U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and several other senior U.S. officials have criticized the internet policies of the European Union (EU), likening them to censorship, after the governing bloc last week levied Elon Musk’s social media platform X with a $140 million fine for breaching its online content rules.
On Dec. 5, EU tech regulators fined X 120 million euros (about $140 million) following a two-year investigation under the Digital Services Act, concluding that the social platform had breached multiple transparency obligations, including 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.”
The EU accused X of converting its verified badges into a paid feature without sufficient identity checks, arguing that this deceived users into believing the accounts were authentic and exposed them to fraud, manipulation, and impersonation.
This meant the platform had failed to meet the Digital Services Act’s accessibility and detail standards, leaving out key information that prevented efforts to track coordinated disinformation, illicit activities, and election interference, according to the EU.
Even before the EU’s fine was announced, U.S. Vice President JD Vance suggested it amounted to punishing X for “not engaging in censorship.”
Hellbound and Down 