The fine is for three specific transparency failures: misleading users when Elon\u00a0changed verification<\/a>\u00a0from actual verification to \u201cpay $8 for a checkmark,\u201d maintaining a broken ad repository, and refusing to share required data with researchers.<\/p>\n The European Union has announced a fine of $140 million against Elon Musk\u2019s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for several failures to comply with rules governing large digital platforms. A European Commission spokesperson said the fine against X\u2019s holding company was due to the<\/em>\u00a0platform\u2019s misleading use of a blue check mark<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0to identify verified users, a poorly functioning advertising repository, and a failure to provide effective data access for researchers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Again, let\u2019s repeat: it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the way X handles content moderation or what speech it allows on its platform. As\u00a0Daphne Keller explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n Don\u2019t let anyone \u2014 not even the United States<\/em>\u00a0Secretary of State<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 tell you that the European Commission\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0\u20ac120 million enforcement<\/em><\/a>\u00a0against Elon Musk\u2019s X under the Digital Service Act (DSA) is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this fine is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law. Many of these requirements resemble existing US laws or proposals that have garnered bipartisan support.<\/em><\/p>\n There are three charges against X, which all stem from a<\/em>\u00a0multi-year investigation<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that was launched in 2023. One is about verification \u2014 X\u2019s blue checkmarks on user accounts \u2014 and two are about transparency. These charges have nothing to do with what content is on X, or what user speech the platform should or should not allow. There is plenty of EU political disapproval about those things, for sure. But the EU didn\u2019t choose to pick a fight about them. Instead, it went after X for violating much more basic, straightforward provisions of the DSA. Those violations were flagrant enough that it would be weird if the EU hadn\u2019t issued a fine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Both Daphne and I have criticized attempts by EU officials to abuse the DSA in pursuit of censorship. I\u00a0directly called it out<\/a>\u00a0when former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton clearly went way over the line last year, a move that quickly led to\u00a0Breton losing his job<\/a>. I\u2019ve been highly critical of the DSA for years, so if this were actually an abuse of the law for censorship, I\u2019d be first in line to call it out and side with Elon (I\u2019ve done it<\/a>\u00a0in other circumstances as well).<\/p>\n But this is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0that. This has nothing to do with \u201ccontent moderation\u201d or \u201ccensorship\u201d in any way.<\/p>\n And yet, Elon Musk is running around pretending it is a free speech issue, and his once-again friends in the Trump administration are bolstering that false claim.<\/p>\n As Daphne pointed out, the EU\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0investigate certain aspects of X\u2019s content moderation, and that\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0lead to serious questions about censorship and free speech. But\u00a0they have not done so<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Honestly, this move is little different than the Trump FTC taking action against a Chinese company for violating COPPA.\u00a0Which it has done<\/a>. Did we see Chinese politicians lose their minds over that? Did we see the CEO of that company, Apitor Technology, call for dissolving the United States like Elon Musk is now calling for dissolving the EU? No. No, we did not.<\/p>\n But because the Elon Musks\/JD Vances\/Marco Rubios of the world can\u00a0only think in terms of memes and culture wars<\/a>, they know that if they just insist that this is about censorship, that the media will cover it that way, and the ignorant rabble on X will buy their version of the story.<\/p>\n All this is even more incredible because Elon Musk told the EU that\u00a0he was entirely on board with the DSA<\/a>\u00a0while he was in the process of buying Twitter. Yes, the law he\u2019s now claiming is censorship tyranny requiring the dissolution of an entire governmental body is the very same law he declared was \u201cexactly aligned\u201d with his vision for the platform.<\/p>\n At the time,\u00a0we called out<\/a>\u00a0how the EU was clearly playing Musk, who seemed to have no clue what he was actually endorsing. It was obvious he hadn\u2019t read or understood the DSA. But there he was, recording a video claiming perfect alignment with a regulatory framework he\u2019s now treating as an existential threat to free speech.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s pretty rich for him to whine about it now.<\/p>\n Of course, Musk isn\u2019t just misrepresenting the fine. He\u2019s responding with a series of escalating tantrums designed to feed his false censorship narrative. First, he called for abolishing the entire EU:<\/p>\n Then came the petty retaliation. First,\u00a0he canceled the EU Commission\u2019s X advertising account<\/a>. X claimed it was because they \u201cexploited\u201d X\u2019s ad platform by posting a link that appeared to be a video, but replies to that tweet suggested many, many people said that claimed \u201cexploit\u201d was not an exploit at all, but a tool that many others had used.<\/p>\n After that, Musk\u00a0started threatening to punish EU Commissioners directly<\/a>\u00a0for the fine. In doing so he incorrectly references the Streisand Effect:<\/p>\n As\u00a0the coiner<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cThe Streisand Effect,\u201d I\u2019d just like to point out that this is not what the Streisand Effect means at all.