The administrators of the social network X, which was fined 120 million euros for violating EU digital rules, have deleted the European Commission's ad account.
The news was reported by Nikita Bir, Head of Product at X.
He claims that a “dormant ad account“ of the European Commission was used to publish information about the decision to fine the social network, and the link attached to it was disguised as a video in order to “mislead users and artificially increase reach“.
Bire called this situation ironic. “You seem to believe that the rules should not apply to your account. "Your ad account has been deleted," he wrote on X.
As EC spokesman Thomas Rainier said earlier at a briefing in Brussels, X "broke transparency standards." This, he said, included the platform's paid blue verified user badge, which was "misleading to users because it could be purchased by anyone," and X "does not carry out sufficient checks." Rainier also claimed that X's advertising policy was misleading to users and that the social network "does not provide digital data to European investigators," something the EC requires all digital companies to do under the EU's Digital Services Act.