LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators on Friday fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the bloc’s digital rules that they mentioned might depart customers uncovered to scams and manipulation.
The European Fee issued its determination following an investigation it opened two years ago into X beneath the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Providers Act, also called the DSA.
It’s the primary time that the EU has issued a so-called non-compliance determination since rolling out the DSA. The sweeping rulebook requires platforms to take extra accountability for shielding European customers and cleansing up dangerous or unlawful content material and merchandise on their websites, beneath menace of hefty fines.
The Fee mentioned it was punishing X, beforehand generally known as Twitter, due to three completely different breaches of the DSA’s transparency necessities. The choice might rile President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital regulations, complaining that Brussels was focusing on U.S. tech corporations and vowing to retaliate.
The corporate didn’t reply instantly to an electronic mail request for remark.
EU regulators had already outlined their accusations in mid-2024 once they launched preliminary findings of their investigation into X.
Regulators mentioned X’s blue checkmarks broke the rules as a result of on “misleading design practices” and will expose customers to scams and manipulation.
Earlier than Musk acquired X, when it was beforehand generally known as Twitter, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges widespread on social media and have been largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and different influential accounts.
After he bought it in 2022, the positioning began issuing the badges to anybody who wished to pay $8 per 30 days for one.
The means X doesn’t meaningfully confirm who’s behind the account, “making it troublesome for customers to evaluate the authenticity of accounts and content material they have interaction with,” the Fee mentioned in its announcement.
X additionally fell in need of the transparency necessities for its advert database, regulators mentioned.
Platforms within the EU are required to supply a database of all of the digital commercials they’ve carried, with particulars resembling who paid for them and the supposed viewers, to assist researches detect scams, faux adverts and coordinated affect campaigns. However X’s database, the Fee mentioned, is undermined by design options and entry boundaries resembling “extreme delays in processing.”
Regulators additionally mentioned X additionally places up “pointless boundaries” for researchers attempting to entry public information, which stymies analysis into systemic dangers that European customers face.
“Deceiving customers with blue checkmarks, obscuring info on adverts and shutting out researchers don’t have any place on-line within the EU. The DSA protects customers,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s govt vice-president for tech sovereignty, safety and democracy, mentioned in a ready assertion.
