This Thursday, December 5th, the European Commission fined the social network X 120 million euros for violating community law with a misleading check mark, lack of transparency in advertising and difficulty in accessing data for researchers.
“The Commission adopted a non-compliance decision against
At stake is an investigation launched in December 2023 to determine whether
Such violations are worth a fine of 120 million euros: respectively, 45 million, 35 million and 40 million euros.
The community executive justifies such amounts with the nature of these infringements, their seriousness in terms of affected EU users and their duration.
This is the first community fine under the new digital services law, in force for around a year and a half.
The investigation against X concerned the dissemination of illegal content and the effectiveness of the measures taken to combat the manipulation of information, and this process will continue.
For now, Brussels says it has concluded that the blue check mark “misleads users” and that “X’s ad repository does not meet the transparency and accessibility requirements” that are essential to detect hybrid threats, disinformation and false ads.
At the same time, according to the institution, there are “unnecessary barriers” for researchers, “effectively harming research into various systemic risks in the European Union”.
In August 2024, the EU became the first jurisdiction in the world with rules for digital platforms (especially large ones), which are now obliged to remove illegal and harmful content, under the new Digital Services Law.
The law was created to protect the fundamental rights of online users in the EU and became unprecedented legislation for the digital space that holds platforms responsible for harmful content, including disinformation and inappropriate content.
Technological companies that do not comply may be subject to fines of up to 6% of the companies’ global annual turnover.
Also today, under the same legislation, the European Commission announced that it had accepted TikTok’s commitment to provide advertising repositories that ensure full transparency about ads on its platform, after having accused the Chinese social platform of non-compliance.
At a press conference in Brussels, the spokesperson for the community executive for the area of Technological Sovereignty, Thomas Regnier, pointed out that Brussels’ objective “is not to impose a fine”.
“Se [as plataformas] work constructively with the Commission, we will reach an agreement. Otherwise, we will take action”, he added, downplaying the North American challenge to such a fine.