Elon Musk Has Made X a Threat to Democracy and His War on the EU Proves It
Read our Digital & Print Editions
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
In December 2025, the European Commission fined X €120 million under its new Digital Services Act (DSA) – the EU’s flagship online safety law, which requires the biggest platforms to be transparent about how they amplify, advertise and police content. It was the first ever non‑compliance ruling under the DSA, and it focused on three design choices at the heart of Elon Musk’s version of X: a deceptive paid blue‑check system, an opaque advertising archive, and the platform’s decision to shut out researchers.
Those are not abstract compliance failures. They are exactly the structural weaknesses that covert foreign influence operations have been exploiting on X.
The recent exposure of covert foreign influence via imposter accounts on X is jarring enough as it is, but a closer look reveals an even more concerning reality: these accounts did not flourish in spite of the platform’s policies, but because of them.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he promised a new era of “free speech,” an end to bots, and a more transparent information ecosystem. Instead, the platform he renamed “X” has become a near-perfect environment for foreign-run political influence operations.
While these problems predate Musk, the architecture he built – notably the monetisation of engagement, the destruction of identity verification, aggressive cuts to trust and safety, and a recommendation system that amplifies right-wing outrage – has turned X into one of the most permissive, profitable, and low-risk environments in the world for foreign operators seeking to infiltrate US political discourse.
With the recent revelations about foreign-run MAGA and “patriot” accounts, we now have the clearest evidence yet that Musk’s policy changes are facilitating – and in some cases, even monetising – foreign influence and disinformation.
EXCLUSIVE
The Epstein files expose how racial hierarchy, genetic “optimisation” and even climate-driven population culling circulated inside Big Tech circles
Nafeez Ahmed
From Verification to Monetisation
Before Musk, verification was flawed but still meaningful. It required proof of identity, deterred impersonation, and gave users a way to distinguish real people from impostors. Musk destroyed that system in one move, turning verification into an $8/month badge with no identity checks.
Suddenly, the perception of legitimacy associated with the checkmark was available to anyone willing to pay a small amount of money. Among the recently-exposed fake MAGA accounts, many were willing to do just that. In a sample of 22 of the most influential foreign-run fake MAGA accounts, nearly all (19 accounts, or 86%) have a blue checkmark, indicating that they are paying to be Premium users and therefore are eligible to apply to participate in X’s content monetisation program, which allows influencer accounts to earn money from their content based on the levels of engagement they receive from other Premium users.
Accounts with Premium subscriptions also get algorithmic priority, which in practice means their posts have greater reach and higher engagement than non-Premium users – so more people see their posts and more money can be made based on their greater reach.
The engagement-based monetisation system introduced by Musk incentivises outrage bait, disinformation, and other problematic content that large numbers of people react to and engage with. Under this unprecedented scheme, anyone, anywhere in the world, can profit from divisive or false content designed to drive wedges between Americans and Europeans, with no regard for things like quality or truthfulness. It’s no coincidence that the fake MAGA accounts posted frequently about hot-button topics like immigration, isolationism, and culture war issues.
These same design choices are now at the centre of the EU’s €120 million penalty, which found that X’s paid blue‑check system misleads users about who is “verified”, exposes people to impersonation and scams, and undermines transparency around political and issue‑based advertising.
Dismantling Trust and Safety
In addition to dismantling the verification system and creating a monetisation scheme that rewards disinformation and divisive content, Musk also disbanded Twitter’s trust and safety teams – those responsible for detecting and preventing things like election interference, platform manipulation, foreign influence, and coordinated inauthentic activity. Former staff warned publicly that slashing these teams would “embolden malicious actors.”
And it appears that it did just that: Looking at the same sample of 22 accounts, all were created in the past 3 years (after Musk bought Twitter), and all but one were created in the time period after Musk dismantled the trust and safety team and rolled out the content monetisation system.
As a result of Musk’s leadership, these foreign-run impostor accounts didn’t have to infiltrate X by stealth. They walked in through the front door, because no one was left working security.
The Reform leader recently used media interviews to back Christopher Harborne’s company while promising to cut taxes and regulations on crypto firms
Adam Bienkov
Blind Spots
On top of that, Musk also made the decision to severely restrict API access and dismantle partnerships with outside researchers and civil society groups. These were the people and organisations that identified Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence operations on the old Twitter. Under Musk, they were locked out, with limited access to the data needed to detect such activity.
As a result, it became nearly impossible to study influence operations at scale, creating a huge blind spot when it comes to detection. That blind spot helps to explain how the recently-exposed, foreign-run impostor accounts managed to build audiences and push content for years without detection. Their success wasn’t due to the sophistication of the operation, but rather a lack of oversight and enforcement on the platform.
That blind spot has now been formally called out in law. In its enforcement decision, the European Commission concluded that X’s refusal to provide vetted researchers with meaningful access to public data breaches the DSA’s transparency rules and “undermines research into systemic risks” such as disinformation and foreign interference.
A Culture of Permissiveness
In addition to rolling out new policies and dismantling the trust and safety teams, Musk also used his large platform to change the culture on X. He has repeatedly mocked efforts to curb disinformation and malign foreign influence, along with reinstating accounts that were previously banned for violating platform rules around hate speech, extremism, and mis- and disinformation.
Looking at his content on X, Musk has posted about what he calls the “Russia hoax” at least a dozen times, suggesting that he doesn’t even view foreign influence as a legitimate problem. In dozens of other posts, Musk has also downplayed the existence of disinformation and ridiculed those warning about it, often referring to anti-disinformation efforts as “censorship.” This sends a message of permissiveness to bad actors – and based on what we’re learning about foreign influence on the platform, that message appears to have been received.
Musk’s response to the EU’s action has followed the same script, denouncing the €120 million fine as an attack on “free speech”, lashing out at “woke” European bureaucrats and even calling for the EU to be abolished, rather than engaging with the specific findings on deception and transparency.
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
We’re not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
Fuel on the Fire
To date, Musk has responded to the revelations not with contrition or reform – but with defiance. In the wake of the European Commission’s €120 million fine for breaches of transparency and content regulation under the Digital Services Act (DSA), he publicly called for the abolition of the European Union, framing the ruling as an assault on “free speech.”
Meanwhile, US officials including Marco Rubio have backed his stance – describing the fine as an “attack on all American tech platforms and the American people.”
The vast majority of exposed accounts remain operational. It’s unclear how many other impostor accounts exist – and given the continued restrictions on data access for independent researchers, it seems unlikely we’ll ever get a full picture. At this point, there is no sign that Musk or X intend to take effective action to prevent further foreign-run influence operations – and indeed their publicly declared hostility to regulation suggests the opposite.
Ultimately, this is not just a story about a mismanaged platform. It is a warning about what happens when the infrastructure of American political discourse is handed to someone who refuses to admit to the vulnerabilities that hostile foreign actors are all too willing to exploit.
The foreign-run impostor accounts recently exposed did not sneak past X’s defenses – because they didn’t have to. They got away with this because under Musk’s leadership, those defences no longer even exist.
Comments (0)