This is the EU’s first non-compliance ruling since the Digital Services Act was implemented
The European Union has fined Elon Musk-owned social media platform X €120 million for violating its Digital Services Act, reported the Associated Press.
This is the EU’s first non-compliance ruling since the Act was implemented. The European Commission released its judgment after a two-year investigation launched in December 2023 revealed three violations of the Act’s transparency requirements.
X’s blue checkmarks policy did not adequately verify the identities behind accounts, “making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with,” the Commission said in a statement published by AP News. Before Musk acquired the platform in 2022, X, then known as Twitter, issued blue checkmarks to influential accounts as verification badges; after Musk took ownership, X granted any account that would pay US$8 a month a blue checkmark.
EU regulators also said X did not meet transparency requirements for its ad database; under EU rules, platforms must have a database of all digital advertisements carried, including details of ads’ financiers and target audiences. X’s database was hindered by barriers to access like “excessive delays in processing,” per a statement published by AP News.
Moreover, X set what regulators described as “unnecessary barriers” for researchers seeking public information.
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” said Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, in a statement published by AP News.
The Act requires platforms to protect European users and remove harmful or illegal content and products from sites. EU Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said in a statement published by AP News that the body was “not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdictions based on their color or their country of origin” and explained that the process was democratic.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the commission’s decision as “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments” in a snippet of an X post published by AP News. US vice president JD Vance wrote in a post that X was being fined “for not engaging in censorship.”
According to AP News, X did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
