French headquarters of Elon Musk’s X raided by Paris cybercrime unit

[ad_1] Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the corporate’s former chief government for questioning as a part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.

“A search is beneath approach by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s workplace, the nationwide police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ workplace mentioned in a post on X on Tuesday , including that it could now not be publishing on the community.

It mentioned in a press release that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for “voluntary questioning” in April of their capability as “de facto and de jure managers of the X platform on the time of the occasions”. Yaccarino resigned as chief government of X in July final yr.

The French prosecutors’ announcement comes amid a hardening of European attitudes to social media giants. A senior supply within the Greek authorities instructed Reuters on Tuesday the nation was “very shut” to asserting a social media ban for youngsters aged beneath 15.

In Spain, the place the federal government is making ready a sequence of measures together with a social media ban for under-16s, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, promised to guard kids from the “digital wild west” and maintain tech corporations accountable for hateful and dangerous content material.

Sánchez mentioned on Tuesday that pressing motion was wanted as a result of social media was a “failed state the place legal guidelines are ignored and crimes are tolerated”.

The Paris raid is a part of an investigation launched in January final yr into the suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent knowledge extraction, which the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned it had widened to cowl complaints about X’s synthetic intelligence software, Grok.

It mentioned the alleged offences it was investigating now included complicity within the possession and organised distribution of kid abuse pictures, violation of picture rights by sexualised deepfakes, and denial of crimes towards humanity.

Different potential prices included fraudulent knowledge extraction from, and falsified operation of, an automatic knowledge processing system by an organised group, and operation of an unlawful on-line platform by an organised group, the assertion mentioned.

French authorities launched the investigation after the centre-right MP Éric Bothorel filed a criticism alleging that biased algorithms on the platform had been more likely to have distorted its knowledge processing system and affected the sort of content material it really useful.

Bothorel complained of a “lowered variety of voices” and Musk’s “private interventions” in X’s administration since he purchased it in 2022. One other criticism mentioned the modifications had led to a surge in “nauseating political content material”.

Prosecutors mentioned in November that they had been increasing the investigation to incorporate the behaviour of Grok, which allegedly engaged in Holocaust denial , advancing false claims generally made by individuals who deny Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews.

The chatbot has since precipitated outrage by permitting customers to “strip” clothed folks, together with kids, in photographs by AI picture era and modifying. The EU has launched an investigation into its manufacturing and dissemination of sexualised deepfakes of ladies and minors.

X has been approached for touch upon Tuesday’s raid. The corporate said last summer it didn't intend to adjust to French prosecutors’ calls for, which it described as “politically motivated”, and denied all allegations towards it.

X mentioned it believed the investigation was “distorting French regulation to serve a political agenda, and in the end limit free speech”. It mentioned it was dedicated to “defending its basic rights, defending person knowledge and resisting political censorship”.

The Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned on Tuesday that the investigation was being carried out as “a part of a constructive strategy, with the purpose of in the end making certain that the X platform complies with French legal guidelines, insofar because it operates on nationwide territory”.

Regardless of being described as voluntary, the summonses issued to Musk and Yaccarino are necessary, however they're exhausting to implement on folks exterior France . Afterwards, authorities can probably place suspects in custody.

Europol mentioned it supported the investigation by its European cybercrime centre and deployed a specialist to Paris for the raid. “The investigation issues a variety of suspected prison offences linked to the functioning and use of the platform,” it mentioned.

These included “the dissemination of unlawful content material and different types of on-line prison exercise”, the pan-European policing organisation mentioned, including that it “stands able to proceed supporting the French authorities because the investigation progresses”.