The probe is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant.
rench prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference.”
Magistrate Laure Beccuau said in a statement Friday that prosecutors had launched the probe on Wednesday and were looking into whether the social media giant broke French law by altering its algorithms and fraudulently extracting data from users.
The criminal investigation comes on the heels of an inquiry launched in January, and is based on complaints from a lawmaker and an unnamed senior civil servant, Beccuau said.
A complaint that sparked the initial January inquiry accused X of spreading “an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”
POLITICO has reached out to X for comment.
The investigation lands as X is increasingly under fire from regulators in Paris and Brussels.
Two French parliamentarians referred the platform to France’s digital regulator Arcom on Thursday following anti-Semitic and racist posts by Grok, the artificial-intelligence chatbot that answers questions from X users.
The European Commission has separately been investigating the Musk-owned platform for almost two years now, on suspicion of breaching its landmark platforms regulation, the Digital Services Act.
Chinese hackers breached the US government office that reviews foreign investments for national security risks, three US officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
The theft, which has not previously been reported, underscores Beijing’s keen interest in spying on a US government office that has broad powers to block Chinese investment in the US as tensions between the world’s two superpowers remain high.
The breach was part of a broader incursion by the hackers into the Treasury Department’s unclassified system. The office targeted by the hackers, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), in December gained greater authority to scrutinize real estate sales near US military bases. US lawmakers and national security officials have grown increasingly worried that the Chinese government or its proxies could use land acquisitions to spy on those bases.
Declaration by the Minister for Foreign Affairs on behalf of the Belgian Government urging Chinese authorities to take action against malicious cyber activities undertaken by Chinese actors.
