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Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has been fined €120m (£105m) by the EU after it found rule breaches had left users vulnerable to scams and manipulation.
The European Commission started investigating X under the Digital Services Act (DSA) two years ago and has now issued its first non-compliance decision against the site.
In a decision that could anger the US President Donald Trump the commission censured Elon Musk’s platform for three different breaches of DSA transparency requirements.
The Trump administration has previously criticised Brussels’ digital regulations, saying that they target US tech companies and had vowed to retaliate.
One of X’s breaches highlighted by the EU concerned the “deceptive design practices” of the platform’s blue checkmarks, which exposed users to scams and manipulation, regulators said.
Before Mr Musk acquired the site for $44bn (£33bn) in 2022, the checkmarks indicated the accounts of notable users with verified identities.
Under the tech billionaire’s changes, however, the badge could be bought by anyone willing to pay $8 (£6) a month.
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How Elon Musk’s X is boosting the British right.
The commission said, it was therefore “difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with”.
X also fell short of transparency requirements for its database of advertisements, regulators said.
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In the EU, platforms are required to provide a database of all the digital…
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