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<\/div>\nElon Musk’s social media platform X has been fined \u20ac120m (\u00a3105m) by the EU over its blue tick badges.<\/p>\n
The European Commission said by allowing people to pay for a blue verified check mark on their profile, the social media platform “deceives users” because the firm is not “meaningfully verifying” who is behind the account.<\/p>\n
“This deception exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors,” it said.<\/p>\n
The BBC has approached X for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
EU regulators said the platform was also failing to provide transparency around its adverts, and it was not giving researchers access to public data.<\/p>\n
“The fine issued today was calculated taking into account the nature of these infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration,” it said.<\/p>\n
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,” said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty.<\/p>\n
The decision means X must tell the Commission how it will bring the allegedly violating measures into compliance with EU laws, or face further, periodic fines.<\/p>\n
The action constitutes the Commission’s first decision on a platform’s “non-compliance” with its Digital Services Act (DSA) – one of two rulebooks online firms must follow in order to operate their services in the EU.<\/p>\n
The DSA sets out obligations for platforms around content, data and advertising, while the Digital Markets Act establishes how companies should operate in order to benefit consumers and competition.<\/p>\n
Such rules have come under increased scrutiny from US leaders, who warned against tougher regulation of tech firms by governments and regulators.<\/p>\n
US Vice President JD Vance lashed out at the EU amid rumours of its forthcoming fine on Thursday – claiming it was being punished “for not engaging in censorship”.<\/p>\n
“The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Published at Fri, 05 Dec 2025 12:00:39 +0000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elon Musk’s X fined \u20ac120m over ‘deceptive’ blue ticks Elon Musk’s social media platform X has been fined \u20ac120m (\u00a3105m) by the EU over its blue tick badges. The European Commission said by allowing people to pay for a blue verified check mark on their profile, the social media platform “deceives users” because the firm… Continue reading Elon Musk’s X fined \u20ac120m over ‘deceptive’ blue ticks<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/260web.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}