Social media giant X has sold premium subscriptions to members of Hezbollah, a militant group considered a terrorist organisation by the UK, EU and the US, according to a technology watchdog.

The Tech Transparency Project (TTP) says it found more than a dozen X accounts for US-sanctioned entities that had a blue checkmark, which requires the purchase of a premium subscription.

Two of the accounts identified by the organisation belong to the top leaders of Hezbollah, while others belong to Iranian and Russian state-run media.

A blue checkmark account that bears the name and profile image of Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, also indicates it is “ID verified,” a service that offered to premium subscribers as a way to prevent impersonation.

TTP said that while X requires users to submit a government-issued ID and a selfie to get verified in this way, it is unclear if Nasrallah did so.

According to the organisation, the account has 93,600 followers and was first created in October 2021.

The account was only verified in November 2023, the same month Nasrallah threatened further escalation of Israel’s war with Hamas.

The tech watchdog said that in early December 2023, the account had a pinned post at the top of its feed with the message, “We are coming…..” over a Hezbollah video of rocket fire and militants firing weapons. The post also featured ads in the reply section.

The organisation claims that Iran-backed militant group the Houthis, which has been attacking ships in the Red Sea, also had an account with a blue checkmark after being verified in February this year. However, the checkmark has since been removed.

Iran's Press TV and Russia's Tinkoff Bank were found to have gold checkmarks, which indicates that the account is a "verified organisation". At the time of the research, this checkmark cost $1,000 per month.

X has since introduced a basic tier that costs $200 a month.

"For years, Twitter, as X was previously known, allowed U.S.-sanctioned individuals and entities to use free accounts on the platform, an arrangement that some legal experts said was permissible under U.S. sanctions law," said TTP. "But by providing a premium, paid service to sanctioned entities, X may be raising new legal issues."

It added that it isn't publicly known if the platform has sought or received waivers for any of the accounts detailed in its report.

However, X policy states that its premium services, which include the blue checkmark, are off limits to US-sanctioned entities.

TTP’s investigation also found that some checkmark accounts associated with these sanctioned organisations had ads running in the replies to their posts, raising the possibility that they could get a cut of that ad revenue.

If any of the accounts identified by the watchdog did participate in this revenue sharing, that would raise further questions about sanctions violations by X, it said.

National Technology News has approached X for comment.

---