French cybercrime authorities were on Tuesday carrying out a search of the French offices of social media network X, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said.
The operation, which involves the EU police agency Europol, is part of an investigation opened in January 2025 into whether X’s algorithm had been used to interfere in French politics.
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 helm of the company.
The investigation was opened following two complaints in January 2025 and then broadened after additional reports criticised 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 centrist 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 Paris public prosecutor’s office at the time confirmed the investigation, denouncing the alleged biased algorithms which may have ‘distorted the operation of an automated data processing system’.
Laurent Buanec, France director of X, pushed back against the investigation in January 2025, saying X had ‘strict, clear and public rules’, which protected the platform from hate speech and disinformation.
In July, Mr Musk denied the initial accusations and said French prosecutors were launching a ‘politically-motivated criminal investigation’.
‘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,’ the prosecutor’s office said.
The prosecutor’s office also said it was leaving the X social media platform and would communicate on LinkedIn and Instagram from now on.
LinkedIn belongs to Microsoft and Instagram to Meta.
The prosecutor’s office made this announcement in a post on X itself, though no further details about the specific nature of the algorithm concerns or the scope of the search were provided.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
