The European Commission fined Elon Musk's X social network 120 million euros

The European Commission has fined Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, for the first time after a two-year investigation, under its landmark digital services law. This is reported by Euronews.

At the center of the investigation is the blue marker, which was previously used to mark official accounts for free, but is now sold for 7 euros per month, which could mislead users about the authenticity of personal data.

The European Commission has announced that in the new X settings, the account with the marker may not represent a real user, but a bot. Therefore, it decided to impose a financial penalty for breaching the EU DSA.

Second, the European Commission found that X failed to fulfill the transparency obligation regarding advertising on social networks, blurring the line between advertising and content, which could lead to financial fraud for users.

The European Commission claims that users and authorities cannot access an updated register of advertisers on the site, which could also be problematic during election campaigns.

Musk's company could not explain why certain ads were targeted to certain users. The European Commission also criticized the X platform for not providing data on views and likes to researchers, even though it was an obligation under the Digital Services Act.