EU's €120 Million Fine Against X Focuses on Advertising Transparency, Not Speech Regulation
By
saubeidl
5mo ago· 5 min readenInsight
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Summary
The article explains that the EU's €120 million fine against X (formerly Twitter) under the Digital Services Act is not about censorship or speech regulation, but rather about enforcing standard legal requirements regarding advertising transparency and data access for researchers. The author argues that the fine addresses X's failure to comply with basic DSA obligations like providing a searchable ad library and researcher data access, not content moderation decisions.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledDon't let anyone — not even the United States Secretary of State — tell you that the European Commission's €120 million enforcement against Elon Musk's X under the Digital Service Act (DSA) is about censorship or about what speech users can post on the platform.
The DSA's advertising rules are not about what ads say, but about making sure users can see who is paying for political ads and how they are being targeted.
The fine is about X's failure to comply with the DSA's requirements for a searchable ad library and researcher data access — not about content moderation.
This is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law — requirements that are about transparency and accountability, not about controlling speech.
The €120 million fine under the Digital Services Act is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law, writes Stanford's Daphne Keller.
