Elon Musk’s X fined $140 million by European Commission

Elon Musk’s

The violations included “the deceptive design of the ‘blue check mark’, the lack of transparency of the ad repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers,” the commission said in a statement on Friday.

The decision follows a two-year investigation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was passed in 2022 to regulate online platforms. Failure to comply with the decision could lead to fines, the commission said.

“Deceiving users with blue flags, hiding information in advertisements and excluding researchers has no place online in the EU,” said Henna Virkkunen, vice president for technology sovereignty, security and democracy.

“With DSA’s initial non-compliance decision, we hold X accountable for undermining users’ rights and evading liability.”

X did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. One to answer “Bulls—,” Musk wrote in response to the European Commission’s post about X.

Musk’s social network now has 60 days to tell the Commission how it plans to fix problems with “deceptive” blue checkmarks and 90 days to submit a plan to fix problems with its ad store and provide access to public data for researchers.

“Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments,” the commission said. expression.

The sentence came a day after the commission announced it would investigate the situation. Meta It violated antitrust rules regarding the new policy on allowing AI providers access to WhatsApp.

In recent months, the United States has been pressuring Europe to ease or abandon its rules on big tech companies, including the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and other AI regulations under consideration.