https://www.linkedin.com/posts/global-witness_globalwitnessi...
Additionally, the underlying algo could lean toward to what causes more engagement rather than equally tailoring each party. Without having any information personally about German politics or their cultural engagement with social media, I can only anecdotally say that in America, it appears to me that the ones most engaged with social media on X are more often than not right leaning. More of the left-leaning engagement seems increasingly moving towards other outlets, such as Bluesky.
All the anger is amplified through an algorithm and you can't even say it's the algorithm's fault.
Isn't that movement because Musk changed X to increase promotion of right-wing things and decrease promotion of left-wing things?
Before Musk Twitter did promote right-wing stuff more than left-wing stuff. I don't have a cite but there was a paper published by researchers who had been given full access to internal Twitter data that showed this.
That level of right-leaning is probably the level of right-leaning you get from the natural level of engagement you get on a fairly neutral platform from right-wing people being more likely to engage than left-wing people.
You seem confused. France launched a criminal probe, whose goal is to investigate whether these types of biases reflect actual manipulation from Twitter. You are presented with evidence suggesting these biases exist. Now France is expected to look into them. Their findings will either support a criminal case, reject a criminal case, or simply not support further investigations.
> Pushing antisemitism, holocaust denial, and supremacist content is not ok, even if you argue they are only pushing extremist content for the clicks (which is a laughably bad hypothesis as Twitter's business model depends on the platform having mainstream appeal)
It is that simple. If Twitter doesn't comply with court orders like that, they will no longer be allowed to operate within France or the EU. Never ever think companies are above the law or don't have to cooperate with requests like this, that's a defeatist attitude.
I mean seriously think about the implications of your concept here. X is a worldwide service. Should X just be an information broker dealing out the details on users to any country that makes claims as nebulous as 'foreign influence'? It's a term which can be (and often is) whimsically applied to essentially anybody who happens to disagree with some regime in a given country.
Yes. A poster that specifically tries to influence a French elections with false statements is breaking French law wherever and whoever they are.
Somehow rules seem to no longer apply when we start consider them being applied against our interests. This is a big part of the reason why the 'rules based order' is now mostly just sardonic mockery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/08/india-twitte...
France, by contrast, seems to be making poorly defined and largely unfalsifiable claims about X's algorithm itself. I do not believe X would comply if a country began demanding algorithmic changes, as the main reason you'd go after the algorithm is to enact censorship with no transparency, which is very much in the spirit of contemporary French politics.
[1] - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/elon-musks-x-says-...
X already complies with Germany's ban on nazi material. If that's not an lagorithmic change, what is?
>which is very much in the spirit of contemporary French politics.
Put your own (glass)house in order. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/us-free-spee...
As for falsifiability, proving a negative is generally impossible. This is how witch trials were able to be successful. You can't really prove you aren't a witch, when the person accusing you already assumes that you are. This is why the burden of proof is on the person making accusations, as opposed to 'Let me go into your house and see if I can find anything that I might be able to use as evidence to justify my hunch that you're a witch. Ah hah, I found a dead frog! Burn the witch!'
What is the current accountability or transparency of the X algorithm?
Ah yes, Musk promised to make it public, and... it hasn't been updated in two years. https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm And clearly, the promotion of Musk's tweets on everyone's timeline is completely organic.
>This is why the burden of proof is on the person making accusations Yeah, this is all a WITCH HUNT! No justice department has ever done any investigation in the history of humanity, warrants don't exist, people are only judged by what is publicly known without police ever seizing any private material. WITCH HUNT!
Go back to truth social, mister President.
And Elon is being followed by some 220 million+ people. That's a not insubstantial chunk of the entire human race, let alone the subset of X users. It's unsurprising that his comments would end up highly promoted by most of any algorithm that significantly weights account popularity, which all do - excepting perhaps TikTok.
To get a warrant you need to present strong probable cause to a judge - not liking what is being promoted would not suffice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_TikTok_in_the_...
