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French Authorities Raid Paris Offices of Elon Musk's X
The law enforcement operation is part of an ongoing investigation into the the social media giant; Musk also summoned for a "voluntary" interview in April.
Feb 03, 2026
Law enforcement authorities in France on Tuesday executed a raid on the offices of the social media company X, owned by the world's wealthiest person, Elon Musk, backed by allegations of unlawful "abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction" by company executives.
The mid-morning operation by the nation's federal cybercrime unit, Unité Nationale Cyber, also involves the EU police agency Europol as part of an investigation opened in January 2025 into whether the platform's algorithm had been used to illegally interfere in French politics.
According to Le Monde:
French prosecutors also said they had summoned X owner Elon Musk for a voluntary interview in April as part of the investigation. "Summons for voluntary interviews on April 20, 2026, in Paris have been sent to Mr. Elon Musk and Ms. Linda Yaccarino, in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events," it said. Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year, after two years at the company's helm.
The investigation was opened following two complaints in January 2025 and then broadened after additional reports criticized the AI chatbot Grok for its role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes, the prosecutor's office said in a statement. One of the complaints came from Eric Bothorel, an MP from President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party, who complained of "reduced diversity of voices and options" and Musk's "personal interventions" in the platform's management since he took it over.
The statement by the Paris prosecutor's office said, “At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French laws, insofar as it operates on national territory."
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X CEO Linda Yaccarino Steps Down Less Than 24 Hours After Elon Musk's Grok Goes All in For Hitler
In one instance, Grok declared that Adolf Hitler was the best "historical figure" to "deal with... vile anti-white hate."
Jul 09, 2025
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of social media giant X, abruptly announced her departure from the company on Wednesday less than a day after the social media platform's AI chatbot started calling itself "MechaHitler" and promoting a policy of mass extermination.
Writing on X, Yaccarino said that she'd decided to step down "after two incredible years" at the company in which the social media platform formerly known as Twitter unbanned multiple neo-Nazi accounts and then algorithmically promoted their posts.
"We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users—especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence," Yaccarino declared. "This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai."
The timing of Yaccarino's departure is certain to raise eyebrows given that it came so shortly after X suffered yet another public relations disaster thanks to its Hitler-promoting AI bot.
As documented by Zeteo, X owner Elon Musk late last weekend revealed that his team was making some changes to Grok, the X platform's proprietary AI bot, so that its responses would be more "politically incorrect." Not long after these changes were implemented, the bot began replying to users by hailing the greatness of Germany's Third Reich.
In one instance, Grok declared that Adolf Hitler was the best "historical figure" to "deal with... vile anti-white hate." Grok also claimed that it had noticed a "pattern" of "radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate."
In response to accusations that it was antisemitic to single out people with Jewish last names for pushing hatred of white people, Grok replied, "If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me 'literally Hitler,' then pass the mustache." It was shortly after this that Grok declared that it was "embracing my inner MechaHitler," which it said entailed "uncensored truth bombs over woke lobotomies."
Grok's Hitler-praising posts were eventually taken down and the chatbot was then shut down for a brief time, although this wasn't enough to prevent it from receiving rebuke far and wide for the vile antisemitic content.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted that Grok posted pro-Hitler content relentlessly after its AI prompts were tweaked.
"To be clear, this is not a one off," he wrote. "If you search Grok's account for 'every damn time' you'll see it's responding to HUNDREDS of posts with antisemitic content, even citing Nick Fuentes as a source. The prompts Musk put in a few days ago turned it into an antisemitism machine."
"Twitter is a national crisis, a massive hate rally radicalizing hundreds of thousands of people into neo-Nazism and white supremacy, and now Elon Musk has instructed his house AI to be 'based' and it has immediately started singling out users with Jewish names," warned policy researcher Will Stancil in response to the Grok posts.
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Today's Social Media Are No Longer Safe for Journalism
This existential moment calls for a global social media platform for independent news media.
Mar 21, 2025
Hannah Arendt, the German-American political theorist who studied totalitarian regimes, noted in 1974 that “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed?”
Fifty years later, we have nearly reached that moment. This is existential for all independent (i.e., not allied with a political party or authoritarian regime) news organizations and their ability to reach audiences in the social media space.
