European Union: European Commission fined X EUR 120 million for breaching transparency obligations under Digital Services Act

On 5 December 2025, the European Commission fined X EUR 120 million for breaching transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The noncompliance decision concerns three areas, the deceptive use of the “blue checkmark”, insufficient transparency of its advertising repository, and failure to provide authorised researchers with access to public data. The Commission noted that X’s “blue checkmark” can be purchased without meaningful identity verification, creating a misleading appearance of authenticity and exposing users to impersonation risks. The platform’s ad repository lacks required information, such as ad content, topic, and the paying entity, and includes design barriers. X also restricts researchers’ access to public data through prohibitive terms of service and unnecessary procedural obstacles. The Commission noted that this is the Commission’s first DSA non-compliance decision. X must, within 60 working days, outline measures to address the deceptive design and, within 90 days, submit an action plan to remedy its process for its ad repository and researcher data access. Continued non-compliance may result in periodic penalty payments. The Commission’s broader investigation into X’s handling of illegal content and information manipulation remains ongoing.