Germany and France 'Strike a Legal Blow' Against Musk's X Platform Over Political Bias in Social Media Algorithm
A German court has ordered Musk's X platform to hand over election data, while France has launched an investigation into the bias of the social media platform's algorithm, POLITICO reports.
In Germany, plaintiffs won a lawsuit against Platform X, formerly known as Twitter, providing critical access to social media data to investigate potential election interference. The German court ruled that the platform must immediately provide researchers with access to data on politically-related content ahead of the country's elections on 23 February. The ruling was handed down on Thursday and is one of the first major court tests of the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA). The precedent raises new questions about X's compliance with European regulations ahead of Germany's federal elections.
In a lawsuit filed earlier this week by the Democratic Reporters International (DRI) and the Civil Rights Society (GFF), X is accused of blocking efforts to track potential election interference by not providing researchers with access to key user engagement data, including likes, shares and visibility, that other platforms provide to researchers.
The next day, the French Public Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into Platform X on charges of manipulating the social media algorithm, according to the press service of the prosecutor's office. In a written response to POLITICO, the prosecutor's office said that the investigation was launched following ‘a report by a member of parliament on 12 January 2025, which exposed biased algorithms in X's operation that may have distorted the work of the automated data processing system,’ confirming previous French media reports.
The investigation comes a few days before the Artificial Intelligence Summit in Paris, to which Musk was invited and which US Vice President J.D. Vance plans to attend.
This is one of the first major judicial reviews of the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA).