Musk’s X deemed too small for EU crackdown on big tech’s power

Elon Musk’s social media platform X is set to avoid being hit by a landmark European Union law aimed at reining in tech giants after watchdogs decided the platform’s impact on EU markets is too small, Report informs referring to Bloomberg.

The EU’s executive arm is nearing the end of a probe into the platform previously known as Twitter, and is poised to conclude that it does not fall under its Digital Markets Act, according to people familiar with the matter.

X will dodge the DMA’s raft of dos and don’ts because it isn’t a powerful enough service for business users and doesn’t meet certain revenue thresholds, according to the people, who spoke under condition of anonymity. They added that the European Commission is likely to publish its findings in October.

The DMA lays out a series of dos and don’ts for the likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google Search, Apple Inc.’s Safari, Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook among others. It’s intended to head off competition violations by tech firms before they take root and fines for violations can be up to 10% of global revenue, or as much as 20% in the case of repeated breaches.

The law targets firms with annual sales across the 27-nation EU of at least 7.5 billion euros ($8.3 billion) or a market capitalization of 75 billion euros and above. Platform services are also required to have more than 45 million monthly active end-users and more than 10,000 yearly active business users in the EU.