The European Commission (EC) has issued a fine of €120 million (USD 140 million / INR 1,257 crore) to X social media for breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The EU accuses X of misleading users with the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts,’ without the company doing any sort of verification, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.
The EU’s DSA is meant to establish a comprehensive set of rules for digital services, particularly for online platforms and search engines. It aims to create a safer, more predictable, and trustworthy online environment across the EU’s single market.
EU’s accusations against the X platform
After initiating the investigation against X in 2024, the EU has come up with this fine. X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users, exposing its users to impersonation fraud and scams.
On X, anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified’ status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with, says the commission.
Further, the commission accuses X of its advertisement repository failing to meet transparency requirements and lacking critical information, such as the content and topic of the advertisement, as well as the legal entity paying for it. It also cites excessive delays in processing ad repository access requests and not meeting the accessibility requirements of the DSA.
The third accusation is that X prohibits independent access to its public data, including scraping by eligible researchers, and places unnecessary barriers. This undermines research into several systemic risks.
Next Steps
X now has 60 working days to inform the Commission of the specific measures it intends to take to end the infringement related to the blue checkmark and 90 working days to provide an action plan relating to the ad repository and access to public data for researchers.
The Board of the DSA Act will have one month from the receipt of X’s action plan to give its opinion. After that, the Commission will have another month to give its final decision and set a reasonable implementation period.