Europe hits online platform X with fines

The European Union has once again underlined its willingness to stand up to big technology companies after its executive arm, the European Commission, fined Elon Musk's social media platform X 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the bloc's digital regulations, known as the Digital Services Act.

The 27-member bloc has had frequent run-ins with several of the United States-based technology companies that dominate the digital landscape, over issues including market share and monopolies, but this particular case relates to noncompliance with rules on transparency about harmful or illegal content.

The areas where the EU found shortcomings include excessive delays in providing information about advert placers, exposing X users to potentially misleading or false information, the placing of unnecessary barriers in the way of accessing public data, and blue tick accounts.

Under the company's former name of Twitter, a blue tick was a badge of verification of the account owner, and was particularly used by trusted or authoritative names and organizations.

Since the company was bought and rebranded by Musk in 2022, blue ticks have been available to anyone who pays, with no real effort made to verify the account holder, opening users up to the danger of misleading information.

A year ago, the European Federation of Journalists left X, saying the site "no longer serves the public interest at all, but the particular ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies", adding that it had become "the preferred vector for conspiracy theories, racism, far-right ideas and misogynistic rhetoric".

Musk, who was born in South Africa and became a United States citizen in 2002, has previously used his own blue tick account to speak in support of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party, pay legal costs for other far-right activists, post statements such as "civil war in Britain is inevitable, just a question of when", and reshare images combining the EU flag with that of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party.

He was a close associate of US President Donald Trump, and several of Trump's inner circle joined him in his criticism of the commission's actions. Even before the ruling had been announced, US Vice-President JD Vance said X was being fined "for not engaging in censorship … The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage".

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio likened the fine to an attack by foreign government on the American people.

"The days of censoring Americans online are over," he added.

But commission spokesman Thomas Regnier denied there was anything personal about the ruling, saying it was "not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdictions based on their color or their country of origin, absolutely not. This is based on a process, democratic process".