On 5 December 2025 the European Commission fined X €120 million for breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The Commission said it is the first non-compliance decision adopted under the DSA, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, which sets obligations for online platforms operating in the EU.
What the Commission found
The first breach concerns the blue checkmark for verified accounts. The Commission found that anyone can pay to obtain verified status on X without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, which it considers a deceptive design practice prohibited by Article 25(1) of the DSA. The Commission noted that the DSA does not require platforms to verify users, but does prohibit them from falsely claiming that users have been verified.
The second breach relates to X's advertising repository, which the Commission found does not meet the DSA's transparency and accessibility requirements. It pointed to design features and access barriers such as excessive processing delays, and to missing information including the content and topic of advertisements and the legal entity paying for them. The third breach concerns researcher access to public data: X's terms of service prohibit eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, including by scraping, and its access processes impose unnecessary barriers.
The fine was calculated by reference to the nature of the infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users and their duration.
What happens next
X has 60 working days to tell the Commission how it will end the infringement relating to blue checkmarks, and 90 working days to submit an action plan addressing the advertising repository and researcher data access breaches under Articles 39 and 40(12). The European Board for Digital Services then has one month to give an opinion, after which the Commission has a further month to adopt a final decision and set an implementation period. Failure to comply may lead to periodic penalty payments.
The Commission's separate investigation of X, opened in December 2023, continues in relation to the dissemination of illegal content and the effectiveness of measures against information manipulation. Other large platforms will read the decision as an indication of how the Commission interprets the DSA's transparency duties.
