Musk calls Spanish PM ‘fascist’ as X hits out over French office raid
Elon Musk has slammed Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez as a “true fascist totalitarian” after he proposed a ban on social media use by teenagers, as Europe toughens its stance against tech giants.
In a furious response on his social media site X, the tech billionaire described the Spanish prime minister – who had earlier promised to protect children from the “digital Wild West” – as a “tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain”.
Sanchez had described social media on Tuesday as a “failed state where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated”, challenging Mr Musk for using X to “amplify disinformation” regarding the decision by Madrid to regularise 500,000 undocumented immigrants.
Mr Musk’s tirade came just hours after authorities raided X’s Paris headquarters, prompting the company to hit back at French prosecutors for what it called an “abusive and illegitimate” move.
The Paris Public Prosecutor’s office carried out the raid as part of a cyber crime investigation into alleged manipulation of algorithms, fraudulent data extraction, and the use of the site’s AI chatbot, Grok, to produce child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes. [Continue reading…]
The investigation began with two reports filed on January 12, 2025. They were submitted by MP Eric Bothorel, from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, and a civil servant specializing in cybercrime. The reports condemned changes Musk had made to the way the platform operates, and notably changes to its recommendation algorithms. According to the complainants, the algorithms had been changed to promote certain types of content, which could amount to the offense of “obstructing or distorting the functioning” of an IT system – a charge that is typically cited in hacking cases.
A preliminary investigation was opened in July 2025 and entrusted to the Gendarmerie. The prosecutors then observed “the recurring use of the X platform in the commission of offenses of various kinds,” and subsequently added a new charge to the case: “operating an illicit online platform as part of an organized group.” This recently created offense targets the administrators of platforms that are used to distribute certain illegal products, services or content online or that violate specific legal obligations. It was also cited in a case against the chat site Coco, which was implicated in child pornography cases. The charge carries a potential sentence of 10 years in prison.
At the same time, prosecutors added another charge to the case, this time concerning “the processing of personal data by the X platform” and its partner companies. In June 2025, a report by the non-governmental organization AI Forensics revealed that X had allowed companies whose ads it published to target users based on highly sensitive personal data, including their political and religious leanings or sexual orientations. The prosecutors also stated they were “closely examining the effectiveness of the confidentiality of private messages exchanged by users on the platform.” [Continue reading…]