Newsletter SOMI - January 14th, 2026
This is the newsletter for January 2026 from the Foundation for Market Information Research to its relations, including the participants in its actions, its sympathizers, media professionals and app users.
Jan Wed 14 2026
Happy New Year!
We hope everyone has had a strong and positive start to 2026.
As we begin the new year, we would like to reflect on some key milestones from 2025, a year of significant growth and expansion for SOMI. In 2025, we branched out beyond the Netherlands and Belgium, extending our reach across Europe.
In February 2025, we filed two collective damage claims in Germany against TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). In June, we filed a collective damage claim against Meta in Belgium, as well as a cease-and-desist claim in Germany regarding Meta’s AI training practices. This momentum continued in August, when we filed a cease-and-desist claim against X in France.
In September, we filed a collective damage claim against Meta in Germany and announced our forthcoming claim against Meta in Denmark during the National Consultation on Social Media and Search Engines. In November, we filed additional collective damage claims against X in Belgium and against TikTok in Italy.
To date, we have filed a total of 14 claims across five EU jurisdictions.
As of January 1, 2026, SOMI counts 430 certificate holders for the Litigation Certificates and Capital Certificates. We are deeply grateful to our participants, supporters, and our dedicated legal team for making these achievements possible.
Looking ahead to 2026, we remain committed to holding Big Tech accountable and to protecting EU citizens from the unlawful use of personal data and harmful digital products.
News
EU Commission fines X for €120 million for violations of the DSA
On December 5th, 2025, the European Commission announced a fine of €120 million to X (formerly Twitter) for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA), following formal proceedings launched in December 2023.
The violations include the deceptive design of the platform’s “blue checkmark,” which any user can pay for without thorough verification. This makes it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and the content they engage with.
X’s advertisement repository also fails to meet DSA transparency and accessibility standards due to barriers like slow processing time and lack of critical information such as ad content, topic, and the paying entity. These issues hinder researchers and the public from detecting scams, misinformation campaigns, and other online advertising risks. Additionally, X has not provided researchers with proper access to the platform’s public data.
X has 60 days to inform the Commission of measures to address the deceptive blue checkmark and 90 days to submit an action plan to resolve problems related to its ad repository and public data access for researchers.
EU Commission approves TikTok’s commitments to improve advertising transparency under the DSA
On December 5th, 2025, the European Commission announced that it has accepted TikTok’s commitments to improve advertising transparency in line with the Digital Services Act (DSA), following formal proceedings launched in February 2024.
TikTok has agreed to:
Provide the full content of each advertisement as it appears in users’ feeds.
Update its ad repository within 24 hours.
Share advertisers’ targeting criteria and aggregated audience data, enabling researchers to examine how ads are targeted and delivered.
Add more search and filtering options to make ads easier to find.
TikTok must implement these commitments as soon as possible, and no later than the deadlines agreed with the Commission, which range from 2 to 12 months.