US Officials Condemn EU $140M Fine on X Over Blue Checkmark
The gloves are off in the escalating tech war between Silicon Valley and Brussels. This week, the EU Commission landed a €120 million ($140 million) knockout punch on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). The crime? Selling blue checkmarks. Brussels isn’t buying Musk’s vision, branding the move a calculated con job.
X, formerly Twitter, just felt the sting of the EU’s newly sharpened Digital Services Act (DSA) claws, marking the first significant enforcement under the groundbreaking legislation. The DSA aims to rein in Big Tech, demanding accountability for online content and user protection. At issue? X’s blue badge verification system. Regulators contend that by handing out badges based on payment,notidentity verification, X is essentially selling credibility and peddling in inauthenticity.
US officials say the $140M X fine is overreach
The Commission argues that a lack of verification is a Trojan Horse, lulling users into a false sense of security. That coveted blue check, meant to signal authenticity, instead becomes a beacon for malicious actors, alleges the EU. Regulators warn that this verification void throws open the gates to scams, impersonation, and manipulation on a grand scale. While the Digital Services Act (DSA) doesn’t mandate verification, it slams the door on platforms peddling verification falsehoods.
X’s multi-million dollar fine stems from more than just ignored content moderation rules. The platform is also accused of shrouding its advertising practices in secrecy and stonewalling researchers seeking access to public data, core tenets of the DSA. One regulator put it bluntly: X is "undermining users’ rights and evading accountability" by deliberately obscuring information and cheapening its blue badge verification into a deceptive marketing gimmick.
US Vice President and FCC Chair Slams EU’s “Attack on Free Speech”
The EU’s hammer fell, and Washington roared. The penalty levied against the social media platform ignited a firestorm of outrage among US officials, who saw it as a direct assault on American innovation. FCC Chair Brendan Carr, taking to X with the speed of a tweet, blasted the European Commission, accusing them of targeting the company solely for its status as a "successful US tech company." He framed the fine as regulatory overreach, a thinly veiled attempt to bleed American coffers dry, claiming Europe was "taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by its own suffocating regulations."
Vice-President JD Vance sees it differently. He previously characterized the fine as a consequence of "refusing to censor." This transatlantic tension isn’t just about money; it’s a philosophical showdown: Brussels’s push for preemptive digital policing versus Washington’s laissez-faire, free-market ideals.
Now, the heat is on X. The question is: will they reveal their roadmap for DSA compliance? Failure to act on these violations could trigger a cascade of escalating penalties, transforming this initial fine into a prolonged struggle defining the very future of digital content regulation. And lurking in the wings, the US government could become a decisive player in this high-stakes drama.
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