In its first DSA penalty, EU fines X €120M for ‘deceptive’ blue check verification system

Summary

The European Commission has imposed its first fine under Europe’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), and it’s against Elon Musk’s X. The EC is taking issue with the fact that X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, has been allowing anyone to buy a “blue checkmark,” the platform’s long-standing symbol, which used to indicate that a user has been verified to be who they are claiming to be. Calling the design of the blue checkmark system “deceptive,” the European Union’s executive arm on Friday imposed a fine of €120 million (about $140 million) on X, saying the company had breached its transparency obligations under the DSA. The Commission said other breaches of the law include a lack of transparency of X’s advertising repository and failure to provide researchers access to public data. Before Musk bought the company, Twitter used to issue blue checks to journalists, celebrities, politicians, and public figures on the platform after it had verified their identity. Musk did away with that policy in 2023, and all the “verified” blue check today indicates is that a user subscribes to X Premium, and that they meet certain eligibility criteria, like having a profile photo, a display name, and having linked their account to a phone number. “X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users,” the Commission wrote in a statement. “This violates the DSA obligation for online platforms to prohibit deceptive design practices on their services. On X, anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified’ status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with.” The Commission added that such a system exposes users to scams, impersonation fraud and manipulation. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 The regulator also found that X’s advertisement repository doesn’t comply with DSA requirements for transparency and accessibility, say...