How about:
> Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm xAI has deleted “inappropriate” posts on X after the company’s chatbot, Grok, began praising Adolf Hitler, referring to itself as MechaHitler and making antisemitic comments in response to user queries.
[…]
> “The white man stands for innovation, grit and not bending to PC nonsense,” Grok said in a subsequent post.
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/09/grok-ai-p...
Or:
> In a series of posts – often picking up language from users or responding to their goading – Grok repeatedly abused [Polish PM] Tusk as “a fucking traitor”, “a ginger whore” and said the former European Council president was “an opportunist who sells sovereignty for EU jobs”.
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/08/musks-gro...
Or last month's
> Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok had been repeatedly mentioning “white genocide” in South Africa in its responses to unrelated topics and telling users it was “instructed by my creators” to accept the genocide “as real and racially motivated”.
* https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/elon-musk...
Freedom of speech in France (and many other countries) is not the same as the US (assuming you are from the US). Apart from the question of whether it even applies for an AI, it does not protect hate speech.
First, the far-left is _nowhere near_ as far as the far-right is (in fact, I don't think there's _any_ significant far-left representation in France: neither the Communist Party nor the France Insoumise are far-left, they're just left).
Second, you make it sound like there's a bias towards the left, which is a ridiculous point that has no ground in reality: France is _heavily_ biased towards the right. The internal and international politics are deeply right-wing and getting _more_ right-wing by the year, most successful politicians are on the right, even the so-called left-wing governments have been doing centrist or right-wing politics since 1995: the left is _weak_ in France despite popular support. So "your country has already hit that tipping point and you can't even save it because you lack the liberty to do so" is laughable: the _people in power_ are regularly indulging in hate speech.
Third, you make it sound like the hate speech law is biased to protect the left, when the reality is that hate speech almost exclusively exists on the far-right so _obviously_ it's going to affect the right more. Let's talk about concrete examples:
You'll often hear from the far-right that people of colour are fundamentally inferior to white people. That someone of a particular ethnicity is a "savage", or is uncultured. That muslims are terrorists, jews are conspiring. There's so many examples. That's all horrific hate speech that's forbidden in France. Please do give concrete examples of far-left hate speech that you hear these days that is remotely comparable, because I cannot think of any. Maybe "kill all billionaires"? Which by the way _is_ illegal, it's incitation to violence.
So yeah, some speech at the far right (not "right of center") is forbidden in France. You seem to think that's a limitation of freedom, but the minorities feel _way_ more free for it (although they're still not having a great time, hate speech still happens).
There are strict limitations on 'hate speech’, denial of the Holocaust is illegal, and there are laws still on the books (and some examples of media outlets being prosecuted for breaking those laws) around presenting drug use as a positive thing, or encouraging drug use.
You can be prosecuted as an "apologist for terrorism” should the government conclude that this is what you are doing. You can also be charged with “contempt of public officials” as people were for burning an effigy of President Macron.
In the US, as far as I know as someone who has only ever visited the country for a short time, you are allowed to hold the President in contempt, you can announce to anyone who’ll listen your ignorant, racist, Holocaust-denying opinions and not be afraid of that speech being criminalized (though there are social costs you’ll probably pay), and if you want to go on the internet and encourage people to try drugs, you can. You can support whatever side of whatever conflict around the world you like with your words and you probably won’t be breaking the law.
France’s laws around freedom of expression are strong, but they are different to those in the US and I would say offer fewer protections for citizens than the US 1st amendnment.
Defamation might be illegal in both the US and France, but I can burn an American flag and show contempt for the US President without commiting a crime the US. Do the same in the France and you don’t have the same protections for your speech.
- the bot can't work in a legal void. It's pushing messages on a public platform , someone has the responsibility for that.
- if correcting speech is enough we should all be free push whatever horrible things we want online, subsequently correct them and never face any consequences whatsoever.
Then there's some things you can say without getting into legal trouble, but you may get killed for it by those you offend.
Don't even get me started on Nazis. Their most effective tool for control over citizens was restriction of speech. The Reichstag Fire decree being exhibit A.
