EU fines X €120 million under Digital Services Act

The European Commission today issued a fine of €120 million to X for breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The breaches include the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark’, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.

X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users. This violates the DSA obligation for online platforms to prohibit deceptive design practices on their services.

X’s advertisement repository fails to meet the transparency and accessibility requirements of the DSA. Accessible and searchable ad repositories are critical for researchers and civil society to detect scams, hybrid threat campaigns, coordinated information operations and fake advertisements.

X incorporates design features and access barriers, such as excessive delays in processing, which undermine the purpose of ad repositories. X’s ads repository also lacks critical information, such as the content and topic of the advertisement, as well as the legal entity paying for it. This hinders researchers and the public to independently scrutinise any potential risks in online advertising.

The fine issued today was calculated taking into account the nature of these infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration.

X now has 60 working days to inform the Commission of the specific measures it intends to take to bring to an end the infringement of Article 25 (1) DSA, related to the deceptive use of blue checkmarks.

  Story by WAM  – Belgium