The Trump administration’s ultimatum to stop regulating social media platforms in exchange for tariff relief does not appear to have persuaded officials with the European Union.
On Friday, Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, was hit with a $140 million fine for violating the EU’s Digital Services Act, a set of transparency laws designed to curb the corrosive powers of tech platforms like social media sites.
In April, X was fretting over the European Commission’s investigation, denying allegations that included claims its “verified user” system had been abused by “malicious actors” to deceive users and that the platform had failed to comply with legal requirements to make its data available to researchers who study things like disinformation.
Per CNBC:
The Commission on Friday said breaches include ‘the deceptive design of its “blue checkmark”, the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.’ The ruling follows a two-year investigation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was adopted in 2022 to regulate online platforms. The Commission said that failure to comply with the decision may lead to penalty payments. ‘Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,’ said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy. ‘With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.’
Donald Trump and his administration have rebuked the EU’s efforts to regulate Big Tech companies, many executives of which have showered the president with gifts and lined his and his allies’ pockets.
In that vein of rebuke, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted to Musk’s platform, “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments. The days of censoring Americans online are over.”
Musk reposted Rubio’s statement, adding, “Absolutely.” (X did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.)
Recently, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking in Europe, said European countries might expect tariff relief if they agree to a more hands-off approach to Big Tech. But that incentive clearly isn’t working. In fact, just one day before announcing its fine of X, the European Commission announced a separate antitrust investigation into Meta over allegations regarding artificial intelligence chatbots on its messaging platform WhatsApp. (The company has called the allegations “baseless.”)
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.