Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has been fined €120m (£105m) after it was found in breach of new EU digital laws, in a high-stakes ruling likely to put the European Commission on a collision course with the US billionaire and potentially Donald Trump.
The breaches, under consideration for two years, included what the EU said was a “deceptive” blue tick verification badge given to users and the lack of transparency of its advertising.
The commission rules require tech companies to provide a public list of advertisers to ensure the company’s structures guard against illegal scams, fake advertisements and coordinated campaigns in the context of political elections.
In a third breach, the EU also concluded that X had failed to provide the required access to public data available to researchers, who typically keep tabs on contentious issues such as political content.
The historic ruling by the European Commission is a part closure of an investigation that started two years ago.
The commission said on Friday that it had found X in breach of transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA), in the first ruling against the platform since the laws regulating the content of social media and large tech platforms came into force in 2023.
In December 2023 the commission opened formal proceedings to assess whether X may have breached the DSA in areas linked to the dissemination of illegal content and the effectiveness of the measures taken to combat information manipulation, for which the investigation continues.
Under the DSA, X can be fined up to 6% of its worldwide revenue, which was estimated to be between $2.5bn and $2.7bn (£1.9bn and £2bn) in 2024.
Three other investigations remain, two of which relate to the content and the algorithms promoting content that changed after Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 and rebranded it X.
The commission continues to investigate whether there have been breaches of laws prohibiting incitement to violence or terrorism.
It is also looking into the mechanism for users to flag and report what they believe is illegal content.
Senior officials said the fine broke down into three sections: €45m for introducing a “verification” blue tick that users could buy, leaving others unable to determine the authenticity of account holders.
Before Musk took over Twitter, blue ticks were only awarded to verifiable account holders, including politicians, celebrities, public bodies and verified journalists in mainstream media and established new media, such as bloggers and YouTubers. After the takeover, users who subscribed to X Premium were then eligible for blue tick status.
Henna Virkkunen, who is the executive vice-president at the European Commission responsible for tech regulation, said: “With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU.”
The platform was also hit with a fine of €35m for breaches of ad regulations and €40m for data access breaches in relation to research.
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The ruling risks enraging Trump’s administration. Last week the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said the EU must consider its tech regulations in order to get 50% tariffs on steel reduced.
His threats were branded “blackmail” by the Spanish commissioner, Teresa Ribera.
Senior EU officials said the ruling was independent of any pleadings by the US delegation in Brussels last week to meet trade ministers. They said the EU retained its “sovereign right” to regulate US tech companies with 25 companies including non-US companies such as TikTok coming under the DSA.
Musk – who is on a path to become the world’s first trillionaire – has 90 days to come up with an “action plan” to respond to the fine but ultimately he is also free to appeal against any EU ruling, as others, such as Apple, have done in the past, taking their case to the European court of justice.
At the same time the EU has announced that it has, by contrast, secured commitments from TikTok to provide advertising repositories to address the commission concerns raised in May this year about transparency.
The DSA requires platforms to maintain an accessible and searchable repository of the ads running on their services to allow researchers and representatives of civil society “to detect scams, advertisements for illegal or age-inappropriate”.
Senior officials said the new phenomenon of fake political adverts or ads with fake celebrities cannot be studied unless the social media companies stick to the rules.
X has been approached for comment. The EU said the company had been informed of the decision.
