Elon Musk's X is refusing to hand over data to French authorities, claiming it's defending its users' free speech and privacy while branding a criminal investigation into alleged algorithm manipulation as "politically motivated."
In a post on Monday, X's Global Government Affairs account denied the allegations, insisting the French investigation "egregiously undermines X’s fundamental right to due process and threatens our users’ rights to privacy and free speech."
Preparing to fight the allegedly improper data grab, X accused a French politician, Eric Bothorel, of sparking the probe due to his supposed fears that X was manipulating its algorithm to influence French users' political views. Earlier this month, Politico reported that French authorities suspected X of amplifying hateful, racist, and homophobic content.
To figure out if X was intentionally pulling the strings for nefarious purposes on its discovery engine, French authorities "requested access to X’s recommendation algorithm and real-time data about all user posts on the platform in order for several 'experts' to analyze the data and purportedly 'uncover the truth' about the operation of the X platform," X said.
But X appears to have garbled some of the facts in its rush to reject the request, which may cast doubt on the alleged bias. Most glaringly, X seems to insist that Bothorel alone "instigated" the probe, while the Paris Prosecutor's Office said in its January press release that the investigation was prompted by "two reports from a Member of Parliament and a senior official of a French public institution."
Additionally, X identified two allegedly biased experts as supposedly primed to analyze the X data to supposedly help rig the probe, and at least one of them has denied any involvement.