Overview
- EU regulators found three breaches of the Digital Services Act: deceptive blue-check verification, an inadequate advertising repository, and blocked access to public data for researchers.
- Officials itemized the penalty as €45 million for the verification issue, €35 million for ad-transparency failures, and €40 million for restricting researcher access.
- X has 60 working days to explain how it will fix the blue-check system and 90 working days to submit an action plan for ads transparency and researcher data access, with possible periodic penalties for non-compliance.
- The broader EU probe into X’s handling of illegal content and information manipulation remains open, separate from Friday’s transparency decision.
- Senior U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, criticized the move, while the Commission stressed the case concerns transparency; TikTok avoided a fine the same day by agreeing to binding ad-transparency commitments.