The order went out to the people who speak for the European Commission: stop buying ads on X. The decision, recorded in an internal note seen by the Brussels Playbook newsletter, rests on “widespread concerns relating to the spread of disinformation,” and it lands on the Elon Musk-owned platform at an already delicate moment.
Deputy Chief Spokesperson Dana Spinant told the institution’s heads of service and directors general that disinformation on X, above all around the Israel-Hamas war, had led her department to “recommend to temporarily suspend advertising on this platform until further notice to avoid risks of reputational damage to the Commission.” The Commission’s own profile pages on X stay open; what stops is the paid promotion. In her note, the department says it “will consider using alternative platforms (e.g. LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook) or digital advertising on websites, as appropriate. We are also exploring new platforms to diversify our social media presence.”
The legal backdrop matters. X answers to the Digital Services Act, the bloc’s new content moderation law, and the Commission is its enforcer. In October the company received a formal request for information asking how its management of illegal content and false material linked to Hamas’ October 7 attack complies with that regime. A regulator that questions the platform’s conduct in public, then quietly buys visibility on it, was living in tension; that tension is now resolved in favour of withdrawal.
The human side carries an awkward twist, because the Commission was recently in trouble over its own X advertising. POLITICO reported this month that its home affairs department paid for ads in September aimed at user groups sorted by religion and politics, among them audiences labelled “anti-Christian”, plus people interested in Giorgia Meloni or in the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin. That campaign promoted the contested proposal to scan platforms for child sexual abuse material, which critics say would violate privacy and effectively break encrypted communications. Spinant’s note warns services that ads targeting profiles by sensitive personal data would breach the DSA itself, adding: “It is essential that our advertising respects scrupulously the spirit and the letter of the rules that we seek to enforce as regulator for very large online platforms,” the official wrote.
For the staff who run the institution’s communications, the change is procedural, a shuffle of budgets toward friendlier channels. For the regulator, it is a public act of living by the rules it polices, and until further notice, an unresolved investigation carries on underneath. X did not reply to a request for comment.
Sources
- No more ads on Elon’s X, EU Commission tells staff – POLITICO
- European Commission to Freeze Ads on X
