Europe hits the blue checkmark billionaire with €120M for Ukraine politics? EU drops hammer on Musk

The European Union has dropped a massive legal hammer on Elon Musk’s X, slapping the platform with a €120 million fine under the bloc’s powerful Digital Services Act (DSA). It’s the first-ever penalty issued under the EU’s flagship digital law and it puts Musk directly in Brussels’ crosshairs. EU regulators accuse X of violating transparency rules, calling the platform’s paid blue checkmark “deceptive” after it was transformed from a verification tool into a subscription perk. While this fine closes one chapter of a nearly two-year probe, investigations into X’s handling of illegal content and misinformation are still underway.