X Claims It Banned the European Fee’s Advert Account. It Says It Wasn’t Utilizing Advertisements

On Saturday, X says it slapped the European Fee with a ban on its X advert account over what it has deemed a rule violation. Coincidentally sufficient, the European Fee had just slapped that social media platform with a fine of about $140 Million a day earlier for alleged deceptiveness and lack of transparency, and for allegedly withholding obligatory knowledge disclosures.

However the European Fee says it doesn’t pay for adverts on X anyway—a Fee coverage that has stood for over two years.

In response to an X submit by X head of product Nikita Bier, the European Commission’s tweet announcing the fine was itself misleading. Bier says there’s an exploit within the X advert composer, and that the European Fee used it “to submit a hyperlink that deceives customers into considering it’s a video and to artificially improve its attain.”

The irony of your announcement:

You logged into your dormant advert account to make the most of an exploit in our Advert Composer — to submit a hyperlink that deceives customers into considering it’s a video and to artificially improve its attain.

As it’s possible you’ll bear in mind, X believes everybody ought to… https://t.co/ziuhUOimOT

— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier) December 6, 2025

The European Fee’s submit does have a video in it:

In the present day, we fined X for non-compliance with transparency obligations beneath the DSA.

We’re holding X accountable for:
🔹Misleading design of its ‘blue checkmark’
🔹Lack of transparency of its promoting repository
🔹Failure to offer entry to public knowledge for researchers

↓

— European Fee (@EU_Commission) December 5, 2025

Nevertheless, a Fee spokesperson identified to Gizmodo that the European Fee announced a policy of not advertising on X back in 2023, in addition to a suspension of all different paid companies. “The suspension nonetheless applies,” the spokesperson stated.

The European Fee’s submit has what seems to be an overlaid play button firstly, nevertheless it autoplays a video—and that is no totally different from the moderately puzzling method video posts on X appear to work in regular circumstances, similar to in this video post from Kawasaki. In our assessments, on desktop the play/pause perform implied by the play button picture on the Fee’s submit works usually.

On cellular, nevertheless, the play/pause perform is damaged in our assessments. As a substitute of pausing the video, it takes the consumer to the European Commission’s press release about its fine against X. It’s not clear whether or not or not that is the difficulty that considerations X’s Nikita Bier. Gizmodo reached out to X for readability about this a number of instances, however has not heard again.

In response to the Fee spokesperson, “The Fee is just utilizing the instruments that platforms themselves are making accessible to our company accounts – this was the case with the ‘Publish Composer’ software in X.” Post Composer is an advertising-oriented characteristic that lives beneath the “X Enterprise” umbrella.

⁠”We anticipate these instruments to be absolutely in step with the platforms’ personal phrases and situations, in addition to with our legislative framework,” the spokesperson stated.

When requested, the Fee didn’t make clear the way it was accessing Publish Composer if it was not paying for premium options, nor if it nonetheless has entry to them after the ban Bier claims he issued. The Fee’s X account has a grey checkmark, which is the verification badge for “governments and multilateral organizations.” According to X, “A few of these accounts could also be subscribed to Premium Organizations.” Two months in the past, X added further complexity to this by subdividing Premium Organizations into “Premium Enterprise” and “Premium Organizations.”

At any price, the Fee spokesperson claimed of their remark that the Fee “all the time makes use of all social media platforms in good religion.”

If Gizmodo receives additional readability both from the Fee or X, we’ll replace this submit.