Most countries have laws against foreign interference. I presume disproportionately propagating far-right content via algorithm might very well count as such an interference.
https://www.tribunal-de-paris.justice.fr/sites/default/files...
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.)
And far worse is happening right now against law firms and media companies.
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.linkedin.com/posts/global-witness_globalwitnessi...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-left-cant-meme
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/meme-magic
https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-the-left-cant-meme/ | https://web.archive.org/web/20210924231415/https://unherd.co...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/trumps-occult-online-support... | https://web.archive.org/web/20170125155034/http://motherboar...
As for me? I am beside myself. I view the content as part performance, part farce, all kayfabe. Trump et al learned from the best:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation#A_World_Wit...
> In Russia, Vladimir Putin and his cabinet of political technologists create mass confusion. Vladislav Surkov uses ideas from art to turn Russian politics into a bewildering piece of theatre. Donald Trump employs the same techniques in his presidential campaign by using language from Occupy Wall Street. Curtis asserts that Trump "defeated journalism" by rendering its fact-checking abilities irrelevant.
> The American Left's attempt to resist Trump on the internet had no effect. In fact, they were just feeding the social media corporations who valued their many additional clicks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov
> Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov (Russian: Владислав Юрьевич Сурков; born 21 September 1964) is a Russian politician. He was First Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration from 1999 to 2011, during which time he was often viewed as the main ideologist of the Kremlin who proposed and implemented the concept of sovereign democracy in Russia. From December 2011 until May 2013, Surkov served as the Russian Federation's Deputy Prime Minister. After his resignation, Surkov returned to the Presidential Executive Office and became a personal adviser of Vladimir Putin on relationships with Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ukraine.
> BBC documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis credits Surkov's blend of theater and politics with keeping Putin, and Putin's chosen successors, in power since 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy
> Whilst talking about sovereign democracy in 2006, Mikhail Kasyanov said that "... the aims of this doctrine are quite clear: the concentration and holding of political power and property at any cost. The consequences of this are already evident, including the glorification of populism, the steady destruction of private and public institutions and the departure from the principles of the law, democracy, and the free market."
> United States Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried (in office 2005–2009) stated in a 2007 interview:
> > I get nervous when people put labels in front of democracy. Sovereign democracy, managed democracy, people's democracy, socialist democracy, Aryan democracy, Islamic democracy—I am not a big fan of adjectives. Managed democracy doesn't sound like democracy. Sovereign democracy strikes me as meaningless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy
> Guided democracy, also called directed democracy and managed democracy, is a formally democratic government that functions as a de facto authoritarian government or, in some cases, as an autocratic government. Such hybrid regimes are legitimized by elections, but do not change the state's policies, motives, and goals.
> In a guided democracy, the government controls elections such that the people can exercise democratic rights without truly changing public policy. While they follow basic democratic principles, there can be major deviations towards authoritarianism. Under managed democracy, the state's continuous use of propaganda techniques, such as through manufacturing consent, prevents the electorate from having a significant impact on policy.
> The concept is also related to semi-democracy, also known as anocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ve_Got_No_Strings
> Down where the Volga flows
> There's a Russian rendez-vous
> Where me and Ivan go
> But I'd rather go with you, hey
> There are no strings on me
Be well, anon.
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_...