05 Dec 2025, 05:42 PM IST i Summary is AI Generated. Newsroom Reviewed Elon Musk’s X social network was slapped with a lower-than-expected €120 million ($140 million) fine for violating the European Union’s controversial content-moderation law, in a move still set to raise tensions with the White House over free speech and tech regulation. In doling out the first ever penalty under the Digital Services Act, the European Commission concluded that X’s paid-for blue tick symbol misled users, the platform stonewalled giving researchers access to data and failed to properly set up an advertising repository, it said in a statement Friday. The fine wasn’t based on the revenues of his vast private business empire in space, infrastructure and neuroscience that regulators had considered targeting. The fine is a tiny fraction of Musk’s $467 billion wealth and comes after months of intense pressure from Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked the bloc’s harsh fines and attempts to regulate American tech companies. Despite the relatively light penalty, the standoff exposes a deepening divide over digital sovereignty and what constitutes fundamental rights like free speech and privacy in the internet age. “The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” US Vice President JD Vance said in a post on X before the fine was announced. 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.