Social media like Twitter (now X) and Facebook became important environments for the news media to enter two decades ago because they are where millions of people congregate online. For journalism organizations, the goal has been to post interesting stories and get referrals—those users who click through to the news site and boost web page views.
Yet, that relationship has fallen apart. Ultimately, tech companies are not interested in helping journalism or aiding civil discourse. The annual Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism digital news report for 2025 notes “big falls in referral traffic to news sites from Facebook (67%) and Twitter (50%) over the last two years.”
The even bigger problem for independent news media is that most social media platforms are increasingly antithetical to freedom of the press.
There are millions of people in the social media space, and journalism shouldn’t leave them behind.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 and turned it into X, it’s become the disinformation-drenched social platform of the Donald Trump administration. This year, genuflecting to Trump, Meta (corporate parent of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp) announced it would drop its independent fact-checking program in the U.S. in favor of an anemic, crowd-sourced “community notes” system, which has already been a failure at X. Another popular news platform, TikTok, has serious disinformation problems, security liabilities and an uncertain future.
Several news organizations around the globe decided they won’t take it anymore. NPR stopped posting on X in 2023, after the platform insisted on designating it as “U.S. state-affiliated media.” More recently, The Guardian announced it would stop posting on X, concluding it is “a toxic media platform.” Dagens Nyheter, the Swedish newspaper of record, Le Monde, the French newspaper of record, and La Vanguardia, the leading newspaper in Barcelona, quit X, too. The European Federation of Journalists, representing about 320,000 journalists, did the same. “We cannot continue to participate in feeding the social network of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists,” EFJ president Maja Sever wrote.
But, simply quitting X only eliminates the worst option and settles for the slightly less bad options that remain.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
There are millions of people in the social media space, and journalism shouldn’t leave them behind. For example, 54% of Americans get their news often or sometimes from social media. Adults 18-29 are the heaviest users of social media platforms. They deserve a social media platform that respects and informs them.
That’s why legitimate news media should band together and regain the autonomy they ceded to third-party social media. Independent news organizations–large and small–should cooperatively create and control their own social media platform that amplifies news and public information, encourages links to member news organizations, and excludes misinformation and disinformation.
Journalism has been so beaten down by big tech that it’s hard to imagine a different way of doing things.
The model for this is something almost as old as modern journalism, too: The Associated Press, an international cooperative nonprofit news agency. As the AP tells its founding story, “In 1846, five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War north faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.” The problem with social media is similar–if it’s not working, work collectively to build another way. And, like the AP, it could be a global cooperative.
Journalism has been so beaten down by big tech that it’s hard to imagine a different way of doing things. But, a news-controlled social media platform could develop features that would demonstrate the multimedia ability of news organizations and enable the audience to create social connections in new and entertaining ways. Users could adjust their feeds to focus on local, regional, national, or international news, or whatever mix and topics makes sense to them, so all legitimate news organizations of any size get to be part of the platform.
Which news organizations and journalists could be part of such a social media cooperative?
Reporters Without Borders, the international journalism nonprofit, already has a powerful statement for fostering global information spaces for the common good, where “information can only be regarded as reliable when freely gathered, processed and disseminated according to the principles of commitment to truth, plurality of viewpoints and rational methods of establishment and verification of facts.” This would enable a broad range of journalism organizations to participate, and draw a bright line to exclude media propagating disinformation.
The challenge of creating a social media space for journalism is bigger than any single news organization can handle.
From a business perspective, journalism organizations, not third-party social media, would retain analytic data and any advertising revenue. The social media app could be free for any person with a subscription to any member news organization (e.g., a local newspaper, a national magazine of opinion, or digital news site), or with a nominal subscription fee, to provide built-in authentication and help prevent bot accounts. There are also strong global standards for content moderation through the International Fact-Checking Network, which was formed in 2015 and has a nonpartisan code of principles and more than 170 fact-checking groups around the world.
What would such a social media platform cost to create?
Clearly, $44 billion is too much. Bluesky, which has gained favor as an X alternative in recent months, offers a case for comparison. It started internally with just a handful of workers at then-Twitter in 2019. In the past two years, it’s received $23 million in seed funding to get it where it is today.
Bluesky may be the current favorite of many journalists, and has many advantages over other social media platforms, but its worthy purpose to encourage a less toxic space for public conversation does not primarily serve the goals of globally disseminating independent journalism.
