Twitter Blue's quiet rollout in EU frets watchdog over lack of notice

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 -- despite previously saying it would.

The product, known as Twitter Blue, lets users pay to get a blue check mark on their account -- mimicking the look of the legacy verification feature the platform offered prior to Elon Musk's takeover of the company last year -- 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.

Speaking to Reuters, the Irish data protection commissioner Helen Dixon said: "We're 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't going to roll out in the EU and certainly not before there have been discussions with our office."

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) told TechCrunch it's continuing to engage with Twitter on the matter but declined further comment.

The revised subscription product launched soon after Musk's takeover of the company last fall -- 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.

The product was then relaunched in December -- initially in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand -- with manual checks in place aimed at combating the rampant impersonation that had greeted v1.

Since then Twitter has continued to expand access to Blue. In January the subscription offering was made available to users in Japan. Then, in early February, it was opened up to more paying users -- 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.