The European Union has moved this week to punish the social media company X and Elon Musk for allegedly “deceiving users” through certain company practices.
On Thursday, X, which was formerly known as Twitter, was fined €120 million ($140 million) by the European Union for violating one of the international organization’s laws regulating technology companies. The move makes the social media platform the first company to be fined under the jurisdiction of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” Henna Virkkunen, the Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the European Commission said in a statement.
“The DSA gives researchers the way to uncover potential threats. The DSA restores trust in the online environment. With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability,” Virkkunen continued.
The case dates back to December 18, 2023, when the European Commission began a formal investigation into X. Twitter was bought by Musk, a top Republican donor in the 2024 election and former head of DOGE, in October 2022, and has since been rebranded X. Later, in July 2024, Musk endorsed President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Trump administration officials are speaking out against the EU’s effort.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X that “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. The days of censoring Americans online are over.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr posted on X that “Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company. Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations.”
According to a press release from the commission, X’s blue checkmark feature was deceptive because the social media company allowed anyone who paid money to receive the marking rather than just those the company had “meaningfully verifying who is behind the account.”
The commission claims this feature violated the DSA requirement that online platforms not permit deceptive design practices. The commission also said that X had not met the transparency and accessibility requirements laid out by the DSA.
“X incorporates design features and access barriers, such as excessive delays in processing, which undermine the purpose of ad repositories. X’s ads repository also lacks critical information, such as the content and topic of the advertisement, as well as the legal entity paying for it,” the commission concluded. The executive body also held that X failed “to provide researchers access to public data.”
The social media company now has 60 working days to let the commission know how it will rectify the violation associated with the blue checkmarks, and 90 working days to provide an action plan to the commission addressing the violations associated with X’s advertising repository and researcher access to public data.
The Daily Signal has reached out to X for comment.