Elon Musk’s X Accused By European Union Of Deceiving Users As It Becomes First Social Media Platform To Fall Foul Of New Act

Elon Musk has accused the European Commission of offering X, formerly Twitter, an “illegal secret deal” to censor speech, after X was found to have breached the EU’s Digital Services Act. The preliminary ruling stated that X “deceives” users with its “Blue checkmark” system, lacks advertising transparency, and fails to provide public data access to researchers. Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager tweeted that X “misleads users” and blocks research data access.

Responding, Musk accused the commission of “offering X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us.”

“The other platforms accepted that deal,” he wrote. “X did not.”