In a turn of events that would be funny if it were not actually happening, the US Department of Justice has filed a brief supporting Elon Musk’s challenge to a €120 million ($130 million) EU fine. The European Union’s crime? Saying that X deceives users by selling blue verification ticks without actually verifying who owns the accounts.
Let’s sit with this for a moment. The US government — the same government that spends time worrying about actual monopolies, actual fraud, actual national security — has decided that a blue checkmark on a social media platform is worth defending in international court. Not worth defending in the sense of “this is a legitimate business model,” but worth defending in the sense of “the EU is tyrannically oppressing a guy who sold fake authenticity for $8 a month.”
The EU’s position is simple: if you charge money for a badge that supposedly means “this account is real,” you should probably verify that the account is real. Revolutionary thinking, apparently. X’s response, backed now by Washington, seems to be that blue ticks are a form of expression, a digital accessory, a vibe — anything but what they actually are, which is a deliberately confusing product sold to people desperate for social validation.
The real absurdity is not that Musk is fighting the fine. It’s that the US government has decided he is the underdog here. Somewhere in an EU office, bureaucrats are probably laughing while sipping espresso, realizing they have successfully turned the world’s richest man into a sympathetic figure in American eyes. That takes actual talent.