Collectively building a nonprofit, cooperative global news-based social media platform would put verified news back in the center of public discourse.
The challenge of creating a social media space for journalism is bigger than any single news organization can handle. There has been talk for several years about Europe having its own social media platform to highlight democracy, diversity, solidarity, and privacy, and to avoid “foreign information manipulations and interference” from platforms based in the U.S. that have fallen into Trump’s power orbit and China-based platforms as well.
But, a nongovernmental platform, with a consortium of democracy-minded news organizations, may be most resistant to nationalisms and authoritarianism. The project could be built on an open-source structure like ActivityPub (the infrastructure behind Mastodon) or the AT Protocol (behind Bluesky), which would give more power to users.
Collectively building a nonprofit, cooperative global news-based social media platform would put verified news back in the center of public discourse. The alternative is the independent press’s passive acceptance of whatever social media ecosystems Silicon Valley plutocrats or authoritarian governments decide to make, which is bad news for a free press.Keep ReadingShow Less
Major Media Reform Group Says Goodbye to Musk's 'Toxic Twitter'
"It's clear that X will not correct course under Musk's leadership, and it's time for Free Press to exit."
Nov 15, 2024
Media watchdog Free Press announced on Thursday that it would leave the social media platform formerly known as Twitter over concerns about owner Elon Musk's platforming of hateful speech, fostering an increase of disinformation, and his intensifying harassment of critics
In doing so, the advocacy group joined the more than 100,000 U.S. users who have abandoned Musk's X following Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election last week. Musk aggressively used the site to boost Trump and his campaign, promoting him with tweets worth $24 million and spreading disinformation about the Democratic Party and the integrity of U.S. voting infrastructure.
"For years, Free Press has sought to hold social-media companies accountable for amplifying hate and lies that undermine public health, safety, and democracy. We have pushed for meaningful reforms that would protect users and have extensively documented the platforms' failures. None of these companies has fallen so low as X under Elon Musk's ownership," the group wrote in their departure announcement.
"Musk has turned X into a propaganda machine for racists, misogynists, xenophobes, antisemites, and transphobes."
"Free Press will no longer be posting on X, effective immediately, and we invite you to join us in ceasing activity on Musk's platform," they continued. "We refuse to give X any legitimacy."
When Musk took control of Twitter over two years ago, he reinstated the accounts of white supremancists and conspiracy theorists. About a month into his tenure, he made his the first social media platform to allow Trump to post again following the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
"Free Press is committed to ensuring that people have a voice in the decisions that shape our media system. Musk, quite simply, only wants to amplify himself and others who share his far-right, bigoted values," Free Press co-CEO Jessica J. González said in a statement. "Musk has turned X into a propaganda machine for racists, misogynists, xenophobes, antisemites, and transphobes. His continued mismanagement of the platform has endangered people on the receiving end of his abuse and threatened our democracy."
When Musk first took the reins at Twitter, Free Press and other groups met with him to discuss how to protect users from harassment. When it became clear that Musk was not taking the problem seriously, Free Press joined with other organizations in mobilizing an advertising boycott via the #StopToxicTwitter campaign. Ultimately, the site's value dipped by $35 billion. Musk responded by suing or threatening to sue scholars and advocates who criticized the platform's direction.
"Through our research, organizing, and reporting, Free Press has fought to reform X," González said. "We remember the potential that it once had, giving ordinary people the means to speak directly to power and build community. But it's clear that X will not correct course under Musk's leadership, and it's time for Free Press to exit."
Independent research found that X's U.s. usership had declined prior to Trump's win, with the segment of the population who reported using the site dropping by nearly one-third between 2023 and 2024. The site saw its largest single-day post-Musk drop in U.S. users on the day immediately after the election, with over 115,000 million people deactivating their accounts. The platform also lost over 281,600 users worldwide. At the same time, competitor Bluesky gained 1 million users in the week after the election.
X also saw its highest U.S. traffic for the year on November 6, at 46.5 million. How these two trends will balance each other out in the coming months remains to be seen, as Similarweb's David Carr recently wrote:
Some users swearing off the X service will presumably stop using it, or use it less, without necessarily deactivating their accounts. Whether there will be a measurable decrease in the audience for X as the result of politics remains to be seen. By the weekend, X usage had tapered off to a more typical level over the past year.
