EU accepts X plan to address digital content violations

The European Union announced Wednesday that it had accepted a plan by Elon Musk’s X social media platform to correct digital content violations linked to a 120-million-euro, or $138-million, fine.

The European Commission imposed the penalty in December 2025 over breaches of transparency obligations, the design of X’s blue checkmark for supposedly verified accounts, and a failure to provide researchers with access to public data. The fine was the first issued under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

X proposed measures to improve researcher access, including access to advertising content, and to respond in a timely way. The platform has already changed the meaning of its blue checkmarks from verified users to premium users.

Thomas Regnier, the European Commission’s spokesman on digital issues, said the measures were an important step in the right direction. He said they would allow researchers, civil society and the public to get more transparency into X’s systems and their effect on users.

X has six months to carry out the measures. They will then be subject to an external and independent audit.

The agreement does not stop an appeal that X filed in February against the fine.

The source said the Digital Services Act has drawn strong criticism in the United States, including claims that it allows censorship. The US tech industry and the Trump administration have objected to European regulation of the sector. US President Donald Trump called the X fine censorship. A few weeks later, the US State Department announced sanctions on five people, including former EU commissioner Thierry Breton.

The European Commission has not fully completed its 2023 probe into X. It also opened an investigation at the start of the year into AI chatbot Grok over the generation of sexualised deepfake images of women and minors.