Elon Musk-owned X has taken down the European Fee’s promoting account simply days after the social media platform was hit with a 120 million euro ($140 million) fantastic by the European Union (EU) for violating its transparency guidelines beneath the Digital Providers Act (DSA).
The platform additional accused the EU’s government arm of making an attempt to amplify its personal social media submit in regards to the fantastic imposed on X. The European Fee tried “to benefit from an exploit in our Advert Composer — to submit a hyperlink that deceives customers into pondering it’s a video and to artificially improve its attain,” Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, wrote in a submit on the platform on Sunday, December 7.
The transfer escalates a long-standing feud between Musk’s platform and EU regulators over free speech, misinformation, on-line regulation, platform design and accountability, amongst different points. It’s one among a number of disputes that X has been embroiled in outdoors america this 12 months, largely owing to the platform’s content material moderation practices and devil-may-care method to free expression that has ruffled various feathers.
The ruling
Following a two-year investigation into X, the European Fee imposed a 120 million euro fantastic on the platform for violating the DSA’s transparency necessities. The ruling issued on Friday, November 5, particularly cited the platform’s misleading design of its ‘blue checkmark’, the dearth of transparency of its promoting repository, and the failure to supply entry to public information for researchers, as breaches of the bloc’s digital rules.
Handed in 2022 and coming into impact in 2024, the DSA classifies all on-line middleman platforms into 4 classes, particularly: Middleman providers, internet hosting providers, on-line platforms, and Very Massive On-line Platforms (VLOPs) – platforms having greater than 45 million customers. The sweeping rulebook requires on-line platforms to guard European customers by cleansing up dangerous or unlawful content material and merchandise on their websites, beneath menace of hefty fines as much as six per cent of their annual international gross sales.
EU regulators have mentioned that X has failed to supply transparency round its adverts, and didn’t give researchers entry to public information. However the principle focus of the investigation was X’s paid blue ticks.
Earlier than Elon Musk bought X, when it was referred to as Twitter, the platform issued a blue tick verification badge to a consumer provided that they equipped proof of who they have been. It was primarily reserved for celebrities, politicians, journalists, official accounts of organisations, and different influential accounts.
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After Musk acquired X in 2022, the platform introduced any consumer might get a blue tick subsequent to their profile title so long as they paid a month-to-month subscription charge. It was a part of a sweeping set of adjustments made by the SpaceX and Tesla CEO, who argued that the outdated verification system was opaque and unfairly gatekept customers. Musk additionally framed paid blue ticks as a option to curb bots whereas turning verification into a brand new income stream for the platform.
However the European Fee mentioned that X deceived customers by permitting folks to pay for a blue tick on their profile and never “meaningfully verifying” who’s behind the account. “This deception exposes customers to scams, together with impersonation frauds, in addition to different types of manipulation by malicious actors,” it mentioned.
The Fee additional mentioned that the fantastic imposed on X was calculated by “bearing in mind the character of those infringements, their gravity by way of affected EU customers, and their period.”
The pushback
Stepping up his criticism of the bloc, Musk referred to as for the EU to be abolished after his platform was fined. “The EU ought to be abolished and sovereignty returned to particular person nations, in order that governments can higher signify their folks,” he mentioned in a submit on X.
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The Fee’s determination additionally rekindled tensions between the EU and United States, with a number of members of the Trump administration, together with US Vice President JD Vance, accusing the bloc of concentrating on US tech firms with its digital rules.
“The EU ought to be supporting free speech not attacking American firms over rubbish,” Vance wrote on X. “The European Fee’s $140 million fantastic isn’t simply an assault on @X, it’s an assault on all American tech platforms and the American folks by overseas governments. The times of censoring Individuals on-line are over,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X.
“Europe is taxing Individuals to subsidise a continent held again by Europe’s personal suffocating rules,” wrote Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Fee (FCC).
Denying that the EU’s guidelines have been supposed to muzzle huge tech firms, EU officers mentioned that the Fee “not concentrating on anybody, not concentrating on any firm, not concentrating on any jurisdictions based mostly on their shade or their nation of origin.” “That is based mostly on a democratic course of,” European Fee spokesperson Thomas Regnier was quoted as saying.
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X has 60 days to tell the Fee about the way it plans to repair its ‘misleading’ blue checkmark practices, and one other 90 days to submit an motion plan on addressing DSA breaches associated to its advert repository and researcher entry to public information.
The larger image
In its operations outdoors america, X has been caught between socially aware regulators desperate to curb the social media harms threatening residents and authoritarian regimes seeking to suppress dissent.
Brazil, Eire, Canada, Australia, and the EU’s member nations have locked horns with X this 12 months over their respective insurance policies regarding hate speech and age verification. French prosecutors opened a felony probe into X on allegations of overseas interference with biased algorithms.
In Could 2025, X filed a lawsuit in opposition to the Turkish authorities’s order to dam the account of an opposition chief. A couple of months later, the Turkish governemnt shut down Grok, an AI chatbot developed by Musk-owned xAI, for producing allegedly offensive responses about President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
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In India, the social media large has clashed with the central authorities on a number of points up to now and most just lately over the legality of the Sahayog portal, a mechanism that automates content material takedowns and permits authorities businesses to straight order social media platforms to take away content material they deem illegal.
Inside america, X is alleged to have benefited from the favour of the White Home and Republican occasion members, who see Musk as an ally of their campaigns in opposition to extra liberal-skewing tech platforms.
For Musk, X has change into a vessel for selling his imaginative and prescient of free speech. He has extra leeway to choose these fights abroad as a result of the platform has a smaller consumer base than different main platforms and isn’t a giant income generator in comparison with different firms led by the billionaire. Nevertheless, that will change if Musk advances his plans to make X into an ‘the whole lot app’. Integrating AI companions like Grok and launching fee options on the platform might make his equation with regulators extra difficult.