Toxic Tuesday - the day the war of words around social media and AI regulation between the US and Europe hit a new low - as Musk screams victimisation on X!

The divide between the US and Europe when it comes to AI regulation has long been an issue. Recent weeks have seen that situation worsen as the Trump 2.0 administration hit out on various geo-political fronts. 

But it’s safe to say that things struck a new low yesterday as various authorities in three countries in Europe took action Elon Musk’s X just as US legislators paranoia over the EU's supposed bad intent boiled over into a damning public condemnation of hostile practice.

The European Union - set up deliberately to undermine the US, according to current MAGA wisdom - had already opened a formal investigation into X after it was revealed that Grok was able to generate hugely inappropriate sexualised deep fake images. Governments across Europe condemned this and demanded the vendor take action, while Musk himself screamed censorship at being told what to do, before having to back down and put more safeguards in place.

But the EU is still looking into whether X is doing enough after also fining it €120 million. It had already imposed massive fines for non-compliance with the requirements of its wide-ranging Digital Services Act. That process is ongoing, but on Tuesday incidents occurred separately at a national level that inevitably make relations between Europe and the US worse.

France

In France, prosecutors, with the support of Europol, raided the Paris offices of X as part of a preliminary investigation into allegations including the spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes. Prosecutors have also summoned Musk for questioning on 20 April. He has not said whether he will comply with this request. 

Prior to this, the French authorities were investigating Grok alleged generation of posts that smacked of Holocaust denial, a crime in France. Prosecutors are now looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.

Of the raid, X's Global Government Affairs team said in a statement: 

We are disappointed by this development, but we are not surprised. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s office widely publicized the raid—making clear that today’s action was an abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives rather than advance legitimate law enforcement goals rooted in the fair and impartial administration of justice.

The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office is plainly attempting to exert pressure on X’s senior management in the United States by targeting our French entity and employees, who are not the focus of this investigation. The Prosecutor’s Office has ignored the established procedural mechanisms to obtain evidence in compliance with international treaties and X’s rights to defend itself. These procedural mechanisms are well known and used on a daily basis by judicial authorities around the world.

The allegations underlying today’s raid are baseless and X categorically denies any wrongdoing. Today’s staged raid reinforces our conviction that this investigation distorts French law, circumvents due process, and endangers free speech. X is committed to defending its fundamental rights and the rights of its users. We will not be intimidated by the actions of French judicial authorities today.

Now, some important points of clarification for non-European readers. While main man Musk predictably screamed out on X that this was “a political attack”, this is not directly down to the Macron government or the EU coming on all heavy-handed. In France, the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches stand alone, with prosecutors and the courts acting independently from political authority, with this independence enshrined in the French Constitution.

Of course, that’s not stopping apologists screaming ‘Free speech under attack!’:

The UK

Meanwhile across the English Channel, the UK’s data regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO), launched its own investigation into X and xAI to look into compliance with personal data protection regulations, stating:

The reported creation and circulation of such content raises serious concerns under UK data protection law and presents a risk of significant potential harm to the public.

It added:

The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualised images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this.

This latest development comes after a separate investigation into Grok was launched last month by UK media regulator, Ofcom. It contacted X on 5 January to give the firm an opportunity to explain how sexual deep fakes of real people, including children, had been shared on the platform. That is ongoing, says Ofcom:

In our investigation into X, we are currently gathering and analysing evidence to determine whether X has broken the law, including using our formal information-gathering powers. The week after we launched our investigation, we sent legally binding information requests to X, to make sure we have the information we need from the company, and further requests continue to be sent. 

The regulator added Monday that it is not investigating xAI “at this time, but warned:

When we opened our investigation into X, we said we were assessing whether we should also investigate xAI, as the provider of the standalone Grok service. We continue to demand answers from xAI about the risks it poses. We are examining whether to launch an investigation into its compliance with the rules requiring services that publish pornographic material to use highly effective age checks to prevent children from accessing that content.  