<\/p>\n Each move\u2014calling to dissolve the EU, canceling ads, threatening individuals\u2014is transparently designed to manufacture a free speech crisis where none exists. It\u2019s performance art for an audience that won\u2019t bother checking whether the fine is actually about censorship (it isn\u2019t).<\/p>\n And he\u2019ll likely keep escalating with the help of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n The DSA certainly has some issues, but this fine is not one of them. But that hasn\u2019t stopped Elon Musk and his crew of political supporters from pretending that this is some huge attack on American free speech. It\u2019s not. No more than the FTC\u2019s fine against Apitor was an attack on China-based speech.<\/p>\n But, of course, most of the media will continue to pretend this is about free speech. They will frame it that way and for years into the future we\u2019ll hear false stories\u2014that the media and tons of other people will simply accept as true\u2014that the EU fined X and Elon $140 million for not censoring people.<\/p>\n This is the template now. Violate fairly modest regulations, claim it\u2019s censorship, get your political allies to amplify the lie, use it to de-legitimize any attempt at platform accountability for actively misleading users. It\u2019s not about free speech. It never was. It\u2019s about securing freedom from accountability while wielding the power of both private platforms and state resources to crush anyone who tries to impose it.<\/p>\n So yeah, anytime you hear someone claim the EU fined Musk for not censoring people, call it out. Because the truth matters, even when powerful people would prefer you didn\u2019t notice they\u2019re lying.<\/p>\n Elon\u2019s Crying Censorship Over An EU Fine That Has Nothing To Do With Censorship<\/a><\/p>\n More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Politico\u2019s Union Journalists Win Key Ruling In Battle Against Lazy, Undercooked AI<\/a> The post Elon\u2019s Crying Censorship Over An EU Fine That Has Nothing To Do With Censorship<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elon Musk is now calling for the dissolution of the European Union because it fined him $140 million for violating a law he once said was \u201cexactly aligned\u201d with his vision for (what was then called) Twitter.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s doing it by lying about what the fine is actually for.<\/p>\n The EU hit X with\u00a0a $140 million fine<\/a>\u00a0last week for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA). But (despite what you may have heard) this isn\u2019t some censorship overreach by Brussels bureaucrats. The violations\u2014which have\u00a0been known for over a year<\/a>\u2014have nothing to do with content moderation. Zero. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying.<\/p>\n The fine is for three specific transparency failures: misleading users when Elon\u00a0changed verification<\/a>\u00a0from actual verification to \u201cpay $8 for a checkmark,\u201d maintaining a broken ad repository, and refusing to share required data with researchers.<\/p>\n The European Union has announced a fine of $140 million against Elon Musk\u2019s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, for several failures to comply with rules governing large digital platforms. A European Commission spokesperson said the fine against X\u2019s holding company was due to the<\/em>\u00a0platform\u2019s misleading use of a blue check mark<\/u><\/em><\/a>\u00a0to identify verified users, a poorly functioning advertising repository, and a failure to provide effective data access for researchers.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Again, let\u2019s repeat: it has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the way X handles content moderation or what speech it allows on its platform. As\u00a0Daphne Keller explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n Don\u2019t let anyone \u2014 not even the United States<\/em>\u00a0Secretary of State<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 tell you that the European Commission\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0\u20ac120 million enforcement<\/em><\/a>\u00a0against Elon Musk\u2019s X under the Digital Service Act (DSA) is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform. That would, indeed, be interesting. But this fine is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law. Many of these requirements resemble existing US laws or proposals that have garnered bipartisan support.<\/em><\/p>\n There are three charges against X, which all stem from a<\/em>\u00a0multi-year investigation<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that was launched in 2023. One is about verification \u2014 X\u2019s blue checkmarks on user accounts \u2014 and two are about transparency. These charges have nothing to do with what content is on X, or what user speech the platform should or should not allow. There is plenty of EU political disapproval about those things, for sure. But the EU didn\u2019t choose to pick a fight about them. Instead, it went after X for violating much more basic, straightforward provisions of the DSA. Those violations were flagrant enough that it would be weird if the EU hadn\u2019t issued a fine.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Both Daphne and I have criticized attempts by EU officials to abuse the DSA in pursuit of censorship. I\u00a0directly called it out<\/a>\u00a0when former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton clearly went way over the line last year, a move that quickly led to\u00a0Breton losing his job<\/a>. I\u2019ve been highly critical of the DSA for years, so if this were actually an abuse of the law for censorship, I\u2019d be first in line to call it out and side with Elon (I\u2019ve done it<\/a>\u00a0in other circumstances as well).<\/p>\n But this is\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0that. This has nothing to do with \u201ccontent moderation\u201d or \u201ccensorship\u201d in any way.