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X hit with $140M EU fine for breaching content rules
- rich_sasha 11mo ago$1m per character
- pu_pe 11mo agoX is likely losing money in the EU at this point, and complying with the rules would also cost them money and/or reputation. Maybe they should consider pulling out.
- varjag 11mo agoMusk wants his agitprop vector in Europe. He will pay the fine and attempt to maliciously comply.
- smcl 11mo agoX is losing money everywhere
- amarcheschi 11mo agoMaybe they should consider pulling out (from Earth) then
- smcl 11mo agoYeah I reckon that's the only way to be sure
- delichon 11mo agoIt put a cooperative president in power. What's that worth?
- ben_w 11mo agoA "cooperative" president who could be manipulated by everyone, which is why he promoted Tesla cars in front of the White House but also reduced support for them, reduced fleet MPG requirements, thinks clinate change and renewables are scams, etc. And then Musk had his falling out when he left DOGE.
- delichon 11mo agoCurrently they are saying lovey dovey things about each other and Musk is having far more success working with regulatory agencies.
- add-sub-mul-div 11mo agoThink of it as the opposite of something like public transportation, which doesn't need to be profitable because it's a public good.
- timeon 11mo agoPublic evil?
- stronglikedan 11mo agoPress X to doubt...
- smcl 11mo agoIf you sincerely think X/Twitter is turning anything remotely close to a profit then you are in a tiny minority.
- maelito 11mo agoOne of X's aim is to influence elections. So losing money is obviously not important to them.
- vkou 11mo agoTrillionaires don't buy mass media companies to make money, they do it to push propaganda. This one in particular is both personally desperate for approval of his petty, narcissistic bullshit, and for trying to consolidate political power by amplifying and supporting authoritarian candidates (that are expected to quid-pro-quo him back).
- perching_aix 11mo ago> Maybe they should consider pulling out. I leapfrogged this by pulling myself out from Twitter instead a while ago, and I can only recommend. And I don't mean this in the "in favor of Bluesky/Mastadon" sense. There are some types of content that I did lose access to this way, but in retrospect it was worth it. I found that the cost-benefit for it is just not there, not for me at least.
- barbazoo 11mo agoI’m assuming they’re only losing money in the hard sense, not in the “soft” sense considering the unimaginable wealth that comes from manipulating millions of people.
- dmix 11mo agoX as a whole became more profitable than Twitter last year thanks to a huge surge in US Election traffic and reduction in operating costs. > Its 2024 adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled Twitter’s best year Revenue is up 20% in 2025 but profit is lower and revenue in general is still much lower than pre-Musk purchase due to lost advertising but it is still improving slowly. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-saw-lower-ad-sales-q2-2025/760824/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/x-formerly-twitter-saw... In the UK there was a more serious drop in revenue https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/15/x-twitter-profits-uk-collapsed-year-after-elon-musk-took-over https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/apr/15/x-twitter... Not sure about EU
- lossolo 11mo ago> and complying with the rules would also cost them money and/or reputation. Maybe they should consider pulling out. Like when they "pulled out" of Brazil? When Musk said they were fighting for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law? Then X got blocked in Brazil, and they silently complied with everything that was against "freedom, democracy, and the rule of law" and stopped talking about it.
- nonethewiser 11mo agoWhy would they pull out? They can simply not pay the fine. Then the EU could either back down or be the bad guy that blocks X.com and seizes their operations in Europe.
- bartekpacia 11mo agoPlease, please. I hope they pull out ASAP!
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- arealaccount 11mo agoIt would have been hilarious if they hit X with a $420M fine
- embedding-shape 11mo agoFortunately for Europeans, politicians and businesses in Europe don't seem to run on the new American "meme vibes" corporate culture. I'm glad we didn't import that, but probably just a question of when...
- 1718627440 11mo agoWhat is the joke here, I don't get it.
- ben_w 11mo ago420 is a drug reference which Musk himself makes every so often.
- charcircuit 11mo ago>"I think it's very important to underline that DSA is having nothing to do with censorship," Only under the EUs backwards idea that if it makes speech illegal it's not censorship. >its failure to provide researchers access to public data. I don't want my X posts being handed over to researchers even if they are technically public. On social media and chat platforms there is an expectation of the posts and chat messages you make to be private due to being in an obscure section of the website. Just look out the outrage over people's privacy that happens every time someone makes a public search engine of everyone's chat messages on a Discord that has an open invitation link. People's idea of privacy does not align with the idea that anything public should be widely spread with others.
- amarcheschi 11mo agoThe reason of the fine is, as stated by the article: EU regulators said X's DSA violations included the deceptive design of its blue checkmark for verified accounts, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository and its failure to provide researchers access to public data. I hold back no criticism on free speech issues in eu (ie chat control) when it is correct to do so, but this case doesn't look like it
- charcircuit 11mo agoAnd it says that the investigation in regards to handle how they handle illegal content (speech they don't like) is still ongoing. So the potential fines over free speech are still upcoming.