Spain

Finally on the European front, the Spanish Government took decisive action against social media platforms in general, citing X and Musk for particular attention. At the World Governments Summit, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said:

Social media has become a failed state, a place where laws are ignored and where disinformation is worth more than truth...The owner of X, himself a migrant, used his personal account to amplify disinformation about the sovereign decision of my government to regularize 500,000 migrants who live, work, and contribute to the success of our country.

He added:

Social media companies are wealthier and more powerful than many nations, including mine. But their might and power should not scare us because our determination is greater than their pockets.

To back up his words, he announced a five point action plan to kick in next week:

First, we will change the law in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for many infringements taking place on their sites.

Second, we will turn algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content into a new criminal offense.

Third, we will implement a hate and polarization footprint system to track, quantify, and expose how digital platforms fuel division and amplify hate.

Fourth, Spain will ban access to social media for minors under the age of 16. Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems — not just checkboxes, but real barriers that work.

Fifth and last, my government will work with our public prosecutor to investigate and pursue the infringement committed by Grok, TikTok, and Instagram.

That's what you call fighting talk! 

Meanwhile back in the US....

All of this happened on the same day that the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee published an interim report into what it called The Foreign Censorship Threat in which it openly accuses the EU of conducting a multi-year campaign to undermine US tech firms and attack general freedom of speech through oppressive regulation designed to achieve global online narrative control.

If that sounds totally paranoid, well, that’s because it is. You can read the whole report here, but among the ‘highlights’ is the claim that:

The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States. Though often framed as combating so-called ‘hate speech’ or ‘dis-information’, the European Commission worked to censor true information and political speech about some of the most important policy debates in recent history—including the COVID-19 pandemic, mass migration, and transgender issues. After ten years, the European Commission has established sufficient control of global online speech to comprehensively suppress narratives that threaten the European Commission’s power.

All of this Machiavellian manoeuvring by Europe is, it seems, directly infringing on American online speech in the US:

Most major social media or video sharing platforms are based in the United States and have a single, global set of rules governing what content can or cannot be posted on the site. These rules set the boundary for what discourse is allowed in the modern town square, making them a key pressure point for regulators seeking narrative control to tighten their grip on political power. Critically, platform content moderation rules are—and effectively must be—global in scope. Country-by-country content moderation is a significant privacy threat, requiring platforms to know and store each user’s specific location every time he or she logs on.

The internet is global, and platforms govern themselves accordingly. That means that when European regulators pressure social media companies to change their content moderation rules, it affects what Americans can say and see online in the United States. European censorship laws affecting content moderation rules are therefore a direct threat to US free speech.

And despite the nefarious intent of the beastly Eurocrats having been 'exposed' by US legislators, they show no sign of cleaning up their act, according to the US politicos, with the European “censorship threat” showing no signs of abating:

The European Commission is trying to circumvent democratic processes to strong-arm every EU country into adopting its expansive definition of ‘hate speech’, which would trigger additional censorship obligations pursuant to the DSA. And Europe is trying to export these wrongheaded laws and initiatives—sometimes even here in the United States.

The Committee’s investigation is ongoing, so there’s more of this to come at some point:

The European Commission’s extraterritorial actions under the Digital Services Act directly infringe on American sovereignty and directly harm American free speech in the United States. The Committee will continue to conduct oversight to inform legislative solutions that defend against and effectively counter this existential risk to a fundamental American right: the right to free expression.

What comes next? Who knows. But the interim report has been welcomed by the Trump 2.0 administration with Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Sarah B. Rogers, praising:

Bracing, diligent work here by House Judiciary, corroborating what we already know: companies censor American users to appease foreign safetyism.

As for Musk, he took this turbulent Tuesday about as well as you might imagine, with his usual considered response on X and all the grace and maturity we've come to expect from him:

My take

Someone, somewhere, somehow has to sit everyone down and bang heads together, but that someone remains completely unidentified at this point. So there will be more and more and more of this toxic combination of paranoia, heavy-handed regulation, and lack of responsibility on the part of social media platform providers.  Meanwhile Musk will continue to play the victim and scream and shout about the EU and fascism. What mood board gets picked up in the Oval Office and what that then results in in terms of more tariff tantrums and other threats remains to be seen. Overall, it all means that everyone will lose out, regardless of what side of the Pond you’re on.