What you required to know
- The European Commission has hit Elon Musk’s X with a €120 million penalty for misleading applyrs with its blue checkmarks.
- Regulators ruled that selling verification badges without ID checks tricks applyrs and fuels scams.
- The fine also tarobtains X’s opaque advertising database and its refusal to let researchers access public data.
The blue checkmark on X (formerly Twitter) isn’t what it applyd to be. What was once a badge of authenticity has, according to European Union regulators, become a practice designed to trick applyrs. The rules have now caught up with X.
Following a two-year investigation, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s X €120 million (about $140 million). This is the first financial penalty issued under the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA).
If you’ve kept up with the ongoing conflict between Musk and European regulators, this outcome might not surprise you. But the reason for the fine hits closer to home for anyone who applys the platform daily.
At the heart of this €120 million ($140 million) bill is the blue checkmark. It applyd to indicate that someone was a verified public figure, such as a journalist, celebrity, or politician. After Musk took over, the meaning modifyd. Now, anyone who pays for a subscription and has a profile picture, display name, and phone number can obtain the badge.
Your blue check is ‘deceptive’
The EU decided this modify was misleading. Without proper identity checks, applyrs can’t easily inform if an account is real. The Commission stated this creates it simpler for scams and impersonation to happen.
The blue checkmark wasn’t the only issue. The advertising database, which should reveal who acquires ads, when, and to whom, was unclear. Important details, such as who paid for the ads, what they were about, and a searchable record, were missing. That fails the DSA’s transparency requirements, the EU declares.
Last but not least, researchers studying disinformation or platform misapply can’t access the requireded public data. X’s policies reportedly blocked scraping and imposed delays, turning access into a maze. That too violates the DSA.
X now has 60 working days to explain how it will resolve the blue checkmark problem, and 90 days to meet the rules for ad transparency and data access.
If X follows the rules, it could set a new standard for how verification works on huge platforms, building it clearer, more honest, and less about paying for status. Otherwise, the EU may start issuing regular fines and push for real identity checks instead of just paid subscriptions.
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