Musk says EU wanted “secret deal” to “censor free speech” after fine threat

Elon Musk accused the European Commission of acting in bad faith after the bloc threatened his social network, X, with a fine. The sanction could run into millions of dollars for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). He said the EU wanted a “secret deal” to “censor free speech”, which X declined.

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The Commission is the primary executive arm of the 27-member EU. On Friday, it released preliminary findings of its investigation into X’s (Twitter) compliance with the DSA. It said the platform is in breach of the law in three areas: misleading verification systems, lack of advertising transparency, and failure to provide data to researchers.

EU Commission claims X blue checkmark “deceives users”

In response, Musk alleged that the Commission’s findings are part of a covert operation to manipulate free speech. The billionaire, who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” said other social media networks agreed to the Commission’s demands. X did not, he added.

“The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal,” Musk wrote on his X account. “If we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal.”

In its report , the Commission found that the process of verifying accounts using X’s blue checkmark “deceives users since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a ‘verified’ status.” It also claimed it was unsatisfied with the platform’s transparency because X “does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository.”

The Commission said X, which reaches 45 million active users in the EU per month, failed to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA. In particular, the bloc said X prevents “researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping.”

The social media platform will have the right of defense and to respond to the preliminary findings in writing, according to the Commission.

Musk promises “public court battle”

Despite the EU’s allegations, the Tesla and SpaceX founder is adamant that his company will be able to convince the courts of its innocence. Responding to a post on X by Thierry Breton, an internal markets commissioner at the European Commission, Musk said, “We look forward to a very public battle in court so that the people of Europe can know the truth.”

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If found guilty, X will be expected to pay a fine equivalent to 6% of its annual global revenue. That could be as much as $306 million based on X’s total revenue of $5.1 billion at the end of 2021.

This is not the first time that the European Commission has considered fining a large social media entity. In May 2022, the Commission fined Meta 1.2 billion euros after the company was found guilty of breaching the Irish Data Protection Authority (DPA) rules.’

Elon Musk bought X in October 2022 for $44 billion. Since then, he has made several changes to the platform, including renaming Twitter to X and sacking thousands of workers.