EU issues €120 million fine to Elon Musk’s X under rules to tackle disinformation

The European Commission on Friday issued a €120 million ($139 million) fine to Elon Musk’s social media platform X for breaking EU laws that require such services to be transparent with users and external researchers.

The specific laws, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), are intended to provide the European Union with a mechanism to tackle online disinformation and influence operations. The largest social media platforms must safeguard their users from manipulation or face fines of up to 6% of their global turnover.

X, which is privately owned by Musk, does not have a duty to publicly declare its global turnover to shareholders. Musk’s net worth is currently estimated to be around $490 billion, making the fine equivalent to about 0.0245% of his wealth.

The fine against X is the first issued under the DSA. It is expected to have geopolitical consequences, with the U.S. administration repeatedly complaining that the EU’s regulations are effectively a method to tax American companies and introduce non-tariff barriers to trade. The commission has the power, in extreme, of requesting that access to X is restricted across the EU.

Shortly after setting out the rules of the DSA last year, the commission informed X that it believed the company broke those rules by misleading users over its paid-for “verified mark” scheme — known as the “blue checkmark” — and by failing to meet transparency requirements over political advertisements and researchers’ access to public data.

In its announcement on Friday, the commission confirmed those findings, arguing “anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified' status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account.”

Researcher access

The DSA also requires platforms to maintain a publicly available, searchable repository of political advertisements “updated in as close as possible to real-time” that will offer third parties the ability to identify who had been targeted by what particular content.

This, the commission said, is “critical for researchers and civil society to detect scams, hybrid threat campaigns, coordinated information operations and fake advertisements.”

However the advertisement repository used by X “incorporates design features and access barriers, such as excessive delays in processing, which undermine the purpose of ad repositories” according to the commission, which said the ads that are recorded there are kept without critical information such as the content and topic of the ad, as well as the legal entity who paid for it.

Under the DSA, platforms also have an obligation to provide researchers with access to their public data. X’s terms of service currently “prohibit eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, including through scraping,” complained the commission.

“Moreover, X's processes for researchers' access to public data impose unnecessary barriers, effectively undermining research into several systemic risks in the European Union,” it added.

A long-brewing fight

X’s own Global Government Affairs team has not responded to the fine as of publication. It previously stated: “If the reports that the European Commission is considering enforcement actions against X are accurate, it represents an unprecedented act of political censorship and an attack on free speech. X has gone above and beyond to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act, and we will use every option at our disposal to defend our business, keep our users safe, and protect freedom of speech in Europe.”

Elon Musk has also claimed the regulations are an attempt to coerce the company into censoring speech. Although the multibillionaire has since had a falling-out with President Donal Trump, before the 2024 election now-Vice President JD Vance suggested that the European Union’s treatment of Musk would influence U.S. policy towards NATO.

An evening before the fine was issued, Vance used X to state: “Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.”

Anne-Sophie Dhiver, the deputy head of the French government agency Viginum, which investigates online disinformation campaigns, previously told Recorded Future News: “As a citizen, Elon Musk can completely comment and communicate on the platform, it is his right.”

“The question is more about the potential manipulation of the algorithm, to amplify or reduce the visibility of some content, which would be contrary to the DSA, as long as the platforms are not mitigating the systematic risks that could arise from the use of their services,” she said.

British officials have feared provoking similar “unproductive public arguments” with Vance when it comes to the issue of British laws impacting U.S.-based technology companies, particularly in the wake of Vance chastising European countries for what he deemed to be their regulators’ lack of commitment to free speech on U.S.-based platforms.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned domestic technology companies in August that complying with EU and U.K. regulations could amount to “censoring Americans to comply with a foreign power’s laws” that may be considered a violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act — the legislation enforced by the FTC — which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices in commerce.

Aside from the process on X as a platform, Musk’s personal account has been criticized for making comments that many have interpreted as supportive of neo-Nazi and far-right individuals, institutions and ideologies — a criminal offense in many European countries where the Nazis were once in power.