Regulators have fined X with a shocking sum of 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the EU bloc’s digital regulations.
The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the Digital Services Act.
This eye-watering fine is the premiere of a non-compliance decision for the DSA.
The Commission says it is punishing X because of three different breaches of the DSA’s transparency requirements:
- The deceptive design of the verified “blue checkmark” (anyone can pay, enabling scams or impersonation).
- The lack of transparency of X’s ad-archive, making the ad data difficult to inspect.
- Unnecessary barriers impeding researchers from accessing public data that would reveal systemic risk, misinformation, or platform behavior.
These breaches go against the EU’s efforts to clean up harmful and illegal content for European users.
Platforms in the EU are required to provide a database of all the digital advertisements they have carried, and thus the Commission has fined X for “excessive delays in processing.”
Donald Trump has previously accused the EC of targeting American tech companies.
“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X. Meanwhile, American VP JD Vance accused the EC of promoting censorship, while the EC publicly pushed back against these accusations.
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