Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has been fined €120m (£105m) by the EU after it found rule breaches had left users vulnerable to scams and manipulation.
The European Commission started investigating X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) two years ago and has now issued its first non-compliance decision against the site.
In a decision that could anger the US President Donald Trump the commission censured Elon Musk’s platform for three different breaches of DSA transparency requirements.
Elon Musk with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Pic: Reuters
The Trump administration has previously criticised Brussels’ digital regulations, saying that they target US tech companies and had vowed to retaliate.
One of X’s breaches highlighted by the EU concerned the “deceptive design practices” of the platform’s blue checkmarks, which exposed users to scams and manipulation, regulators said.
Before Mr Musk acquired the site for $44bn (£33bn) in 2022, the checkmarks indicated the accounts of notable users with verified identities.
Under the tech billionaire’s changes, however, the badge could be bought by anyone willing to pay $8 (£6) a month.
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The commission said, it was therefore “difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with”.
X also fell short of transparency requirements for its database of advertisements, regulators said.
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In the EU, platforms are required to provide a database of all the digital ads they have carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience.
But the commission said X had created “access barriers” to its database, which lacked “critical information” and imposed “excessive delays in processing, which undermine the purpose of ad repositories”.
Elon Musk’s profile on X, with the blue checkmark displayed. Pic: AP
It also found X had failed to meet its DSA obligations to provide researchers with its public data, the commission said.
The EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, Henna Virkkunen, said: “Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU.
“The DSA protects users. 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.”
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X now has 60 working days to inform the commission of how it will bring its blue checkmarks into compliance, and 90 days to address the other two breaches.
The commission says it can impose “periodic penalty payments” on Musk’s platform if it fails to comply.