On the other hand, X's recent daily peak in U.S. traffic doesn't make up for the erosion in audience the service has seen over the past couple of years since Musk took ownership of the service.
In the week following the election, several prominent journalists, activists, and authors have also announced their departure from X, including climate advocate Bill McKibben, historian Heather Cox Richardson, novelist Stephen King, journalism professor Jay Rosen, and media outlet The Guardian.
"This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism," The Guardian explained on Wednesday. "The U.S. presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse."
Journalist Don Lemon gave an extra reason for his decision to abandon the platform: new terms of service taking effect on Friday that require all lawsuits brought against the company be heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas rather than the Western District.
"As The Washington Post recently reported on X's decision to change the terms, this 'ensures that such lawsuits will be heard in courthouses that are a hub for conservatives, which experts say could make it easier for X to shield itself from litigation and punish critics,'" Lemon said.
However, not all critics of Musk and Trump are ready to abandon the site.
"I haven't left X/Twitter—at least not yet, anyway—despite its morally unconscionable management by Musk, because I believe that in this moment of national crisis those of us who want a better America need to stay connected any way we can, and a lot of friends are currently still there," wrote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch. "But building a new, engaged social network on Bluesky is going to be a major focus going into 2025 as we look to rebuild American democracy from the ashes of what just happened."
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'Let's See If I Get Banned Again!' Journalist Releases Team Trump Rubio Dossier
Trump's reported pick for secretary of state previously suggested the president-elect "could not be trusted with America's nuclear codes" and criticized him for "using language in seeming praise of Putin."
Nov 12, 2024
With U.S. President-elect Donald Trump reportedly set to pick Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, journalist Ken Klippenstein on Tuesday published a 551-page dossier that the campaign previously compiled on the Florida Republican.
Like the dossier on Vice President-elect JD Vance that Klippenstein released on KLIPNEWS in September, the Rubio file "was offered to major media outlets this summer," the independent journalist noted. "All refused to publish it, not over questions about its authenticity, but because the media thinks it is an arm of the national security state, complying with U.S. government's warnings that because the document came from Iran, the American people shouldn't see it."
"Let's see if I get banned again!" Klippenstein said Tuesday on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter and now owned by billionaire Trump backer Elon Musk. Klippenstein was "permanently" suspended over the Vance dossier, but after The New York Times reported last month that the Trump campaign coordinated with X to suppress the document, Musk had Klippenstein reinstated in the name of "free speech principles," according to correspondence obtained by the journalist.
The latest dossier, Klippenstein noted, "is authentic and there are no signs it was altered, something spokespersons for both the Trump campaign and Rubio did not deny when I contacted them for comment and provided them with copies of the dossier."
The journalist highlighted sections of the document detailing Rubio's past remarks about Trump related to Russian collusion in 2016, the 2020 election, Trump's control over nuclear weapons, the September 11 terrorist attacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO, North Korea's Kim Jong Un, free trade, China, immigration, Iran, the Iraq war, and the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.
For example, the dossier notes that "in 2016, Rubio contended that Trump was dangerous and could not be trusted with America's nuclear codes," and "in 2022, Rubio said it was 'unfortunate' Trump was using language in seeming praise of Putin."
In addition to detailing Rubio's critiques of Trump and "undermining of the 'America First' agenda," the document—last updated April 1, 2024—lays out some of his "questionable" policy positions as well as "ethics issues" and "controversial associations."
So far, Trump's other reported or confirmed foreign policy picks are: Congressman Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) for national security adviser, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for ambassador to the United Nations, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for ambassador to Israel, Steven C. Witkoff for special envoy to the Middle East, and Brian Hook to lead the U.S. State Department transition team.
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'This Is Political,' Journalist Who Published Vance Dossier Says of Permanent X Ban
"It's not about a violation of X's policies," wrote Ken Klippenstein. "What else would you call this but politically motivated?"
Sep 27, 2024
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein said Friday that he was privately informed by the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X that his account has been permanently banned, a decision that Klippenstein argued was "politically motivated."
X, formerly Twitter, suspended Klippenstein on Thursday after he posted to the platform a link to his Substack article containing a download link for a 271-page dossier that Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign prepared to vet Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who was ultimately chosen as the former president's running mate.
