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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.

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From Verification to Monetisation

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 an...