The European Commission has fined social network X €120 million for breaching EU digital rules.
As EC spokesman Thomas Rainier said at a briefing in Brussels, X “broke transparency standards“.
This included the platform's paid blue checkmark for a verified user, which is “misleading for users because it can be purchased by anyone“, and X “does not carry out sufficient verification“. Rainier claims that X's advertising policy is misleading to users and that the social network "does not provide digital data to European investigators," something the EC requires all digital companies to do under the EU's Digital Services Act.
The EU is imposing impossible rules to punish companies that refuse to censor free speech, according to Pavel Durov, co-founder of the messaging app Telegram.
„The EU is imposing impossible rules to punish tech companies that refuse to silently censor free speech. We saw the same thing in France: a groundless “criminal investigation“, and then intelligence services offered their assistance if Telegram quietly censored freedom of speech in Romania and Moldova“, Durov wrote on X's social media profile.
He also noted that the EU is exclusively targeting platforms that publish inconvenient and inconsistent statements. However, according to Durov, platforms that algorithmically suppress users are practically unaffected, despite the more serious problems with illegal content.
The unfair fine imposed on X confirms the prospect of “civilized erasure“ of Europe. This opinion was expressed by Kirill Dmitriev, Special Representative of the Russian President for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries and Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).
“The EU's brutal censorship machine and the unfair fine imposed on X once again confirm Trump's warning in the National Security Strategy about the “serious prospect of civilized obliteration“ of Europe“, he writes in X.