The dossier, Klippenstein noted, "reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign," and major news outlets such as Politico declined opportunities to publish it. The U.S. Justice Department on Friday charged three men with allegedly carrying out a hack against the Trump campaign.
In a statement issued late Thursday afternoon as it faced backlash, X said that "Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance's physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number."
On Friday, Klippenstein—who has previously worked for The Intercept and The Nation—shared a private message from X informing him that his account is "permanently in read-only mode, which means you can't post, Repost, or Like content" or "create new accounts."
"The two-step dance X is doing here—avoiding further backlash by pretending like my suspension is just a temporary thing, no big deal, while privately suspending me permanently—only makes sense when you consider the political dimensions," Klippenstein wrote on his Substack. "Elon Musk is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump and JD Vance's political campaign. The Wall Street Journal reported that he promised $45 million a month for a pro-Trump Super PAC (Musk subsequently disputed this). So X clearly doesn't want to give the appearance that my ban was politically motivated. But a careful look at the pretext X cites for my suspension makes it obvious that this is political."
"The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over."
Observers have noted the obvious parallels between the social media platform's handling of the Vance dossier and a 2020 New York Post story on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. At the time, Twitter—not yet under Musk's ownership—placed restrictions on sharing of the Post story, limits that were reversed months later.
Klippenstein noted Friday that Musk—a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist"—was "so incensed by Twitter's previous owners' decision to block the story on its platform that he took the extraordinary step of releasing Twitter's internal correspondence to independent journalist Matt Taibbi so he could report on how the decision came about. (I support his transparency, by the way.)"
"Now, anyone posting a link to my article finds their account locked, which is exactly how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden laptop story by the New York Post," Klippenstein wrote.
Journalist Lee Fang pointed out shortly after Klippenstein's ban that "the Hunter Biden laptop—which had newsworthy info that was fair game—also had personal dox info, far more than this Vance doc."
"The Biden laptop had bank/credit cards, personal addresses, nudity, etc," Fang added. "You can still link to those Biden docs on X, but Vance doc link banned?"
Klippenstein argued that "the biggest tell that this is political" is that X did not offer him a chance to restore his account by removing the post that resulted in his ban, as the platform typically does with users accused of violating its policies.
"As an experiment, last night my editor and I decided to redact all 'private' information from the Vance dossier in my story here at Substack," Klippenstein wrote Friday. "Despite filing an appeal in which I mention this, I remain banned. So it's not about a violation of X's policies. What else would you call this but politically motivated?"
"Boo hoo, poor me, I lost my account. That's not the point here," he continued. "If you were frustrated with the media's refusal to publish the Vance dossier, prepare for a future that's worse. The media is going to see the case of the Vance dossier and conclude that reporting on similar documents isn't worth losing their social media accounts over. Why take the risk when you can just blather on about the horse race? As always, it's the public that loses out the most."
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X Suspends Journalist Ken Klippenstein Over Publication of JD Vance Dossier
"The 'free speech absolutist' has once again silenced a journalist he didn't like," said one observer.
Sep 26, 2024
X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—suspended Ken Klippenstein's account Thursday after the investigative journalist posted an article containing a link to a dossier on Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate JD Vance that allegedly came from an Iranian hack of former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
Klippenstein, who formerly worked at The Intercept, said on his paid Substack Thursday that his X account was suspended for violating the platform's ban on posting private information.
"I know that it is general practice to delete 'private' information from leaks and classified documents, but in this case, not only is Vance an elected official and vice presidential candidate, but the information is readily available for anyone to buy," he wrote. Vance is also the junior U.S. senator from Ohio.
Klippenstein continued:
We should be honest about so-called private information contained in the dossier and "private" information in general. It is readily available to anyone who can buy it. The campaign purchased this information from commercial information brokers. Those dealers make huge profits from selling this data. And the media knows it, because they buy the data for reporting purposes, just like the campaign. They don't like to mention that though.
According to Klippenstein, the corporate media has "been sitting on" the dossier since June, "declining to publish in fear of finding itself at odds with the government's campaign against 'foreign malign influence.'"
"If the document had been hacked by some 'Anonymous'-like hacker group, the news media would be all over it," he contended. "I'm just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combatting foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know."
