The European Commission has imposed its first fine under Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and it’s against Elon Musk’s company X (Twitter). The decision has deeply angered the administration of US President Donald Trump and Musk himself.
The European Commission has imposed its first fine under Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and it’s against Elon Musk’s company X (Twitter). The decision has deeply angered the administration of US President Donald Trump and Musk himself.
The EU has expressed concern that X (Twitter) allows anyone to purchase a «blue check mark» — the platform’s long-standing mark that, before Elon Musk’s arrival, indicated that a user had been verified and was who they claimed to be, TechCrunch reports.
The European Commission found the design of the blue tick system to be «misleading» and fined the platform €120 million for violating the DSA. Other violations included a lack of transparency in the advertising repository and failure to provide researchers with access to public data.
Before Musk bought the company, Twitter would issue blue check marks to journalists, celebrities, politicians, and public figures on the platform after verifying their identities. Musk repealed that policy in 2023, and today, a «blue check mark» only means that a user is subscribed to X Premium and meets certain criteria, such as having a profile photo, a display name, and linking their account to a phone number.
«This violates the DSA’s obligation for online platforms to prohibit deceptive design practices on their services. On X, anyone can pay to get ‘verified’ status without the company significantly verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to assess the authenticity of accounts and the content they interact with,» the European Commission’s conclusion states.
It is noted that such a system exposes users to fraud, identity theft, and manipulation.
X (Twitter) now has 60 days to describe how it plans to address the blue tick violations and 90 days to provide an action plan to address the violations related to advertising and transparency and accessibility of public data. Confirmed DSA violations can be punishable by a range of serious sanctions, including fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on his X account that the Commission’s fine was tantamount to an attack on the American people. Musk later agreed with Rubio’s opinion.
«The European Commission’s $140 million fine is not just an attack on X, it is an attack by foreign governments on all American technology platforms and the American people. The days of censoring Americans online are over», Rubio wrote.
Vice President J.D. Vance posted a post on X before the decision, accusing the Commission of trying to fine the social network «for not doing censorship».
«The EU should support freedom of speech, not attack American companies over garbage», he wrote.
European officials denied that the rules were aimed at silencing big tech companies. The commission «is not targeting anyone, is not targeting any company, is not targeting any jurisdiction based on their color or their country of origin,» a spokesman said.
The fine hit the owner of the social network X (Twitter) Elon Musk the hardest, who began publishing numerous posts criticizing the EU and calling for its dissolution.
«The EU should be dissolved and sovereignty returned to individual countries so that governments can better represent the interests of their citizens,» he said in a post that has garnered more than 10 million views and nearly 100,000 likes.
Musk also quoted a post by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who said that the European Union and Ukraine are «drowned in corruption.»
