X owner Elon Musk is appealing the 120 million euro fine that was imposed on his company under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
In a post on Friday, X’s Global Government Affairs team said it filed an appeal with the General Court of the European Union challenging the roughly $140 million penalty that was imposed last December for allegedly violating the DSA.
“This EU Decision resulted from an incomplete and superficial investigation, grave procedural errors, a tortured interpretation of the obligations under the DSA, and systematic breaches of rights of defence and basic due process requirements suggesting prosecutorial bias,” X said.
The fine was issued by the European Commission, which accused X of violating transparency requirements and misleading users through its verification program. Regulators claimed that allowing all users to pay for a blue checkmark made it difficult to determine the authenticity of accounts.
“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU,” executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy Henna Virkkunen said at the time, according to The Hill.
The DSA, passed in 2022, requires large online platforms to limit illegal content on their sites and provide protections for minors from inappropriate content. It also aims to give users more control over how certain content is recommended. The EU had opened an investigation into X in 2023 to see if the online platform breached the part of DSA relating to its “risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.”
X has argued that the appeal “could set important precedents for enforcement, penalty calculations, and fundamental rights protections” under the DSA. The company added that it is “committed to user safety and transparency while defending our users’ access to the only global town square.”
