X fined €120M in the first Digital Services Act penalty
€120M
≈ $140M at the time
European Commission
EU · 2025
Status: Under appeal
What happened
The European Commission found three transparency breaches at X: the paid blue checkmark deceives users because anyone can buy verified status without being verified, the advertising repository is neither searchable nor complete, and researchers are blocked from the public data the DSA requires platforms to share.
How it affected users
A badge that used to signal a checked identity became a purchasable one, which made impersonation and scam accounts far easier to run, and the missing ad archive and researcher access removed the outside scrutiny that would have surfaced the problem.
Status timeline
Dec 5, 2025
First non-compliance decision issued under the Digital Services Act.
Effective amount: ≈ $140M
Feb 16, 2026
X filed an action at the EU General Court, arguing the process breached its due-process rights.
Sources
Last verified 2026-08-28. Spotted an error? Report a correction.
Cite this entry
Deepak Gupta, "X fined €120M in the first Digital Services Act penalty," Tech Fines Directory, guptadeepak.com, 2025-12-05. https://guptadeepak.com/tech-fines/violation/x-eu-dsa-transparency-2025/