The European Commission said it will “make sure” it receives money owed by Elon Musk’s X after the company was fined €120 million for failing to meet transparency rules.
The Commission on Friday said X has breached transparency and deceptive design obligations under the EU’s platforms regulation, the Digital Services Act, and issued the €120 million penalty.
The decision set off a cascade of accusations of censorship from U.S. officials, Musk and his supporters, with some suggesting the company should refuse to pay the fine.
Add three more zeroes to the fine. The neo-Nazi loser can afford it.
Make him serve one day in prison for every Euro.
Oh, yeah, and confiscate his entire fortune.
Guy is a trillionaire. Who cares about 120 million :|
It could be a €10 fine and this pillock would still throw the toys out the pram.
The kinds of human-substitute that become trillionaires, evidently
it would really be something if the app lost all its EU users
Just shut down the fucking platform
That doesn’t fill me with amazing confidence.
isn’t musk a trillionaire? i’m sure he’ll feel the pain of this
He’s a trillionaire if the failing Tesla hits specific, and probably impossible targets. More likely, Tesla is bankrupt in two years.
But that doesn’t stop the PR department from cranking out their propaganda that he’s already a Trillionaire.
Last time i checked he was at about 400b so not a trillionaire, but 120m is still absolutely nothing.
Kinda weird how 3 posts in this thread call/refer to him as trillionaire… doesn’t seem genuine to me.
trust me I am more than happy to be wrong :)
Sadly… being wrong is only temporary.
They’re not fining Musk. They’re fining X/Twitter.
Right, just like Florida Senator Rick Scott didn’t get wealthy committing the largest Medicaire fraud in history, after pleading the 5th over 185 times in his trial. The blame was the company that he owned, and was the CEO. The company paid a massive fine, but he kept his stolen government money, and went on to run for Governor of Florida, where he continued his campaign of stealing from the government, doubling his net worth, and is now a Florida Senator, where he was recently caught on video railing against talk of abolishing insider trading for Senators, whining that “Democrats want to keep people from earning money!”
No, you penis with ears, making a living is fine, but you are using a method that would put any of the rest of us in prison for years, and that happens all the time. We just expect YOU to live by the same laws as US.
He HATES it when people post these reminders of how his entire fortune is build on taking money from the government, as he rails against Career Politicians, and runs on term limits, which he never introduces once he’s on office.
Yeah, the sheer insanity here is that $120M is like, losing a comparative 12¢ to him.
Wikipedia puts the worthless cur’s “worth” at ~470B.
I’m no mathematician but…
470,000,000,000
−120,000,000
=469,880,000,000
OoOOOoo way to go. You go make sure he pays that huuuge fine. I’m sure he’ll lose sleep over this one!
Fine him 12% of his net worth and THAT would at least be an actual penalty.
Oddly enough, I think this would be an effective thing.
Musk, like all bullies, just doesn’t want any accountability whatsoever. Yes, the amount is trivial given his means, but as we saw in South America, he is perfectly willing to back down when a challenge is meaningful, culturally if not materially.
You could take a dime from a millionaire and they would cry about it forever. It’s not about the money it’s about the conversion of money to power, it’s a loss of power they’re upset about not necessarily the actual money or what it could be used on.
In America, €120 million could buy half of Congress.
Got it, the EU should buy Congress!
…that might be an improvement, considering how dumb our political animals are. 🤔
It would be nice to be owned by people with half a brain for a change
More than half, people just didn’t know how inexpensive it was to buy positions.
Congress are a lot cheaper whores than that.
“I’m not corrupt, but 20 bucks is 20 bucks”.
No he’s not. And it bothere him to no end that he’s not.
I’m almost certain Musk has 120mil in loose change, hiding in his couch.
wow that’s really going to hurt him. 🙄
can we make fines like these a percentage of total asset value please?
The fine is for Twitter, so if we make it a percentage of value we might end up paying them…
Oh shit
It’s private, so it’s just monopoly money now.
EU fines aren’t one and done.
