The social platform X announced that it has blocked the advertising account of the European Commission due to alleged rule violations, just a few days after the Commission fined X €120 million for breaching transparency rules.
– Your advertising account has been terminated – stated Nikita Bier, X’s product manager, on Sunday.
The ‘advertising account’ represents an additional account linked to the main one, intended for running advertising campaigns.
Bier accused the Commission of using that account to post links that led users to conclude they were videos, artificially inflating their reach. As a result, the account was blocked, but the Commission’s main account on X remains active.
The move is widely interpreted as retaliation for the €120 million fine that the EU executive body imposed on Thursday for breaching transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The fine, the first ever imposed under EU law governing online space, provoked sharp reactions from U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Friday, as well as public discontent from X’s owner, Elon Musk.
Over the weekend, the billionaire launched a series of attacks on the platform, accusing the EU of being a ‘tyrannical, unelected bureaucracy that oppresses people’ and calling for its abolition.
The U.S. administration also harshly criticized the EU initiative. The U.S. Ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, stated that the fine is excessive and a result of ‘overreaching EU regulation aimed at American innovation’.
A spokesperson for the European Commission commented on Sunday that the Commission always uses all social networks in good faith, reminding that since October 2023, the Commission has suspended all paid advertisements and services on X.
