Europe is ramping up its war on free speech by targeting X with fines for not submitting itself to censorship regulations demanded by the European Union.
The EU levied a fine of $140 million against X, the first-ever penalty under Europe’s Digital Services Act. Europe decided that the website’s blue checkmark symbol is misleading, that it won’t give Europe access to data that will help it investigate free speech on the platform, and that it does not have a proper catalog of the ads available on the platform for Europe to examine.
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This has been part of a two-year pressure campaign against X, as Europe does not believe in free speech, and X CEO Elon Musk has reduced the level of censorship on the platform. Europeans can claim that this isn’t about free speech but “transparency” all they want, but the 2023 investigation opened into X was focused on “disinformation” and “illegal content.” Now, Europe wants access to a list of X’s advertisers, wants its “researchers” to have access to the website’s algorithm to scrutinize “algorithmic bias” and “hate speech,” and to alter how the website runs with respect to its blue checkmark system.
How do EU people not understand that their laws read as absurd to everyone from a remotely free country
“Your extremely well-documented checkmark system is deceptive because it’s not exactly the same as ten years ago. $45 million!”
This is just obvious extortion https://t.co/4dmBgdqv1b
— Lukas (computer)
(@SCHIZO_FREQ) December 8, 2025
This comes as Europe continues to prosecute online speech it considers distasteful, hoping to snuff out any non-government-approved thoughts on the continent. CBS’s 60 Minutes profiled investigators from just one German unit of prosecutors who tout that they have secured 750 hate speech convictions in the last four years. In Germany, it is illegal to insult a politician or repost “disinformation.” (Not just post, but repost).
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What Europe is trying to do to X is to export its censorship policies to an American tech company, imposing European censorship on millions of American users and users from non-European countries. It is threatening X with millions in fines to change its website to fit whatever European censors deem appropriate, a slap in the face of the U.S. and a clear escalation in Europe’s war against the right to free speech.
Europe has lost its way, a fact that has been clear for decades, but the continent continues to fall deeper into an authoritarianism that forces everyday Europeans into silence to protect the sensitivities of left-wing European politicians. Europe is trying to shake down an American company for millions to surrender itself to censorship regulators, a deeper plunge into the pit of authoritarianism, with the continent trying to drag America’s free speech tradition down with it.