The European Commission (EC) on Thursday fined social media company X for €120 million ($140 million) after it found the platform in violation of the European Union’s 2022 Digital Services Act (DSA). European regulators argue the fine punishes X for a lack of transparency, but platform owner Elon Musk and the Trump administration contend the fight is really over the stand Musk has taken to defend free speech on the platform.

In its public announcement, the EC outlined three alleged offenses by the social media company. First, they argued that “X’s use of the ‘blue checkmark’ for ‘verified accounts’ deceives users” because “anyone can pay to obtain the ‘verified’ status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account.”

Second, they argued that “X’s advertisement repository fails to meet the transparency and accessibility requirements of the DSA,” which they claim are necessary “for researchers and civil society to detect scams, hybrid threat campaigns, coordinated information operations and fake advertisements.”

Third, “X fails to meet its DSA obligations to provide researchers with access to the platform’s public data,” the commission stated.

In 2023, Australian regulators fined X $386,000 for failing to cooperate with an anti-child abuse probe, and Brazil’s Supreme Court lifted a ban on X in 2024 after X agreed to pay $5.1 million for misinformation on its platform and accounts that spread it. Thus, the EU is not the first governmental body to target the platform under Musk’s leadership, but the EU penalty of $140 million is far larger than these previous sums.

Perhaps in conscious recognition that these alleged offenses seem insufficient to justify the hefty fine imposed, the EC concluded with this justification: “The fine issued today was calculated taking into account the nature of these infringements, their gravity in terms of affected EU users, and their duration.”

With the word “duration,” the EC tipped its hat to the fact that it has been investigating X for more than two years, since shortly after the regulation came into effect, and that X has consistently refused to change its practices to meet European demands.

However, those demands may not all be reflected in the final charges. On July 12, 2024, Musk wrote on X, “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us. The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.”

Rival social media app TikTok, which still remains in the hands of Chinese owner ByteDance nearly a year after Congress mandated its sale, reached a settlement with the EC and avoided a fine.

Following the EC’s Thursday announcement, Musk offered little additional commentary besides a choice synonym for ox manure.

However, Nikita Bier, head of product at X, pointed out the “irony” of the EC’s decision. To announce that it was fining X in part over its advertisement policy, the EC “logged into your dormant ad account” on X “to take advantage of an exploit in our Ad Composer — to post a link that deceives users into thinking it’s a video and to artificially increase its reach.”

“As you may be aware, X believes everyone should have an equal voice on our platform,” Bier added. “However, it seems you believe that the rules should not apply to your account. Your ad account has been terminated.” Thus, X struck back against the Europe-wide governing entity, further closing off any possibility of reconciliation.

While X has few friends in Brussels, it does have friends in Washington, and the American company seems to be counting on American support in Musk’s struggles against global bureaucrats. Shortly before the EC announcement, Vice President J.D. Vance tweeted about “Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.”

On Friday, at least two more Trump administration officials fired back at the EC announcement. “Once again, Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company,” wrote Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. “Europe is taxing Americans to subsidize a continent held back by Europe’s own suffocating regulations.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added his own commentary, placing the decision in the context of Europe’s broad-based retreat from individual rights, “The European Commission’s $140 million 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.”

Rubio’s remarks echo Vice President Vance’s strident speech at the Munich security conference earlier this year. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia; it’s not China; it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within: the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America,” he declared.

That threat extended to online speech, Vance said, “where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content,’ or to this very country where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet.”

“I think it’s very important to underline that DSA is having nothing to do with censorship,” responded EU tech czar Henna Virkkunen. “We are not here to impose the highest fines. We are here to make sure that our digital legislation is enforced and if you comply with our rules, you don’t get the fine.”

Intoxicated by its power play against X, the EC has planned similar investigations against other social media platforms, which could result either in a massive fine or the company submitting to its demands. “With most of the investigations, we already have published the preliminary findings,” boasted Virkkunen. “The next step is to encourage those online platforms to comply with our rules.” She promised “more decisions” in “the coming months.”

But that strategy may not yield the outcome regulators intend. On Sunday, Musk tweeted that “X is seeing record-breaking downloads in many countries in Europe.”