Overview
- European Commission spokesperson Toma Renière announced the penalty and stressed it is unrelated to censorship or X’s moderation decisions.
- Regulators cited a paid blue-check system that can mislead users, opaque advertising policies, and failures to provide required data to European researchers.
- The DSA, in force since 2023, empowers the EU to demand transparency on algorithms and data access and to levy fines up to 6% of global turnover.
- U.S. politicians including Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance condemned the move, and Elon Musk amplified criticism by sharing posts attacking the decision.
- Russian figures weighed in as RDIF head Kirill Dmitriev accused Brussels of seeking censorship and Telegram’s Pavel Durov argued the EU sets unworkable IT rules to punish dissenting platforms.