The European Commission has completed a preliminary investigation into Elon Musk’s social network X (Twitter) and will soon decide on a multi-million euro fine.
The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported this, citing three unnamed EU officials.
Several investigations into the platform have been ongoing in the EU since December 2023 under the Digital Services Act (DSA). This act subjects internet companies to strict regulation.
The European Commission’s allegations include failure to comply with advertising transparency rules, failure to provide investigators with sufficient access to data, and misleading users by awarding the so-called “blue check mark.”.
A decision could result in a fine of up to six percent of X’s annual global turnover. For X, this could mean a fine of hundreds of millions of euros.
Under the DSA rules, X, as a “very large platform,” has special obligations to take action against hate speech and disinformation, as well as to curb the risk of addiction among young people.
The platform’s owner, Elon Musk, is one of US President Donald Trump’s most important advisers. Trump has been a vocal critic of EU sanctions against tech companies. Just this Thursday, he gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he condemned the European Commission’s fines against tech companies.
“In my view, it’s a kind of tax,” Trump said of the potential fines. It was clear that the fines would not go unanswered.
Musk himself considers the EU regulation an infringement on freedom of expression and calls the European Commission a “censorship body.” Musk recently received support from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg asked Trump not to allow the EU to fine US tech companies.
Last November, the conglomerate Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other social networks and communication platforms, was fined 797 million euros for violating EU antitrust rules by setting unfair terms for advertising service providers.
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