On Friday, the European Commission fined Elon Musk's X platform 120 million euros, the first ever fine imposed under the bloc's flagship content moderation law, UNN reports, citing Politico.
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As the publication notes, the fine is likely to heighten tensions with the US over the bloc's digital rules and drew early criticism from US Vice President JD Vance, who slammed the plans as a fine for "lack of censorship."
While the size of the fine is moderate compared to previous tech fines imposed by Brussels, the US has repeatedly pushed the EU to soften its tech rules in trade negotiations.
X was found to have violated transparency obligations it holds as a very large online platform under the EU's Digital Services Act. The Commission said that X's blue checkmark design is "deceptive" after it was changed from user verification to a paid feature.
The EU executive also said that X's ad library lacks transparency and that it does not provide public data access to researchers, as required by law.
This fine marks the completion of only one part of the EU's investigation into X, which began almost two years ago as the first under the Digital Services Act (DSA). Other important parts, such as X's efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and combat information manipulation, are still ongoing.
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European Commission Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen compared the EU's decision on X to a separate decision on TikTok, which was also published on Friday. The investigation into TikTok's ad library was closed without a fine, as the company offered to redesign its service.
"We are not here to impose the highest fines, we are here to ensure compliance with our digital law. If you follow our rules, you will not get a fine," Virkkunen told reporters at a briefing on Friday morning.
Under the DSA, companies can be fined up to 6 percent of their global annual turnover. While X's global revenues are estimated to be in the low single-digit billions, a number of Musk's companies have much higher revenues.
Virkkunen said they assessed the size of the fine as "proportionate" and said it was calculated taking into account "the nature of these infringements, their severity in terms of affected EU users and their duration."
Asked to explain how the EU calculated the amount, the senior Commission official reiterated the idea of proportionality and said it could not be "reduced to a simple economic formula."
Brussels is under increasing pressure from EU leaders, European Parliament lawmakers and digital rights groups to conclude the investigation into X to show that it is protecting its citizens online.
US officials have repeatedly criticized the DSA, calling it censorship, and threatened retaliatory trade tariffs. On Thursday evening, Vance again stated that the EU should not attack American companies.
"Rumor has it that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should support free speech, not attack American companies over garbage," Vance wrote on X. "Much appreciated," Musk replied.
When Virkkunen was asked about Vance's remarks, she told reporters: "The Customer Service Agreement (DSA) is not about censorship, this decision is about X's transparency."
"On this issue, we have agreed to disagree on how some people in the US view our legislation. It's not about censorship, and we have repeated this several times from this podium, so we really agree to disagree on how it is perceived," Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho said at a daily press briefing.
TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino told POLITICO: "We take our obligations under EU law seriously and reiterate our call for a level playing field. We expect these DSA standards to be applied equally and consistently across all platforms."