EU Fines Musk’s X $140M

Elon Musk slammed the EU after it slapped a fine on his social media platform X for violating transparency rules, warning his response would target the top officials behind the penalty.

"The 'EU' imposed this crazy fine not just on [X], but also on me personally, which is even more insane!" the billionaire Tesla CEO wrote on X. "Therefore, it would seem appropriate to apply our response not just to the EU, but also to the individuals who took this action against me."

The rebuke comes after the European Commission on Friday imposed a €120 million fine on Musk's platform for breaching transparency obligations it faces as a very large online platform under the EU’s Digital Services Act, the bloc's flagship content moderation law.

The EU executive said the platform's blue checkmark feature was deceptive after it was changed from denoting verified users into a paid feature. It also said X’s advertising library lacks transparency, and that it fails to provide access to public data for researchers.

A Commission official said the executive has found three entities behind X; X Holdings Companies, xAI and Elon Musk “at the top.” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the fine is “for a breach committed by X” but “addressed to the entire corporate structure.”

"The EU woke Stasi commissars are about to understand the full meaning of the 'Streisand Effect,'" Musk fumed. The "Streisand effect" refers to when an attempt to keep something discreet backfires.

Musk didn't elaborate on what form his response to the X levy would take or which individuals he would target directly. He followed up with another post to say the EU should be "abolished."

The fine on X and its owner has already drawn a sharp rebuke from Washington, with U.S. officials depicting the bloc’s move as an assault on broader free speech rights, with some alleging that U.S. companies were being singled out.

Vice President JD Vance criticized the fine after details leaked ahead of time. “The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” Vance said.

When asked about Vance’s remarks, the Commission’s Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty Henna Virkkunen told reporters: “The DSA is having not to do with censorship, this decision is about the transparency of X.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a Friday post on the platform, said the 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."

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau added to the criticism, saying that the "nations of Europe cannot look to the US for their own security at the same time they affirmatively undermine the security of the US itself through the (unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative) EU."

Trump's EU envoy Andrew Puzder also slammed the penalty.

The "excessive €120M fine is the result of EU regulatory overreach targeting American innovation," Puzder wrote on X. "The Trump Administration has been clear: we oppose censorship and will challenge burdensome regulations that target US companies abroad. We expect the EU to engage in fair, open, & reciprocal trade — & nothing less."

The move adds another layer of tension to the EU’s strained relationship with the Trump administration, with the U.S. president threatening to impose additional tariffs on the bloc if it continues to penalize American tech giants. The topic has been a theme of tense trade talks in recent months, with the U.S. pushing Brussels to scrap the DSA, along with other enforcement measures.

While the fine was cautiously praised in Brussels and other European capitals, where officials had worried that the EU executive would bow to demands that it rein in its enforcement of U.S. tech firms, some European politicians more aligned with the U.S. agenda joined in on the criticism.

"Nobody elected you," wrote conservative Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders. "You represent no one. You are a totalitarian institution and can’t even spell the words freedom of speech. We should not accept the fining of [X], but abolish the [Commission]."

The fine was only the conclusion of the first part of the EU's probe into X, which will also look at the content circulated on the platform.