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A report from the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project (TTP) alleges that X has been selling premium subscriptions to subjects of US sanctions, including leaders of the US-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah. The TTP report<\/a> identifies 28 accounts that were granted checkmarks under owner Elon Musk\u2019s paid verification plan, evading rules that formally state<\/a> they\u2019re banned from using it. The allegations raise new questions about how strictly social media platforms should vet users \u2014 after the Supreme Court ruled just last year<\/a> that the platform formerly known as Twitter was not responsible for abetting a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The TTP report lists the full series of sanctioned entities that got verified on Twitter. The wide range of names includes:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n TTP says most of the accounts were verified after Musk took over Twitter and began requiring paid verification. Ten were paying to keep \u201clegacy\u201d checkmarks they\u2019d been granted earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n X didn\u2019t offer a comment to TTP at the time of the report\u2019s publication. But it appears to have removed nearly all the verifications, although the two gold checks still appear on Press TV\u2019s and Tinkoff Bank\u2019s accounts. (TTP notes that it also banned one account on the list, linked with Iran-backed militia Harakat al-Nujaba.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In a post emailed to The Verge<\/em>, the X safety account also pushed back on TTP\u2019s claims. \u201cX has a robust and secure approach in place for our monetization features, adhering to legal obligations, along with independent screening by our payments providers,\u201d it reads<\/a>. \u201cSeveral of the accounts listed in the Tech Transparency Report are not directly named on sanction lists, while some others may have visible account check marks without receiving any services that would be subject to sanctions.\u201d X stated that it had reviewed the report and would \u201ctake action if necessary.\u201d TTP posted a followup thread<\/a> rebutting this defense \u2014 arguing that organizations that weren\u2019t \u201cdirectly named\u201d were still owned by sanctioned entities, and that it wasn\u2019t clear how they\u2019d have obtained a checkmark without a paid account.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n US businesses are barred from economic transactions with people and organizations on sanctions lists. As TTP points out, X\u2019s own policies ban buying premium subscriptions if you\u2019re sanctioned or otherwise banned from financial dealings in the US. TTP points out that it\u2019s possible, albeit unlikely, that X gifted the blue checkmarks to terrorist groups for free \u2014 but the ban covers \u201ccontribution\u201d of goods and services, too. It\u2019s also possible some unrelated party duped X\u2019s verification program with impersonation, a widely reported problem on the service, though many of the accounts appear well established and credibly belong to their supposed owners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Beginning in its pre-Musk days as Twitter, X was the subject of a high-profile legal fight over whether it materially supported terrorists. The surviving family of an Islamic State attack victim sued it for failing to ban accounts linked to the group, taking their case to the Supreme Court in February 2023 as Twitter v. Taamneh<\/em>. But the court unanimously decided against holding Twitter responsible<\/a> for \u201caiding and abetting\u201d the attack. An opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas declared that the terrorist group\u2019s relationship with Twitter was comparable to Twitter\u2019s \u201carm\u2019s length, passive, and largely indifferent relationship with most users.\u201d The court applied the same logic to a similar case involving YouTube, avoiding a potentially explosive fight over online liability laws in general.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The question on the table here is different: did Twitter accept hard digital cash (even if it was only $8 a month) from people it was banned from financial dealings with? It\u2019s an issue that\u2019s becoming more and more relevant for social platforms, which, after years of free access, are increasingly pushing users to pay up<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the court also made a point of distinguishing conscious collaboration from sometimes failing to enforce a stated policy on a platform with hundreds of millions of users. And X, in its favor, did appear to cull the subscriptions when it was made aware of them. Either way, there\u2019s no legal challenge to X here at the moment \u2014 just a bad look for the company\u2019s verification plan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Update 6:23PM ET: <\/strong>Added followup statement from TTP.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n