The far left is just as awful and the USSR's glavlit, gulag, etc were extremely effective at silencing criticism. All ever in the name of order and peace, but in truth a consolidation of power.
> Then there's some things you can say without getting into legal trouble, but you may get killed for it by those you offend.
Sure, this is why Americans have a phrase called "Live free or die". If you're not willing to die for liberty then your fear of death will be used to control you. So fuck em, say what you think.
We have freedom of religion but you can't e.g. declare "child porn" is your religion.
We have freedom of assembly but the police can disperse a crowd.
And that's the case everywhere, the US included.
etc etc etc
How sure are you about that? I mean, it is more likely that the bot overshot how it was expected to push propaganda. Musk is on record expressing disagreement with how LLMs are trained to be "politicaly-correct", which is a dog whistle for pushing extremist views.
> Again, what is the problem? I thought France had freedom of speech but maybe not?
This is a puerile and simplistic view of what freedom of speech is. You are free t speak your mind, but others around you are free from experiencing abuse and discrimination. Also, media has more responsibilities than morons running their mouth, and even those are liable for hate speech.
No, you can't have freedom of speech and forbid the of hurting someone's feelings. The very speech that needs to be protected is damningly truthful speech. I'll suffer through a million fools and idiots spouting off nonsense just so that one person who, against all popular delusion and immense social pressure, when men and women in large numbers often go mad with hysteria as if a viral fad, and with the fortitude of knowing they are correct, can appeal to society at large without fear of arrest or legal consequences. These are the ones who change history for the better. The fools are like gnats, they are quite easy to ignore and swat off. The barriers you construct to make people stay within the lines are shackles on thought itself. These barriers inevitably get reinforced by the powerful until no thinking is done at all.
> In France, a woman spent 23 hours in custody for giving French President Emmanuel Macron the middle finger. (She was acquitted after arguing she had pointed her finger in the air and not directly at the president.)
Not to be an apologist of course, just wanted to point out that it may be a sign of them being behind the curve on some technical aspects, or at least on best practice, likely on purpose. Sure they probably did some ideological meddling too.
For all the (valid) criticism on alignment/censoring, one has to acknowledge the success of the pragmatic approach from OpenAI and Anthropic. As much as we might not want to admit it, bit of censoring is kind of critical to be able to use LLMs seriously to solve real problems.
https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files...
Not sure what laws exist but it seems tricky to design a coherent legal standard around what sorts of algorithms are allowed. I'd rather just be able to choose between open-source algorithms, that way we can just not use the one that pushes {Billionaire}'s latest post to the top.
From another comment that found the statute (in French):
* https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006149839
(auto translation)
> Fraudulently accessing or maintaining access to all or part of an automated data processing system is punishable by three years' imprisonment and a fine of €100,000.
> Where this results in either the deletion or modification of data contained in the system, or an alteration of the functioning of this system, the penalty is five years' imprisonment and a fine of €150,000.
Unless I've missed something more specific lower down.
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/id/LEGISCTA000006149839
> altération du fonctionnement d’un système de traitement automatisé de données en bande organisée
Alteration/manipulation of a data processing system by an organised group of people.
> extraction frauduleuse de données d’un système de traitement automatisé de données en bande organisée
Fraudulent data extraction from a data processing system
"organised group of people" is terrible translation, it means it's in the realm of organised crime.
Deepl translation of the relevant part:
> At the heart of this investigation lies a legal innovation. Mr. Bothorel's alert is largely based on a recent analysis published on February 6 by legal scholar and law professor Michel Séjean. In the specialist journal Dalloz, he argues that under French law, distorting the operation of a recommendation algorithm on a social network can be punishable by the same penalties as computer hacking. According to this analysis, manipulating a platform's algorithm without the users' knowledge would be punishable under Article 323-2 of the French Penal Code, which punishes “hindering or distorting the operation of an automated data processing system”.
(Machine translation also)
> Obstructing or distorting the operation of an automated data processing system is punishable by five years' imprisonment and a fine of €150,000.
