enforcement action European Union enforcement 8/10
Government · European AI Office

The European Commission has accepted X’s action plan addressing its breaches of the Digital Services Act regarding transparency and researcher data access. Following a December 2025 fine, X committed to improving its advertising repository and providing free, effective data access to eligible researchers, including allowing scraping of public data. X must implement these measures and submit an independent audit within six months.

Action required

X must implement an action plan within six months to improve transparency regarding its advertising repository and provide researchers with effective, free access to public data, followed by an independent audit.

Binding status

binding

Governing body

European Commission

Direction

restrictive

Innovation impact

mixed

Enforcement details

Agency

European Commission

Compliance requirements

Required disclosures

  • Publish more information about advertisements
  • Transparency into X's systems for researchers and public

Prohibited practices

  • Contractually prohibiting eligible researchers to scrape public data

Audit requirements

  • Independent external audit to assess changes
  • Submit audit results to the Commission
  • Fully implement audit recommendations

Transparency requirements

  • Improve advertising repository with better search features and faster response times
  • Publish more information about advertisements
  • Enable access to advertising repository via an API
  • Give eligible researchers effective access to public data by improving and speeding up the screening process for applications
  • Give access to data free-of-charge
  • Update terms to refrain from contractually prohibiting eligible researchers to scrape public data

Affected industries

technologymedia entertainmentadvertising

Affected roles

compliance officergeneral counselproduct managerboard directorengineering

Cross-references

Cites laws

Digital Services Act

"The approved measures represent an important step in enabling researchers, civil society and the public in general to gain more transparency into X’s systems, in particular to monitor X’s systemic risks and to assess the platform’s broader impact on its users and European society as a whole."

Enriched 2026-07-17

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