EU Fines Elon Musk’s X: €120 Million for Online Safety Failures

EU Fines Elon Musk’s X: €120 Million for Online Safety Failures

On 5 December 2025, the European Commission announced a major fine against X (formerly Twitter), owned by Elon Musk:

“Today, the Commission has issued a fine of €120 million to X for breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The 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 Commission stated that X broke three main rules:

• “X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users. This violates the DSA obligation for online platforms to prohibit deceptive design practices on their services”.

• “X’s advertisement repository fails to meet the transparency and accessibility requirements of the DSA”.

• “X fails to meet its DSA obligations to provide researchers with access to the platform’s public data. For instance, X’s terms of service prohibit eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, including through scraping”.

The Commission also said “X now has 60 working days to inform the Commission of the specific measures it intends to take to bring to an end the infringement of Article 25 (1) DSA, related to the deceptive use of blue checkmarks”.

#DigitalServicesAct #OnlineSafety #EULaw #SocialMedia #DigitalLiteracy #Transparency #ProtectUsers #RuneLexAIRegulationExperts

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