Musk’s X Fined as EU Escalates Free-Speech Clash With US (1)

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 it failed to properly set up an advertising repository. The fine wasn’t based on the revenues of Musk’s vast private business empire in space, infrastructure ...