like celebrities — and better promotion from X’s algorithm, among other perks.
The US Treasury maintains a list of sanctioned entities, and while X’s official terms of service prohibit individuals and organizations on the list from making payments on the platform, the report found 28 accounts that had the blue check mark.
“We were surprised to discover that X provided premium services to a wide range of groups that the US has sanctioned for terrorism and other activities that harm its national security,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project. “It’s yet another sign that X has lost control of its platform.”
X and Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Mr Musk said he wants X to be a haven for free speech and will only remove illegal content.
On Wednesday, after the Tech Transparency Project published its investigation, X removed the checkmarks from several of the accounts.
Since Mr. Musk bought Twitter in 2022, the company has made drastic changes to the way it does business — in some cases ditching advertising in favor of subscription dollars. It has also reinstated thousands of banned accounts and restored the rules that once governed the site.
Mr Musk also scrapped Twitter’s verification policy, which saw staff members verify politicians, celebrities, journalists and others by giving them a blue check mark to show they were real. Instead, users now pay for these badges, and popular paid accounts are eligible for a cut of revenue for ads that appear next to their posts. Memberships for organizations cost $1,000 per month, a tier that comes with added benefits and a gold check mark.
(The X still denotes official government accounts with a free check mark, now grey.)
It is unclear how the organizations and people highlighted in the report broke X’s rules to pay for their premium status. (Mr. Musk has fired about 80 percent of X’s staff.) Because X no longer verifies users’ identities before giving checkmarks, it’s also possible that the accounts discovered by the Tech Transparency Project belong to impersonators.
Congressional legislation, known as the Berman Amendments, provides for the free flow of information, without sanctions, between the United States and sanctioned countries. Internet companies have relied on the amendments in the past, including in 2020 when TikTok argued that they were protecting the app from an attempt by President Donald J. Trump to prevent US citizens from downloading it. However, it is unclear whether the argument would cover financial transactions on a social networking service.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, appears to have started paying X in November for a premium account and frequently posts news bulletins and memes mocking the United States and Israel to his 93,000 followers. His account is labeled ID-verified, meaning the account owner provided a copy of a government ID to X.
An account identified as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, an Iranian-backed militia, also received the blue tick in November and promotes its cause to more than 11,000 followers. And the Yemeni militia known as the Houthis signed up this month, just weeks after the United States said it would be designated a terrorist group following its attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.
On Facebook, by contrast, searches for Mr. Nasrallah come with a warning that his name is “sometimes associated with the activities of Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.”
Scammers jumped at the chance to impersonate the brands when X introduced subscriptions in late 2022, and the site has been struggling to police the scammers ever since. Last month, an account with a gold checkmark amassed 35,000 followers as it posted praises of Hitler before it was suspended. (Vice News earlier reported the story.) And in October, some blue-checked accounts spread false information about the conflict in Gaza.
X initially gave free premium accounts to some of its top advertisers, but ran into problems even with those, many of whom had been hacked, according to internal messages seen by The New York Times. This month, Monique Pintarelli, X’s head of ad sales in the Americas, ordered an audit of all accounts that had received free gold checks and asked employees to remove badges from compromised accounts, those messages said.
Ryan Mack contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
