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 laws that they mentioned may depart customers uncovered to scams and manipulation.
The European Fee issued its determination following an investigation it opened two years in the past into X below the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Providers Act, often known as 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 duty for safeguarding European customers and cleansing up dangerous or unlawful content material and merchandise on their websites, below 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 may rile President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital laws, complaining that Brussels was focusing on U.S. tech firms and vowing to retaliate.
The corporate didn’t reply instantly to an e 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 foundations as a result of on “deceptive 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 frequent on social media and have been largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and different influential accounts.
After he purchased it in 2022, the location 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 difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage 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 offer a database of all of the digital ads they’ve carried, with particulars corresponding to who paid for them and the meant viewers, to assist researches detect scams, pretend adverts and coordinated affect campaigns. However X’s database, the Fee mentioned, is undermined by design options and entry limitations corresponding to “excessive delays in processing.”
Regulators additionally mentioned X additionally places up “unnecessary barriers” for researchers attempting to entry public knowledge, which stymies analysis into systemic dangers that European customers face.
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s govt vice-president for tech sovereignty, safety and democracy, mentioned in a ready assertion.