This is the first fine, if they don’t comply in the future (edit: in 90 days), they’ll get more fines, increasing each time.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a shitty fine. Give them proper incentive to change instead of a measly slap on the wrist
If eventually fines do get calculated on their total income (which is possible, they can issue fines up to 2% of total yearly income if I remember correctly) and these fines are starting to come in more frequently it gets quite expensive really fast.
The EU does this already. And I agree, $140million is not much, EU-wide. Last I heard it was just 1 member state who issued a similar fine - times 27 that would already hurt a little.
All the dumber that Musk is making such a stink about what is really less than peanuts to him.
It is peanuts to him but I think his hissyfit is not so much about the money but the fact that the EU has the capacity to regulate his company. As an billionaire in the US he is very much used to doing whatever he wants with no consequences or constraints from regulatory agencies.
[X] hasn’t replied to POLITICO’s repeated requests for comment.
lol
Not the main point, but I found this interesting:
Regnier also justified the Commission’s continued use of X as a platform for corporate communications, despite the severity of anti-EU comments posted by Musk over the weekend and the platform’s decision to suspend the Commission’s account for paid advertising.
The EU executive uses 15 social media platforms and hasn’t made a decision to suspend its use of X, Regnier said.
All these platforms are ways to “get in touch to citizens, stakeholders, to do some outreach work, to precisely speak about what we are doing in the EU,” he said.
Statements comparing the EU to Nazi Germany are “part of the freedom of speech that we very much praise in the EU,” which “allows even for the craziest statements that you can imagine,” Chief Spokesperson Paula Pinho said.
The Commission stopped “using paid advertising or any paid services for X” in 2023 and its regular account remains open, Regnier said.
Statements comparing the EU to Nazi Germany are “part of the freedom of speech that we very much praise in the EU,” which “allows even for the craziest statements that you can imagine,”
That’s news to Germany.
So why is the EU this interested in defending spreading lies and propaganda? It comes off to me like a complete lack of a backbone. Like a pacifist who believes so intensely in pacifism that they’d rather let a nation commit genocide, than stopping it with force. Which, after writing that, also seems to apply to the EU…
€120M compared to his promised $700B (€600B) bonus is 0.02% or (assuming 365 days per year, 12 hours per day) is equivalent to 56 minutes of work.
It has about the same disincentive as a $7 fine for a minimum wage worker.
This is only considering the bonus and ignoring any income on top of that. He can afford it without even thinking.
Aren’t the fines coming from the shareholders and not Musk’s personal bank account?
For the ultra wealthy it’s more of a matter of pride and loss of power than the actual money. People like Musk loathe being held accountable, so even if the amount is equivalent to $7 for us, having to pay it hurts him more than it would us.
That’s not even considering that his wealth is mostly in unrealized gains from non-liquid assets so he probably can’t just write a check for $120m. Having to cash in stocks to pay it would actually lower his net worth more than $120m.
I think your second point is key. Once we’re talking about billions or trillions of dollars the number doesn’t really represent the same currency normal people use to pay their bills or buy food, it becomes a measure of power and political influence. Fines and taxes are scary because they serve as a reality check, they need to be paid in real money, where as things like net worth and stock valuation are in big part arbitrary and vibes-based.
Is this like when the local library hounds me for late return fees? It feels financially comparable when you slap such a small amount on it .
Not really. For people like Musk it’s not about the money, it’s about loathing being held accountable in any way.
Plus, you probably don’t have to liquidate assets to pay the library fine.
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The charges are clear. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2934
Well that wasn’t very ambiguous
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Yes. Seriously. And if x wants to operate in the EU then it has to follow EU law.
Consumer protection still exists and what x is doing with it’s ‘verified’ badges is just straight up deception. The only thing it verifies is that that account has paid x money.
Second, relating to transparency in advertising. Hybrid warfare is a major threat to the stability of Europe’s society, institutions and democracy. A major vector for that is propaganda carried out through Facebook and X. Both through fake users and adverts.
The EU should very much take this seriously and I’m glad that they are.
