EU Fines X $140 Million for Digital rule breaches

The European Union on Friday slapped Elon Musk’s social media platform X with a 120-million-euro ($140-million) fine for breaching the bloc’s digital rules, in a move that risks a fresh clash with U.S. administration officials.

The high-profile probe into the company was seen as a test of the EU’s resolve to police Big Tech – and Vice President JD Vance fired a bullish warning against “attacking” U.S.firms through “censorship” before the penalty was even made public.

Imposing the first-ever fine under its powerful Digital Services Act (DSA) on content, the European Commission said X was guilty of non-compliance with transparency rules including through the “deceptive design” of its blue checkmark for “verified” accounts.

“This decision is about the transparency of X” and “nothing to do with censorship,” the bloc’s tech chief henna Virkkunen told reporters as it was announced – pushing back at Vance’s charge.

The U.S. vice president warned the EU pre-emptively Thursday it “should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage” – in an X post to which Musk replied “Much appreciated.”

Musk’s platform was targeted by the EU’s first ever formal DSA inquiry in December 2023 – and preliminarily found to have breached its rules on several counts in July 2024.

The EU found that changes made to the platform’s checkmark system after Musk took over in 2022 meant that “anyone can pay” to obtain the badge of authenticity – without X “meaningfully verifying who is behind the account.”

“This deception exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors,” the Commission said in a statement.

it also found X failed to be sufficiently transparent about its advertising and to give researchers access to public data in line with DSA rules.

X remains under investigation over tackling the spread of illegal content and data manipulation – with those parts of the EU probe yet to conclude.

‘Words to action’

Part one of the X probe had appeared to stall since