Elon Musk’s X was hit with a $140 million fine on Friday over alleged breaches of Europe’s Digital Services Act, the online safety law meant to protect the digital space by cracking down on illegal or potentially harmful content, in a move rejected by Musk and U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
The fine stems from an investigation, launched in 2023, into X’s potential liability under the rules, which took effect about the same time Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, saying he wanted to promote free speech.
The European Commission cited X for its blue check-mark system, which allows users to subscribe to a tier of the platform that grants them a badge that had previously signified the person had been vetted and approved by X’s moderators. Musk’s management team put the new system into effect shortly after taking over, as Musk decried what he called a “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark.”
“On X, anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified’ status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with,” the European Commission said. “This deception exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors.”
The commission also said X failed to provide a transparent advertising repository — a requirement of the Digital Services Act — and fell short of an obligation to let researchers access and analyze its public data.
“The fine issued today was calculated taking into account the nature of these infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration,” it said, noting this was the first noncompliance decision since the Digital Services Act took effect.
Vance sharply criticized the decision in advance of the announcement, casting it as a fine “for not engaging in censorship.”
“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” he posted on X Thursday night. Musk soon responded, “Much appreciated.” Vance, Musk and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Musk has not always abided by his maximalist free speech promises. Soon after Musk took over the company, X banned an account that tracked the location of his private plane and booted journalists who reported on it. He had earlier declared, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”
More recently, following the shooting of two National Guard members in D.C., Musk declared that “Falsely labeling non-violent people as ‘fascist’ or ‘Nazi’ should be treated as incitement to murder.”
The X case was viewed as an indicator of whether the European Union would forge ahead with its efforts to penalize large tech firms, after the Trump administration warned the bloc against regulating American companies.
The fine against X is the culmination of years of European scrutiny of Musk’s ownership of X. Musk bought the social media company formerly known as Twitter shortly before the European Union’s landmark social media law came into force, and regulators swiftly signaled that they would probe his moves to remove top safety officials and change content moderation rules.
The probe was also a test of regulators’ abilities to hold tech companies accountable under the E.U.’s digital laws, a sweeping package of social media, artificial intelligence and competition rules intended to rein in alleged abuses of tech companies.
The Federal Trade Commission and members of Congress reviewed Musk’s X acquisition without issuing fines or charges; there is no comprehensive equivalent of Europe’s Digital Services Act in the United States.
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