EU thumps X with $140 million fine over blue check 'deception'

BRUSSELS (CN) — The European Union fined Elon Musk’s X 120 million euros ($140 million) Friday for deceiving users with fake verification badges and blocking researchers, defying warnings from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who hours earlier accused Brussels of attacking American companies over “garbage.”

European regulators said X misled users with its paid “blue checkmark” system, buried information in its advertising database and shut out researchers trying to study risks like disinformation. The 120 million-euro penalty marks the first enforcement action under the Digital Services Act, a 2022 law that forces big platforms to police harmful content and open their operations to outside scrutiny.

Vance had fired a preemptive shot late Thursday. “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage,” he wrote on X. Musk responded with “Much appreciated” and amplified calls for Congress to let X sue the EU in U.S. courts for triple damages.

The clash landed a day after the Trump administration released a national security strategy blasting Europe for “regulatory suffocation” and lack of “civilizational self-confidence.” The document called for pushing back against “Europe’s current trajectory” and ditching what it labeled a failed regulatory approach.

The core problem? X lets anyone pay $8 a month for a blue checkmark, enabling scammers and bots across the platform. Before Musk’s takeover in 2022, the badge was reserved for authenticated accounts at no cost. Now anyone can purchase one, including bots, which Brussels says misleads users about account authenticity and enables scammers and impersonators.

The 120 million-euro fine breaks down to 45 million for the fake verification, 35 million for the broken ad database, and 40 million for blocking researchers. Officials said the blue checkmark penalty roughly equals what X makes from paid verification in the EU.

“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,” said Henna Virkkunen, the commission’s executive vice president overseeing tech policy.

Beyond the blue checkmark deception, X made its advertising database nearly impossible to search — blocking efforts to spot scam ads and election interference. Key details like who paid for ads often went missing. X also bans researchers from collecting public data on the platform, even through standard methods, cutting off studies into coordinated disinformation.

Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier pushed back hard at a news conference Friday on U.S. accusations that the law amounts to censorship. “Today’s decision has nothing to do with content moderation,” he said. The fine targets transparency rules, not what content appears on platforms. He rattled off the numbers: Instagram removed over 118 million posts in the EU this year, Facebook pulled over 413 million, X took down more than 616,000 — all company decisions, not government orders.

“We want platforms to enforce the terms and conditions and to make sure that our citizens can fight back against unjustified content moderation decisions taken by Big Tech,” Regnier said. Asked if 120 million euros would deter one of the world’s richest men, he called it proportionate: “One hundred twenty million euros is more money than simply complying with our legislation.”

Brussels calculated the fine based on how serious each violation was rather than as a percentage of X’s revenue, a departure from how most EU tech penalties work. The penalty came in lower than some analysts had expected and stays well under the law’s 6% cap on global turnover. Officials pointed to Musk personally sitting atop the corporate structure alongside X Holdings and X Corp.

While Brussels has hit tech giants with massive antitrust fines — including 2.95 billion euros against Alphabet’s Google in September — the DSA hadn’t produced a penalty despite taking effect for major platforms in August 2023. French President Emmanuel Macron blasted Brussels just last week for moving “way too slow,” accusing regulators of buckling under U.S. pressure.

The two-year timeline shows how hard it is to build a regulatory system from scratch. Brussels is supervising 25 major platforms while trying to build cases strong enough to survive court challenges from companies with unlimited legal budgets. Officials issued preliminary findings last July before Friday’s final decision.

TikTok avoided a similar fate by cooperating with Brussels. The commission accepted the company’s promises Friday to fix its own ad transparency problems, letting it dodge a fine. TikTok agreed to show full ad content, update within 24 hours, reveal targeting methods and improve search functions. Officials said they’ve now settled three DSA cases this way when companies cooperate.

But TikTok still faces heat despite its cooperation on advertising. Multiple investigations dating to February 2024 cover child safety, addictive features and researcher access. Brussels found in October thatTikTok violated the same researcher access rules that just cost X 120 million euros. A Dec. 2024 probe examines whether TikTok failed to protect Romania’s presidential election after intelligence reports flagged coordinated manipulation.

“Our objective is not a fine,” Regnier said. “If you engage constructively with the commission, we settle cases. If you do not, we take action.”

European regulators also opened an antitrust investigation into Meta on Thursday over accusations the company blocks rival AI chatbots from WhatsApp while favoring its own Meta AI assistant.

Two other investigations continue — one into how X handles terrorist content, another into Musk’s algorithm changes since buying Twitter. Brussels ordered X earlier this year to preserve all documents about its algorithm.

X has 60 days to fix the blue checkmark mess or face rolling penalties. For the ad database and researcher access, it has 90 days to submit plans showing how it’ll comply. Brussels will then set deadlines and can pile on more fines if X drags its feet.

Courthouse News correspondent Yuval Molina is based in Brussels, Belgium.