Elon Musk’s X has been hit with a 120 million euro ($140 million) fine by the European Commission for breaching transparency obligations, in the latest challenge to a U.S. big tech company by the bloc.
The Commission on Friday said breaches include “the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark’, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.”
The ruling follows a two-year investigation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was adopted in 2022 to regulate online platforms. The Commission said that failure to comply with the decision may lead to penalty payments.
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,” said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.
“With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.”
X didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment. In a reply on X to a post from the European Commission, Musk wrote, “Bulls---.”
Musk’s social network now has 60 days to tell the Commission how it plans to address the issues with “deceptive” blue checkmarks, and 90 days to submit a plan to resolve the issues with its ads repository, and access to its public data for researchers.
“Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments,” the Commission said in a statement.
The fine comes a day after the commission announced it would investigate whether Meta
breached antitrust rules around a new policy on allowing AI providers’ access to WhatsApp.
In recent months, the US has been pressuring Europe to soften, or abandon, its rules for big tech companies, including the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act and other AI regulations that are under consideration.