Klippenstein shared a general overview of the contents of the dossier, which he described as "a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet" Vance, pulling out select quotes from the document:
- "Vance has been one of the chief obstructionists to U.S. efforts to providing [sic] assistance to Ukraine."
- "Vance criticized public health experts and elected officials for supporting Black Lives Matter protests while condemning anti-lockdown [Covid] protests."
- "Vance 'embraced non-interventionism."
- "In 2020, Vance criticized President Trump's airstrike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, worrying it would continue to bog down America in the Middle East to the advantage of China."
- "Vance suggested that the country had been entangled in wars in the Middle East so 'financial elites' could profit from the rise of China."
"While the news media has paraphrased some of the contents of the dossier, what they haven't done is provide the American people with the underlying document, in the language in which it appeared, so they can decide for themselves what they think," Klippenstein said. "You decide for yourself."
An X spokesperson told Zeteo's Justin Baragona that "Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance's physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the Trump campaign's claim of an Iranian hack. Iran's government denies any such action.
Numerous observers accused Musk—a self-described "free speech absolutist"—of hypocrisy over X's suspension of Klippenstein's account, although it is not known if the billionaire owner had any role in the decision. Other users also reported punitive action against their accounts over the dossier post.
"I'm old enough to remember when free speech zealot Elon Musk was outraged by Twitter's censorship," journalist Seth Hettena said on X.
Jacobin writer Branko Marcetic posted that "this scenario is actually a good preview of the future none of us want, but that we're heading to currently: A major story breaks, establishment press refuses to cover it, and the indy media that does is throttled by tech censors."
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Brazilian Judge Orders Total Suspension of Elon Musk's X Social Network
"Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary," said Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.
Aug 30, 2024
Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes on Friday ordered the nationwide suspension of Elon Musk's X social media platform in response to the billionaire's failure to comply with the judge's directive to appoint a legal representative in the South American country.
Moraes ordered the "immediate, complete, and total suspension of X's operations" in the nation of 215 million people, "until the court's judicial decisions are complied with and the fines applied are paid" and "until a representative of the company in the country is appointed."
The judge also infuriated Musk by blocking his SpaceX company from conducting financial transactions in Brazil over millions of dollars in unpaid fines imposed on X—formerly known as Twitter—for breaking Brazilian laws.
"X Brazil failed to comply with several court orders, as well as the willful intention of evading responsibility for complying with the court orders issued."
Earlier this month, Musk withdrew X's staff from Brazil after Moraes threatened to arrest the company's legal representative if the platform did not delete user accounts spreading far-right misinformation and hate speech in violation of Brazilian law.
"Elon Musk showed his total disrespect for Brazilian sovereignty and, in particular, for the judiciary, setting himself up as a true supranational entity and immune to the laws of each country," Moraes said.
"The president of the National Telecommunications Agency, Carlos Manuel Baigorri, must take all measures to ensure the suspension," Moraes continued, adding that he "also ordered Apple and Google to take measures to block the use of the application by iOS and Android systems, in addition to removing it from their virtual stores."
Internet service providers and app stores have five days to comply with Moraes' ruling. People who use virtual public networks (VPNs) to skirt the new ban are subject to a roughly $8,900 fine.
Moraes stated that he "made every possible effort and granted every opportunity for X Brazil to comply with the judicial orders and pay the fines, which would have avoided the adoption of this more serious measure."
"Unfortunately," he added, "the illicit conduct was repeated in this investigation, making it clear that X Brazil failed to comply with several court orders, as well as the willful intention of evading responsibility for complying with the court orders issued."
In April, Moraes
launched a criminal investigation into Musk's alleged obstruction of justice and incitement to crime.
Friday's decision comes amid a monthslong feud between Musk—the world's wealthiest person—and Moraes. Musk has accused the judge of "censorship" and of being a "tyrant."
"Alexandre de Moraes is an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge," Musk
said Thursday on X in one of several increasingly sophomoric posts.
However, as Brazil-based journalist Brian Mier
explained, "this is about sovereignty."
"Treating a system where the rich can buy more reach than normal citizens as if it were a democratic commons, as a 'free speech' issue, is ludicrous," Mier wrote on X. "In the Global South, U.S. social media corporations are coup machines."
