EU regulators hit Elon Musk’s X with 120 million euro fine for breaching bloc’s social media law

European Union regulators on Friday fined Elon Musk’s social media platform X 120 million euros (USD 140 million) for failing to comply with the bloc’s digital regulations.

The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act.

Also known as the DSA, it is a sweeping rulebook that requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

The Commission said it was punishing X, previously known as Twitter, because of three different breaches of the DSA’s transparency requirements. The decision could rile President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital regulations from Brussels and vowed to retaliate if American tech companies are penalised.

Regulators said X’s blue checkmarks broke the rules because of their “deceptive design” that could expose users to scams and manipulation.

X also fell short of the requirements for its ad database and giving access to researchers’ access to public data.