When a Blue Checkmark Becomes a €120 Million Problem
The European Commission’s first major enforcement action under the Digital Services Act (DSA) offers an early glimpse of how the European Union intends to regulate large digital platforms—and how far that approach may diverge from the U.S. model.
The DSA is an EU regulation governing how online intermediary services operate, including social-media platforms, online marketplaces, app stores, and online booking services. Because it is a regulation rather than a directive, it applies directly across all EU Member States and does not require each country to pass its own implementing law. Rather than focusing primarily on whether specific pieces of content are legal or illegal, the DSA targets how platforms are structured and run. Oversight extends to how “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) design their interfaces, how transparent they are about advertising, and how accessible their data is to outside scrutiny. The DSA classifies platforms with at least 45 million monthly active users in the EU as VLOPs.
The European Commission’s enforcement action against X marks the first major attempt to apply this framework in practice. In April 2023, the Commission designated X (formerly Twitter) as a VLOP pursuant to Article 33(4) of the DSA. In December 2025, the Commission fined X €120 million for “breaching its transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).” The Commission cited three alleged infringements: the design of X’s “blue checkmark,” deficiencies in its advertising-transparency tools, and restrictions on researchers’ access to public data.
The decision offers an early case study of how the DSA may be enforced. It also raises broader questions about the scope of EU platform regulation, the role of transparency as a regulatory tool, and the growing divergence between European and U.S. approaches to governing digital markets.
Understanding the decision requires understanding what the DSA does—and does not—do. The regulation does not redefine what speech is legal or illegal; those determinations remain governed by existing EU and national law. Instead, the DSA imposes procedural and structural obligations on large platforms aimed at creating a safer, more transparent, and more accountable online environment. In practice, that means requiring transparency tools, systemic-risk assessments, and data-access mechanisms designed to make platform operations more visible and subject to outside scrutiny.