The European Commission just dropped a bombshell on AliExpress, hitting the online retail giant with a fine topping $625 million — by far the steepest penalty handed out yet under the bloc's Digital Services Act, and a figure that instantly reshapes how seriously Brussels intends to police the digital marketplace.

Regulators didn't mince words in their press release, accusing AliExpress of failing to "diligently assess and mitigate risks relating to the sale of illegal, unsafe, or counterfeit products on its e-commerce platform" — a finding that cuts to the heart of consumer trust online.

Moderators Given Seconds To Catch Dangerous Products

What investigators uncovered paints a picture of a safety net stretched dangerously thin. Not only had the company skimped on staffing teams dedicated to scrubbing counterfeit and hazardous items from its platform, it had also — whether by design or neglect — made life remarkably easy for bad actors trying to slip past the gates.

Consider this: some content moderators were reportedly given just "tens of seconds" to decide whether a flagged product cleared EU safety standards, according to a Guardian report — barely enough time to glance at a listing, let alone scrutinize it. The fallout was predictable. The EC said it "found millions of products that reappeared online" after being pulled, with some items lingering "for longer than a month" before facing removal again.

A System Riddled With Exploitable Gaps

Sellers looking to dodge scrutiny reportedly found an easy workaround: simply mislabeling their products into categories requiring fewer checks, allowing dangerous goods to slide through with minimal resistance — a crack in the wall wide enough for plenty of bad actors to walk right through.

Enforcement That Rarely Bit Back

The odds of facing real consequences appeared stacked in sellers' favor. The EC determined that AliExpress's mandatory brand authorization system was both weak and understaffed, and that the company routinely failed to penalize traders caught selling illegal goods, despite policies promising otherwise.

Compounding the problem, the EC found that AliExpress "inadequately assessed how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products." Instead of filtering dangerous items out of view, the platform's own algorithms were often pushing them directly into shoppers' feeds — actively amplifying exposure rather than limiting it.

EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen underscored just how many people this touches, noting that one in five Europeans shop monthly on platforms like AliExpress, Temu, and Shein — a reach that turns platform failures into widespread consumer risk.

Flawed Metrics Masked The True Scale Of The Problem

AliExpress reportedly leaned on one narrow quantitative metric to judge how well it was catching illegal listings — and that single yardstick badly undersold the real damage. EC testing revealed "a high volume of illegal products," ranging from unsafe toys to dangerous cosmetics, "continued to circulate despite AliExpress' moderation efforts."

A Warning Ignored

This penalty didn't come out of nowhere. Back in June 2025, regulators had already ordered AliExpress to bring its platform in line with DSA requirements — an order the company failed to follow through on, according to the EC. That failure to course-correct appears to have weighed heavily on the size of the eventual fine, which the EC calibrated to reflect what it called "particularly serious infringements" and AliExpress's sluggish response to known risks.

Eclipsing Earlier DSA Penalties

The scale of the AliExpress $625M EU fine dwarfs previous enforcement actions against other major platforms, cementing it as the DSA's most aggressive penalty to date.

X And Temu Paved The Way

Last December, X became the first platform to fall under the DSA's hammer, fined nearly $140 million after Elon Musk turned blue checkmarks into a paid feature rather than genuine identity verification. Regulators found the shift made it easier to mislead users, noting the DSA "clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place."

Temu followed with a fine exceeding $225 million, after evidence showed EU shoppers were highly likely to stumble across illegal products while browsing the platform.

AliExpress Fires Back, Plans Appeal

AliExpress didn't take the ruling quietly. The company told Ars Technica it was "surprised" by what it described as a "disproportionate" penalty, and confirmed plans to appeal — arguing the EC brushed aside its "sound risk management framework and the significant, proactive enhancements we have made."

The company also pointed out that its European operations are considerably smaller than its business in China, insisting it dedicates "substantial resources in risk assessment and mitigation, product safety and consumer protection" and remains "committed to meeting our obligations to consumers."

Brussels Isn't Buying The Scale Defense

Virkkunen wasn't swayed. Speaking Sunday, she made clear that size offers no shield from accountability. "The spread of counterfeit clothing, unsafe toys, dangerous cosmetics and other illegal and harmful products is not an unavoidable cost of shopping online—it is a failure by AliExpress to comply with its obligations under the Digital Services Act," Virkkunen said. "Scale is not an excuse; risks must be identified and addressed systematically to ensure consumers can safely shop online."

With an appeal now looming, the AliExpress $625M EU fine sends an unmistakable signal across the entire e-commerce industry: in Brussels' eyes, being too big to properly police your own platform is no longer a viable excuse.