The European Commission (EC) has today reached a decision on the investigation into X, which began in 2024. The EC has fined the social network €120 million (about $140 million), finding that its blue checkmark was misleading because it suggested a user had it verified, but anyone could pay to achieve this status “without meaningful verification from the company about who is behind the account”.

This violates the obligation for online platforms to “prohibit deceptive design practices on their services”, under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

According to the EC’s press release, the fine also covers X’s advertising stock failing to meet “the transparency and accessibility requirements of the DSA”. It further states that “accessible and searchable advertising repositories are important for researchers and civil society to detect scams, hybrid threat campaigns, coordinated information operations, and fake advertising”.

X is said to contain “design features and access barriers, such as excessive delays in processing, that undermine the purpose of the ad repository”. The repository also lacks important information such as the content and subject of the advertisement as well as the legal entity that paid for it.

Finally, X is also under fire for failing to provide researchers access to its public data, which is another requirement of the DSA. X’s terms of service prevent eligible researchers from freely accessing its public data, including scraping. X’s procedures “impose unnecessary barriers to researchers’ access to public data, effectively putting research in the EU at risk,” the EC says.

X has 60 working days to inform the EC about “specific measures” it will take to end DSA violations related to the blue checkmark, and 90 days for ad repositories and researchers to access the public data. The EC’s Board of Digital Services will have one month from receipt of