The European Commission slaps Elon Musk's X with a €120 million fine – the first ever under the Digital Services Act

Also open thread

The seat of the European Commission in Brussels is a curious blend of parking garage and toilet.

This one is old news by now, but all blogs are chronicles, and this fine definitely deserves an entry here.

Last year, Elon Musk tweeted that the European Commission had offered his online platform X “an illegal secret deal.” If he agreed to censor content, the Commission would not fine his platform. He said that X had rejected the offer, while other platforms had accepted it.

The Commission announced on Friday that they were imposing a €120 million fine on X – the first such fine ever imposed under their labyrinthine Digital Services Act. Doubtless nervous about the American reaction, Thomas Regnier, “Spokesperson for Tech Sovereignty, Defence, Space and Research” (lol what a retarded title) claimed that the “decision has nothing to do with content moderation.” The stated offences are rather the deceptive design of the blue check marks, which allegedly violates (or violated) Article 25(1) of the DSA; a lack of transparency in advertising, allegedly in violation of Article 39; and a failure to provide researchers with access to public data, allegedly in violation of Article 40(12). The fines for these lapses, which the Commission appears to have pulled entirely out of their collective asshole, are €45 million, €35 million and €40 million, respectively.

Musk called the Commission announcement “bullshit” and demanded that the EU be abolished. Separately, X terminated the Commission’s ad account for embedding a link in their video of the fine announcement, apparently to artificially boost their reach.

The Trump administration have issued their own responses, mostly on X. In reference to rumours of the impending fine last Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance said that “the EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the fine “an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments” and said that “the days of censoring Americans online are over.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr complained that “Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company” and characterised the fine as a tax on “Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations.” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted that “the Digital Services Act is designed to stifle free speech and American tech companies,” and EU Ambassador Andrew Puzder said that the “excessive €120M fine is the result of EU regulatory overreach targeting American innovation.” Trump himself, in response to a journalist’s question, called the fine “nasty” and deplored that “Europe is going in some bad directions.”

X may yet challenge their fine before the European Court of Justice. Any finding in their favour would represent a massive embarrassment to the Commission and also a serious blow to the credibility of the DSA. Even if the chances are slim, I think fighting this would be well worth it.

Otherwise, what’s going on here is clear. The EU is a sclerotic, bloated bureaucratic monstrosity that has stifled business and industry on the Continent for years. In consequence, we have to get much of our everyday technology and all of our social media platforms from abroad, primarily from the United States. The tech illiterates in Brussels regard social media as a foreign imposition on their territory; it is one of various internet things these people barely understand. It is like a thick alien forest for them, abounding in frightening monsters that they call “algorithms” and “Russian disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” and “hate speech.” These out-of-touch mandarins are otherwise well-insulated from the low opinions the rabble hold of them, but every time they log into X their mentions fill with the hostile criticism of ordinary people. They’ve also surely noticed that the open internet has contributed greatly to populist dissent on both the left and the right. Thus they despise social media and they want nothing so much as to regulate it into oblivion, until it becomes nothing but a harmless backwater of cat videos and family photo albums.

They’re not going to realise their vision, not least because they are a lot of bumbling incompetents who turn everything they touch to shit. They will, however, succeed in making life in Europe just a little bit more tiresome, more expensive and less appealing to younger people and professionals who make their livings online. I hope to god the Americans can find a way to punish the European Commission for this fine and the others that are sure to follow. Their overreach is an imposition on American tech companies but also a hindrance to the free expression of millions of ordinary Europeans.