- perching_aix 11mo agoProtected speech is what's covered by "free speech", not all speech. If you disagree with what specific areas of speech they find illegal, say so, be clear about it, rather than presupposing your views in your claims in an emotion evoking fashion (e.g. "speech they don't like"). It's extremely tiring to decipher takes like these and they're everywhere recently. It's supposed to be convincing, yet to read it without finding it jarring, I'd already need to agree with you. Makes no sense!
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- udev4096 11mo agoWhy is it so low? When will big corps get jailed for their actions?
- Jean-Michelgos 11mo agoWhat actions ?
- boston_clone 11mo agoYou should probably read the article.
- Jean-Michelgos 11mo agoI read the article it's about blue check marks, I'm replying to a comment that says that the fine should be higher and should apply to more people? Is he really suggesting blue check marks as the action requiring more than 120 million dollar fine and be applied to more big corps ? Which big corps and what specifically are their "blue check marks" action that warrants bazillion dollar fines?????
- perching_aix 11mo ago> I read the article it's about blue check marks, Why lie so blatantly? This is what was in the article: > EU regulators said X's DSA violations included the deceptive design of its blue checkmark for verified accounts, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository and its failure to provide researchers access to public data. Can you count? I count three distinct claims, not one.
- Jean-Michelgos 11mo agoSo what is a reasonable fine and who are the other big corps ?????
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- uyzstvqs 11mo agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46160196
- cy_hauser 11mo agoA much better link. The underlying article there explains why they are being fined.
- thickoldmen 11mo agoI don't know anyone who supports this censorship agenda. These obtuse bureaucrats need to get fresh air.
- shafyy 11mo agoMe, I do support it. Now you know somebody. And you should go look up the definition of censorship.
- Jean-Michelgos 11mo agoCensorship is exactly what this is. If the fine is paid or not Europe will still be filed with online scams. This is almost defamatory as to suggest that Europeans were defrauded by blue check marks while making no claim evidence or suggestion of injury. (no damages). In scientific terms it's confirmation bias
- perching_aix 11mo ago> Censorship is exactly what this is. What of this is censorship? https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2934 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_... Not a single word about removing anything in this.
- cyberdick 11mo agoIt's technically not censorship. Just a massive fine for not censoring
- mystraline 11mo agoThis isn't too much different than the UK OFCOM doing the similar stunts of suing for Sanctioned Suicide and Kiwifarms for websites hosted in the US, and with no foreign stations of business. I want to make no mistake - I personally think that Kiwifarms is absolutely gross with their harassment campaigns. But it does appear legal, and first amendment speech issue. SaSu advocates for people who wish to commit suicide, a how-to. Its the final "my body, my choice" that every government wants to take away. So silencing is a thing. But again, 1fa issue. https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyrants-4chan-and-kiwi-farms-sue-the-uk-over-extraterritorial-censorship/ https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/05/when-trolls-take-on-tyra... https://sanctioned-suicide.net/ https://sanctioned-suicide.net/
- schubidubiduba 11mo agoI don't see the issue tbh. Why should the UK (or the EU) care about US laws likenthe first amendment? Nobody is forcing them to offer their website to Europeans, a simple IP block of UK users would likely be enough to avoid any legal risks for your US website example.
- buildfocus 11mo agoInteresting discussion of the details of the rules and breaches here, from a "this isn't actually about content or censorship at all" perspective: https://bsky.app/profile/daphnek.bsky.social/post/3m7aqqnarm22i https://bsky.app/profile/daphnek.bsky.social/post/3m7aqqnarm...
- TZubiri 11mo ago"The Commission said X's verified accounts which carry a blue checkmark do not correspond to industry practice and negatively affect users' ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts they interact with" I think X is in the wrong here, the blue checkmark usually means the identity has been verified, in other social media, but also historic twitter. Nowadays on X it only means that a fee has been paid, it's used for scams, some even claim to be Elon Musk or official twitter announcements, which is very ironic.
- Jean-Michelgos 11mo ago[flagged]
- perching_aix 11mo ago> Exactly why people are leaving Europe in droves So that companies can expose them to scams even more optimally with even less recourse? Now that's a surprising conjecture!
- 1718627440 11mo ago> What jurisdiction do they have on an American site ? That's the issue, none. They have jurisdiction because part of the software runs on EU citizens computers and because they process the data of EU citizens.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago> What jurisdiction do they have on an American site ? If it is an American site that only does business in America... well still all the jurisdiction they need; that's kind of how sovereignty works. But little practical ability to enforce orders. But X isn't an American site that only does business in America so the issue is moot, anyhow. It's a multinational corporate network with both business dealings and a local corporation in the EU whose corporate parent happens to be HQ’d in the US, and the EU has as much legal and practical jurisdiction over it as the US had over TikTok when its corporate parent was in China.