I would be really worried if that got applied to people working on systems they own. Take it down because of an issue? Obstruction. Make a change? Distortion.
e.g. to be convicted of trespassing, it has to be proven you knew you were trespassing, or at least that you reasonably should have known.
So no, you wouldn't be convicted because you accidentally took down your own system, etc.
At the end of the day, regardless of whether the letter of the law will allow it or not, what is clearly being investigated here, is a supposed (and somewhat documented) intent at influencing the French people through a distortion of the Twitter/X algorithm.
Until now, all the "social media" platforms have essentially been regulated like hosting services, under the assumption that they have a fairly neutral stance toward the content they host. Hence they're not directly held responsible for what they display.
But if it turns out their algorithms aren't so neutral, it begs the question of whether they should be regulated like legacy medias, hence be held responsible for what they publish.
Criminal intent probably won't be found (or without enough evidence), so this investigation won't result in a lawsuit. However, depending on the findings Twitter might have to be considered as a publisher, not as an hosting platform, and this would make twitter liable for published user content.
Once Twitter is considered as a publisher, all hell break loose for other algorithm-based social media companies.
As it should. They stretched the excuse of "just hosting" past the breaking point.
* https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/07/11/france-p...
* https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/11/france-is-investigating-x-...
* FR: https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files...
What a time we live in, where things like antisemitism and supremacist views are framed as mere political inclinations that are unreasonably threatened by other people, even minorities, having rights.
I get why you are outraged, but also: inform yourself. This is exactly what even minimally competent defense does and should look like.
You're trying to imply there's some contradiction between the three statements, but there really isn't. For one, X never claimed "they've not been made aware of the allegations". The exact wording used in the article was "it “remains in the dark” about the specific allegations", which is different than not being aware of the allegations at all. Moreover it's not contradictory to deny allegations that you're not aware of the specifics about. For instance, if someone accused you of saying a racist thing, but didn't reference a specific incident, it'd be pretty reasonable to both claim you're "in the dark about the specific allegations", and to deny it. It'd also be reasonable to claim it's politically motivated, if for instance it was coming from someone you had beef with.
(In other words: prove it. I get as many counterexamples as my lawyers can dream .)
Robert T. McGraw, Criminal Law: The Use of Inconsistent Defenses, 26 Marq. L. Rev. 167 (1942).
Offering inconsistent defense has got to be thing in France, particularly during criminal prosecution.
The French legal system has been completely revamped by Napoleon far after the US independence, and has been so successful that countries invaded by Napoleon have retained his system after being freed from him.
Meanwhile the us system is still based on a mediaeval system where nothing is ever certain and everything depends on how good a lawyer you can pay.
“ French authorities have 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. One of those “experts” is David Chavalarias, who spearheads the “Escape X” campaign. Formerly known as “HelloQuitteX”, the campaign is dedicated to encouraging X users to leave the platform. A second “expert,” Maziyar Panahi, has previously participated in research projects with David Chavalarias that demonstrate open hostility towards X.”
Considering the prevalence of far right figures in politics right now then, if you're correct, I'd take that one on the chin.
Want a more balanced approach? Don't have 4chan ass kisser as your CEO.
X is one social network that indeed does not suppress some of the far right opinions. All the others social media are mostly left leaning and leaving content that is blatantly racist but targeting only one kind of people that they deemed ok to discriminate based on some crazy ideas that you cannot be racist against a majority.
Only people who have no opinion on twitter and "Roman salute" Musk should be allowed to have a look at his algorithms!
Basically it's a discovery process before a litigation. I'm 99.99% sure it won't end up in a lawsuit.
My bet is that the probe will end up saying: 'criminal intent can't be proven'. Then either the parquet (basically DOJ but less political) or customer protection will say "this probe showed that your algorithm wasn't neutral, you choose which content to show and which not show, you're a publisher now" and Twitter will have to prove it's not, or be treated as a publisher.
Nothing.
There is an investigation (there are named offenses that are the main, but not stated as exclusive, focus), not an accusation against X and various individuals.
The investigation may, depending on what it finds, result in accusations against some or all of the people on whom the investigation is focused, but whether it will and what the accusations will be is not known until the investigation has occurred.
