The criminal investigation, which was opened earlier this month, comes as X is increasingly under fire from regulators across Europe. The European Commission has separately been investigating the Musk-owned platform for almost two years now on suspicion of breaching its landmark regulation, the Digital Services Act.
The French probe is based in part on complaints from centrist lawmaker, Eric Bothorel, who in January 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.”
Those comments sparked an initial inquiry which paved the way for this month’s criminal investigation.
X said in its statement that French authorities had requested access to its recommendation algorithm and data so experts could analyze it. Among the experts, according to X, were David Chavalarias — a French academic researching “computational social sciences, text-mining and complex systems modeling — and Maziyar Panahi, who works with Chavalarias at the Complex Systems Institute in Paris. The institute is part of the National Center for Scientific Research, France’s largest public research body.
X said it had refused the demand for access to its data and algorithm due to its concerns over the impartiality of both the experts and the investigation.
“Based on what we know so far, X believes that this investigation is distorting French law in order to serve a political agenda and, ultimately, restrict free speech,” the company said. “For these reasons, X has not acceded to the French authorities’ demands, as we have a legal right to do. This is not a decision that X takes lightly. However, in this case, the facts speak for themselves.”
Chavalarias launched a campaign to encourage users to leave the platform, in protest at its change of direction after Musk took over, while X alleged that Panahi had expressed “open hostility” to the platform.
POLITICO has contacted Chavalarias, Panahi and the Paris prosecutors’ office for comment.
