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By Dan Gooding and Gabe Whisnant
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday denounced the European Commission’s $140 million fine against Elon Musk's social media platform X, calling it an attack on American tech companies and “the American people."
Rubio wrote on X, "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."
The Commission, the European Union's executive arm, said it was fining X for three violations of the Digital Services Act's transparency rules.
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Newsweek reached out to X via email for comment on Friday.
Why It Matters
While the Commission has argued that it is not seeking to muzzle Big Tech, views on free speech and the roles companies play in monitoring users' posts differ greatly between the United States and many in Europe.
X's current owner, Elon Musk, promised he would end censorship on the platform when he bought it as Twitter in 2022, causing some concerns about hate speech, safety, and security.
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What To Know
Rubio's comments reflected others within the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance, who also posted on the social media platform that the Commission was punishing X for not engaging in censorship.
“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” he wrote.
The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act, also known as the DSA.
It's the first time that the EU has issued a so-called non-compliance decision since rolling out the DSA. The sweeping rulebook requires platforms to take greater responsibility for protecting European users and removing harmful or illegal content and products from their sites, under threat of hefty fines.
EU regulators had already outlined their accusations in mid-2024, when they released preliminary findings of their investigation into X, which included declaring that X’s blue checkmarks violated the rules due to “deceptive design practices” and could expose users to scams and manipulation.
Before Musk acquired X, when it was known as Twitter, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians, media organizations and other influential accounts.
After he bought it in 2022, the site started issuing badges to anyone who paid $8 per month, rather than requiring a strict verification process to determine who was behind an account.
X also fell short of the transparency requirements for its ad database, regulators said.
Platforms in the EU are required to provide a database of all digital advertisements they have carried, including details such as who paid for them and the intended audience, to help researchers detect scams, fake ads, and coordinated influence campaigns. But X's database, the Commission said, is undermined by design features and access barriers such as "excessive delays in processing.”
Regulators also said X puts up “unnecessary barriers” for researchers trying to access public data, which stymies research into systemic risks that European users face.
What People Are Saying
U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, on X: "Once again, Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company. Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations."
Henna Virkkunen, the EU's executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, in a statement Friday: “Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users."
What Happens Next
X is yet to respond to the fine as of press time.
A separate report from the Commission on TikTok and its ad database saw the company say it took its obligations under EU law seriously, while also calling for "a level playing field" across all platforms.
This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.
Update 12/05/25, 12:23 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
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