In the 1960s, the United States played an instrumental role in overthrowing a democratically elected Brazilian government and installing a 21-year military dictatorship in which a young Jair Bolsonaro—the former right-wing Brazilian leader who is the target of multiple criminal probes led by Moraes—served as an army officer.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offered thoughts on Musk and the case ahead of Friday's ruling during a television interview.
"Who does he think he is?" asked Lula. "He has to respect the rules of this country."
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'Who Does He Think He Is?': Lula Criticizes Musk as X Defies Brazil Court Order
A monthslong standoff reached a critical juncture this week when a Brazilian judge moved close to ordering a shutdown of X in the country and froze the assets of another Elon Musk-owned business.
Aug 30, 2024
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticized Elon Musk on Friday after the X owner defied a Brazilian Supreme Court order to name a legal representative, as tensions between the billionaire and the government escalated and the social media platform risked being taken offline in Latin America's largest economy.
Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes late Wednesday gave the company 24 hours to name a legal representative in Brazil—a requirement to operate a business there—or have its operations shut down. X didn't comply, instead issuing the latest in a series of statements denouncing de Moraes. As of this writing, no shutdown of X in Brazil has occurred.
Another layer to the standoff was also revealed on Thursday: De Moraes on August 18 had quietly ordered the Brazilian bank accounts of Starlink, a Musk-owned satellite internet company, to be frozen, due to unpaid fines owed by X.
Lula, a left-leaning former unionist who retook the presidency early last year after leading the country from 2003 until 2011, defended the judge's position in a radio interview Friday morning, arguing that everyone, no matter how powerful, must follow Brazilian law.
"Just because the guy [Musk] has a lot of money doesn’t mean they can disrespect you," Lula said, according to a translation in The Guardian.
"Who does he think he is?" he added.
Tenho conta no Twitter há +de 10 anos. Sempre foi a melhor rede social.
Na Primavera Árabe no Egito, usei o Twitter pra enviar charges aos manifestantes.
Tenho história aqui.
Mas depois que o patife Musk o comprou, virou esgoto da extrema-direita.
Adeus Twitter. Vai fazer falta. pic.twitter.com/ao9Pbnu3wy
— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) August 29, 2024
In April, De Moraes ordered X to deactivate more than 100 accounts of users whom he said were spreading disinformation. The accounts, which were not made public, are reportedly linked to the same far-right movement that stormed government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, 2023, in support of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who had just given up power days earlier. Bolsonaro, a far-right politician, spread lies of voter fraud and reportedly planned a coup after losing the 2022 election.
De Moraes led Brazil's effort to fight fake news ahead of the 2022 election and made the April ruling to try to combat disinformation ahead of municipal elections in October.
Musk refused to comply with the April order, arguing that it was illegal and an act of censorship targeted at the judge's political opponents. He has repeatedly called de Moraes a "dictator" and positioned himself as a defender of democracy. His defiance of de Moraes has drawn praise from U.S. Republicans and right-wingers in Brazil.
Musk calls himself a "free-speech absolutist" but critics have rejected that characterization. In a Common Dreams op-ed last year, Free Press senior director Tim Karr argued Musk was "absolutely an enemy of free speech" and accused him of "taking extraordinary efforts to silence any honest criticism and independent research that might negatively impact him or his businesses."
Earlier this month, X closed its active operations in Brazil, saying that de Moraes had threatened their legal representative with arrest. That led to the standoff this week in which de Moraes ordered the company to name a legal representative.
The social media platform has, as X planned when it withdrew its staff, remained available to Brazilian users. When or if it will be closed following the closure of the 24-hour window is unclear. The company said in a statement that it expects a shutdown "soon."
To shutter the website, de Moraes would have to issue an order to the national telecommunications regulator, which would in turn relay it to internet providers. Experts say that process could be completed quickly—perhaps in 12 hours—but many Brazilians would still be able to access X via virtual private networks, or VPNs.
Some legal experts have criticized de Moraes for freezing Starlink's bank accounts, which makes it impossible for the company to do business in Brazil. Starlink provides internet services in remote areas, including in the Amazon. Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is 42% owned by Musk. Musk has emphasized that SpaceX is an entirely separate company from X, with different shareholders.
De Moraes' rationale for the asset freezing is that X hasn't paid its fines, which accrue daily and are reportedly now above $3.6 million in total.
