Justice Division refuses to help French probe into Musk’s X, WSJ reviews


Elon musk and the xAI emblem.

Vincent Feuray | Afp | Getty Photos

The U.S. Justice Division has informed French legislation enforcement it won’t help with efforts to research tech billionaire Elon Musk’s social media platform X, The Wall Road Journal reported on Saturday, citing a letter from the DOJ’s Workplace of Worldwide Affairs, dated Friday.

In February, Paris prosecutors raided X’s French places of work and ordered Musk to face questions in a widening investigation as a part of a year-long probe into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent information extraction by X or its executives.

“This investigation seeks to make use of the legal authorized system in France to manage a public sq. for the free expression of concepts and opinions in a fashion opposite to the First Modification of the US Structure,” the letter reviewed by the Journal mentioned.

The letter added that France’s requests for U.S. help “represent an effort to entangle the US in a politically charged legal continuing aimed toward wrongfully regulating by means of prosecution the enterprise actions of a social media platform.”

X and Musk have come beneath scrutiny from regulators and governments in a number of international locations since his takeover of the platform, with authorities inspecting points together with content material moderation, information practices and compliance with native legal guidelines.

Prosecutors have mentioned the investigation facilities on whether or not X’s algorithms distorted the remedy of content material on the platform and whether or not the corporate improperly extracted consumer information, after complaints from French lawmakers and advocacy teams.

“We’re grateful to the Justice Division for rejecting this effort by a prosecutor in Paris to compel our CEO and a number of other staff to take a seat for interviews,” an xAI official informed the WSJ, including that xAI hopes the prosecutors “acknowledge that there is no such thing as a wrongdoing right here, and terminate their baseless investigation.”

The U.S. Division of Justice, French authorities and xAI didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Reuters couldn’t instantly confirm the report.

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