<\/p>\n And yet, Elon Musk is running around pretending it is a free speech issue, and his once-again friends in the Trump administration are bolstering that false claim.<\/p>\n As Daphne pointed out, the EU\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0investigate certain aspects of X\u2019s content moderation, and that\u00a0could<\/em>\u00a0lead to serious questions about censorship and free speech. But\u00a0they have not done so<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Honestly, this move is little different than the Trump FTC taking action against a Chinese company for violating COPPA.\u00a0Which it has done<\/a>. Did we see Chinese politicians lose their minds over that? Did we see the CEO of that company, Apitor Technology, call for dissolving the United States like Elon Musk is now calling for dissolving the EU? No. No, we did not.<\/p>\n But because the Elon Musks\/JD Vances\/Marco Rubios of the world can\u00a0only think in terms of memes and culture wars<\/a>, they know that if they just insist that this is about censorship, that the media will cover it that way, and the ignorant rabble on X will buy their version of the story.<\/p>\n All this is even more incredible because Elon Musk told the EU that\u00a0he was entirely on board with the DSA<\/a>\u00a0while he was in the process of buying Twitter. Yes, the law he\u2019s now claiming is censorship tyranny requiring the dissolution of an entire governmental body is the very same law he declared was \u201cexactly aligned\u201d with his vision for the platform.<\/p>\n At the time,\u00a0we called out<\/a>\u00a0how the EU was clearly playing Musk, who seemed to have no clue what he was actually endorsing. It was obvious he hadn\u2019t read or understood the DSA. But there he was, recording a video claiming perfect alignment with a regulatory framework he\u2019s now treating as an existential threat to free speech.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s pretty rich for him to whine about it now.<\/p>\n Of course, Musk isn\u2019t just misrepresenting the fine. He\u2019s responding with a series of escalating tantrums designed to feed his false censorship narrative. First, he called for abolishing the entire EU:<\/p>\n Then came the petty retaliation. First,\u00a0he canceled the EU Commission\u2019s X advertising account<\/a>. X claimed it was because they \u201cexploited\u201d X\u2019s ad platform by posting a link that appeared to be a video, but replies to that tweet suggested many, many people said that claimed \u201cexploit\u201d was not an exploit at all, but a tool that many others had used.<\/p>\n After that, Musk\u00a0started threatening to punish EU Commissioners directly<\/a>\u00a0for the fine. In doing so he incorrectly references the Streisand Effect:<\/p>\n As\u00a0the coiner<\/a>\u00a0of \u201cThe Streisand Effect,\u201d I\u2019d just like to point out that this is not what the Streisand Effect means at all.<\/p>\n Each move\u2014calling to dissolve the EU, canceling ads, threatening individuals\u2014is transparently designed to manufacture a free speech crisis where none exists. It\u2019s performance art for an audience that won\u2019t bother checking whether the fine is actually about censorship (it isn\u2019t).<\/p>\n And he\u2019ll likely keep escalating with the help of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n The DSA certainly has some issues, but this fine is not one of them. But that hasn\u2019t stopped Elon Musk and his crew of political supporters from pretending that this is some huge attack on American free speech. It\u2019s not. No more than the FTC\u2019s fine against Apitor was an attack on China-based speech.<\/p>\n But, of course, most of the media will continue to pretend this is about free speech. They will frame it that way and for years into the future we\u2019ll hear false stories\u2014that the media and tons of other people will simply accept as true\u2014that the EU fined X and Elon $140 million for not censoring people.<\/p>\n This is the template now. Violate fairly modest regulations, claim it\u2019s censorship, get your political allies to amplify the lie, use it to de-legitimize any attempt at platform accountability for actively misleading users. It\u2019s not about free speech. It never was. It\u2019s about securing freedom from accountability while wielding the power of both private platforms and state resources to crush anyone who tries to impose it.<\/p>\n So yeah, anytime you hear someone claim the EU fined Musk for not censoring people, call it out. Because the truth matters, even when powerful people would prefer you didn\u2019t notice they\u2019re lying.<\/p>\n Elon\u2019s Crying Censorship Over An EU Fine That Has Nothing To Do With Censorship<\/a><\/p>\n More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Politico\u2019s Union Journalists Win Key Ruling In Battle Against Lazy, Undercooked AI<\/a> The post Elon\u2019s Crying Censorship Over An EU Fine That Has Nothing To Do With Censorship<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elon Musk is now calling for the dissolution of the European Union because it fined him $140 million for violating a law he once said was \u201cexactly aligned\u201d with his vision for (what was then called) Twitter. And he\u2019s doing it by lying about what the fine is actually for. The EU hit X with\u00a0a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":138892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/6a4433e9-9ef9-49e3-8726-e71c16eda6a3-RackMultipart20251208-182-h18qbx-yP5cts.png?fit=536%2C306&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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ChatGPT Is Pitching In To Help Federal Officers Misrepresent Confrontations With Protesters<\/a>
Our Corrupt Congress Just Quietly Killed Military Right To Repair Reforms<\/a>
This Is What You\u2019re Funding When You Support Techdirt<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n
ChatGPT Is Pitching In To Help Federal Officers Misrepresent Confrontations With Protesters<\/a>
Our Corrupt Congress Just Quietly Killed Military Right To Repair Reforms<\/a>
This Is What You\u2019re Funding When You Support Techdirt<\/a><\/p>\n