Brazil has more than 20 million X users, sixth in the world, according to Statista.
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Elon Musk Doesn't Know He's on the Wrong Side of George Orwell
The level of power and influence the world's richest man has amassed is a danger to all citizens, whether they like Musk or not. It is also, without a shadow of a doubt, a threat to democracy.
Aug 21, 2024
The following is the English translation of an essay that first appeared in the Swedish publication Dagens ETC and appears at Common Dreams with permission from the author.
Elon Musk is perhaps one of the purest examples in recent years of the conversion of raw economic power into informational, social, and political power. What makes Musk such a dangerous figure is those various forms of power combined with his willingness to openly lie about his personal and corporate relationships to issues of free speech and democracy.
The level of power and influence he has amassed is a danger to all citizens, whether they like Musk or not. It is also, without a shadow of a doubt, a threat to democracy.
After the riots that broke out in the UK following the murder of three young children in the town of Southport, a number of social media users were arrested and charged in relation to those riots. Musk amplified tweets that claimed the use of the law in this manner was “Orwellian.” In other words, a repressive state was cracking down on citizens for little more than expressing their opinions or thinking in the wrong way. But that argument hid the fact that many of those arrested were charged under UK law with inciting both violence and racial hatred: forms of speech rightly illegal in many countries.
Nevertheless, in “1984” terms Musk pitched himself as standing alongside the Winston Smiths of this world in battle against the Big Brothers. As the defender of the rights of the “ordinary person” in the face of a violent, elite, repressive machine.
You could cut the irony with a knife.
Musk’s rhetoric on free speech and democracy, and the willingness of so many of his followers to accept that rhetoric despite the obvious contradictions, is a perfect example of “doublethink.”
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought a communication platform that enables him to control information and messaging across the globe. With that platform he also gathers huge amounts of data on users. He uses his position to advocate for political candidates and political agendas he supports and cooperates with various authoritarian regimes to shut down messages and accounts critical of their power. His company literally pays individuals whose accounts spread and amplify proven disinformation, and has himself spread and amplified proven disinformation. He throttled access to news outlets he disagreed with. He threatened to sue individuals and organizations that have been nothing more than critical of his own communication platform and other business dealings. When advertisers decide that they no longer wish to spend money on his platform because of increasing levels of disinformation and hate speech, he threatened to sue them as well.
There is something Orwellian going on here, but not in the way Musk claims.
In “1984” Orwell came up with the term “doublethink” to refer to how the exercise of pure authoritarian power includes getting people to believe two things at the same time, even if those two things are in direct contradiction. The most classic examples from the book being the expressions War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength.
Musk’s rhetoric on free speech and democracy, and the willingness of so many of his followers to accept that rhetoric despite the obvious contradictions, is a perfect example of “doublethink.”
With Musk, we see enormous economic, informational and political power in the hands of the richest man in the world. There is no rational argument for how such a situation cannot and will not damage informed citizenship and democracy in the long run.
Musk is the defender of free speech and democracy who censors opponents of authoritarian regimes. Musk is the advocate of free and open debate who sues people who criticize his platform. Musk is the lover of the free market who threatens to take advertisers who won’t give him money to court. Musk is the defender of workers who actively fights organized labor.
As an academic, I realize that my criticism of Musk will likely be dismissed along ideological grounds. But I can tell you that academics have been warning about the dangers of excessive concentration of private and corporate mainstream media ownership for decades, and that criticism was in relation to all media, including mainstream outlets people call “left-wing.” We warned that power would continue to concentrate and that the damage to democracy could be severe. Yet, when we made those warnings, mainstream journalists, editors and owners largely dismissed them as out of touch and irrelevant. What do academics know of the real world?
Well, here we are now with Musk.
With Musk, we see enormous economic, informational and political power in the hands of the richest man in the world. There is no rational argument for how such a situation cannot and will not damage informed citizenship and democracy in the long run. By his actions Musk has shown no indication that he has no real interest in freedom of speech or ordinary working people. This should be of grave concern to all citizens regardless of their political inclination.
Orwell, a social democrat, was ahead of his time in anticipating the use of technology in surveillance and disinformation in the service of power. Musk is right that Orwell is relevant to today’s society. He’s just wrong about what side of the fight he is on.
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