Why is it ok for you to have a billionaire do whatever he wants, including spreading disinformation and propaganda, and allow for bot networks to spread propaganda from foreign agents, without any accountability?
Why should we have no rules for social media, while all the remaining media have to abide by laws and are held accountable for it?
Why should a billionaire have more power than the people who voted?
If there's a conspiracy of corruption/lobbying/interests behind those countries' decisions, it's a completely different problem that is for those countries' regulators to control, and/or for the people to choose to vote for someone else.
France isn't Russia or Iran, where you have an illegitimate regime that does whatever it wants above their law and constitution.
A Conspiracy Theory doesn't give any right to the billionaire owner of the social network to be above the law.
So don't try to spin your irrelevant bad takes on me, own up to them.
> What we are seeing...
What you're seeing is that a billionaire is being held accountable, and for some unknown reason, you don't like it. You don't represent the opinion of anyone but yourself.
But you're resorting to:
- fallacy‑fallacy by assuming my argument is wrong just because you claim to see a fallacy.
- and to gish‑gallop by trying to overwhelm and make me look up your allegations of me using your list of fallacies.
Overall, it's a poor attempt to escape the argument. That's a wrap.
Do you believe that your political opponents investigating an "algorithm" to prove it is "manipulated" would not already have written the output of this investigation?
Every freaking machine learning model has a bias. ask GPT or anthropic about palestine or even Trump, ask Deepseek about tiananmen. If you search for something you will find it. I could take GPT and prove its "manipulated" toward any race I want. Ill just start from this affirmation and then find things good enough to prove it to random people that will read the billionaire backed press that you praise
They are using a system where the winner is whoever gets more than 50%, but if nobody gets more than 50% they hold a run-off vote between the top two from the first vote.
The problem is that Romania has several viable political parties, which would be great if they used an election system designed to handle that like ranked choice, but in a top two run-off system has a high chance of electing someone that a large majority of the voters rank near the bottom of the candidates.
In the election you are referring to there were candidates from 10 different parties plus 4 independents running. I believe 6 of the parties were right-wing and 4 left-wing. The right-wing parties got 47% of the votes, with the top 3 of them getting 19.18%, 13.86%, and 8.79%.
The left-wing parties got 20% with the highest part getting 19.15%.
Independents got 33% with the highest individual getting 22.94%.
So now France wants to criminally prosecute as though they violated some existing law?
Source?
https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/05/10/israel-hamas-tiktok...
So equal. That doesn't align with claims TikTok is amplifying predominately Pro-Palestinian content.
> Pro-Palestinian content, on the other hand, jumps significantly in the second week and continues to grow steadily. But things begin to change on Oct. 27 when the number page views on pro-Israel posts skyrockets — 2,555 views per post compared to 336 views per post previously.
This look suspicious right? One type of content growing steadily and the other spiking?
This is moving the goalposts[1]. The original statement I made and the part you asked for source on was "Views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on tiktok is predominantly anti-Israel/pro-Palestine". That's not the same as Tiktok "amplifying" Palestinian/Israeli content more.
[1] If you can call it that, I'm only stating what critics of Tiktok claim, not that's my view.
From most evidence, that's true if you replace "tiktok" with "Earth", too.
> which some accuse is a result of Tiktok is rigging the algorithm.
TikTok could be rigging the algorithm, but there's lots of evidence from other channels that the described result is what you'd expect if they weren't.
Even in the Western countries where Israel's support has been strong, public support has generally cratered in recent years as the long policy of genocide in Palestine has been particularly undisguised in Gaza. Basically only the American Right (excited as they are about doing an ethnic cleansing at home) remains very strongly in support of Israel.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/03/most-peop...
I often see anti-Israeli-government/pro-Palestinian/anti-genocide content across my platforms and, when lazy, I'll wonder why then there isn't more change.
And then I wake up and realise again that I'm in a bubble.
Other bubbles may vary.
No it is not. I have the freedom to call you all kinds of insults, but I will get banned (if I'm not already, I wouldn't know lol). It's the paradox of intolerance.
