X's depressing advertising revenue helps Musk circumvent the EU's strictest antitrust laws

After an investigation, Elon Musk's X has won its battle to avoid gatekeeper status under the European Union's strict competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

On Wednesday, the European Commission (EC) announced that “X does not in fact qualify as a gatekeeper in relation to its online social networking service, as the investigation has shown that X is not an important gateway for business users to reach end users .”

Since March,

A gatekeeper is considered to have a significant influence on the internal market if it has an annual Union turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros in each of the last three financial years, the lawsuit says. But

During Musk's tenure at Twitter/X, both advertising revenue and user numbers in the EU steadily declined, the social networking company told the European Commission. In particular, “X Ads has a too small and declining share of advertising spending in the Union to represent an important gateway to the online advertising market,” X argued, further pointing out that X “lacks platform power.” “To change that soon.

“Over the last 15 months, X Ads has faced a decline in the number of commercial advertising users as well as a drop in prices,” X argued.