On Friday 5 December, the European Commission fined X €120m for breaching the Digital Services Act (DSA) - the first non‑compliance decision under the law. Brussels said the platform’s paid blue checkmarks mislead users, while ad transparency and researcher access also fell short.

Officials described X’s “verified” badges as a design that can be bought without meaningful identity checks, making it harder for people to judge whether an account is genuine and exposing users to impersonation and scams. The DSA prohibits this kind of deceptive design.

According to Euronews, the penalty reflects three buckets of harm: roughly €45m for the deceptive blue check system, €40m for restricting researcher access to public data, and €35m for an inadequate ads repository. That total sits well below the DSA’s 6% of global turnover ceiling.

X now has firm timetables. It must set out how it will change the blue check system within 60 working days, and submit plans to fix the ads repository and researcher access within 90 days. Missed deadlines risk periodic daily penalties of up to 5% of average daily global turnover and further fines up to 6% of annual global revenue.

The politics turned sharp within hours. FCC chair Brendan Carr called the move “Europe taxing Americans,” while US Vice‑President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Brussels of targeting US platforms; Musk boosted their posts on X. European officials said the case is about transparency, not speech.

For X, there’s a business pivot to manage. Verification became a subscription perk after the 2022 takeover, flipping a trust signal into a paid feature; regulators have now drawn a line under that approach. X is also part of Musk’s xAI group following a March 2025 transaction, adding corporate complexity to any redesign.

UK advertisers running EU campaigns on X should expect greater daylight on their activity. The Commission says an accessible, searchable ad library needs to show the ad’s content and topic and name the legal entity paying for it - information that researchers and civil society can interrogate at speed. Brand teams will want clean audit trails.

Research access is another change. The Commission criticised X for blocking or throttling ways to study public data, including via scraping, and for erecting unnecessary barriers to approved researchers. Expect tighter routes for academics and watchdogs to analyse reach, targeting and the spread of scams on the platform.

Why it matters in the UK: although the DSA doesn’t apply domestically, the enforcement direction rhymes with London. Ofcom’s Online Safety Act regime allows fines up to 10% of global turnover and is already moving on enforcement, while the CMA’s new digital markets powers can directly fine designated firms for consumer law breaches. Compliance costs are heading one way.

What to watch next: X can appeal, but it still has to file the near‑term fixes while broader DSA probes continue. In a parallel move the Commission accepted TikTok’s binding commitments on ad transparency, signalling what “good” could look like for repositories across platforms. We’d expect advertisers and agencies to adjust workflows quickly.