> in a few years we will have social points like china and those who disagree with left-leaning ideas and government interventionism will be reduced to silence or even jailed.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. Besides, the current powers-that-be are actively suppressing free speech already, banning books, teachings, erasing LGBTQ+ and Black history. You don't get freedom of speech either on platforms like Twitter, where for example the word "cisgender" gets actively suppressed. That's known, what isn't known is how certain topics get boosted or suppressed by their algorithms, which is why there should be transparency.
If you're afraid of the slippery slope from "the left", wake up and see what's actually happening right now. People in the US get disappeared while following the proper immigration processes. The media and speech is actively being suppressed (see the sudden cancellation of The Late Show).
dont ever forget that the tools you build to punish and censor your opponents will be in its reach once they come to power. for instance Biden and twitter created a precedent that allowed X and Trump to happen.
What does US culture war issues have relevance to what's going on with France? Moreover what's the implication here? Are you trying to imply that because Americans are doing right-wing censorship, it's fine or even required that France engages in left-wing censorship?
The current governemtn is close to the far-right, there are more and more attacks on muslim people without much of a eep from the government, there are openly neofascists manifestations in the streets of Paris (not even just far-right, open fascist)...
https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2025/05/13/extreme-...
the majority of attacks and acts of vandalism are against christians in France (from the order of 9-10 times more) and acts of vandalism/violence on muslims actually decreasing year after year (around 130 right now). You can push some propaganda or vision of what is France but numbers matter and looking at numbers we are a failing left leaning government that increased debt and spending like crazy and is now trying to backtrack on many topics because what is looming is what happened to the greeks.
Fun fact: same with the UK Conservatives, and same with Italy's Meloni.
>he is even trying to regularize illegal immigrants in some industries.
Like, you know, Trump.
I guess they are also dangerous leftists, given that's your level of proof.
>macron is surrounded by people from the left
Just lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayrou_government
As you said, "stick to the facts".
>suppression of tax on renters
Such leftism!
But nice try to misled others who are not aware of reality.
left leaning is state interventionism, increase of governement debt, refusal to change the pension funds system, tax reduction on people that have no generational wealth, increased tax on people owning real estate, making the working class - besides the lowest income tier- pay for the others. I am not stating wether it is bad or good here again merely saying that most of macron big moves were to cater to the left politics.
far-right and unseen before immigration numbers should already prove to you that something is wrong with your reasoning.
The left (LFI and Communists) lost the working class long ago. - was already the case under hollande - and Macron brilliantly saw an opportunity to cater to those working class people that were not seeing immigration as the #1 problem but purchasing power, jobs, retirements pensions. This wrecked the chances of far-right parties that were focused on immigration and this also doomed the far-left - that will call anyone disagree with them right wing like you do - with a need to find their own way to seize power and they decided to focus on : immigration, racism and more recently palestine. Once again not voicing wether its good or bad. its probably all that was left to them when they had to face a brighter opponent than them.
calling Macron and his two mandates right-wing is just dishonest. we have more immigrants than ever. more governement. more debt. more spending into our social net than ever.
Yes, this is exactly what the far right is doing and is going to do. And if you believe it isn't, you are a sucker.
See Trump, Meloni, etc.
Trump launched DOGE, Zemmour in france is daily promoting less governement less foreign funding.
You are writing this under an article where everyone left side of the political spectrum is in favor of banning a social network because its owner criticize mass immigration, and leave free to speak some right wing ideas more than over social networks. If the far-right was in power how would you explain even the launch of a criminal probe against X. Nothing make sense in what you trying to convey.
Ah yes, the French far right is very much in favor of letting a South African drughead billionaire with ties with the American government, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia manipulate French public opinion.
Alas, despite your passionate defense of his freedom of speech against everyone else's, Musk is still unlikely to send you his semen for you to bear his child.
aspenmayer•1d ago
> France has launched criminal probe of X over alleged algorithm ‘manipulation’, platform says
https://archive.is/wA7hr