I will explain because I see a lot of post that could be better if their author understood that the French system isn't the US system.
France 'prosecutor' role is divided in two: one is called 'procureur' and represent the state, but is chosen among judges by the executive power. The second is 'juge d'instruction' and represent the judiciary. They are chosen nominated by the local court without any executive power involvement. They lead the investigation, they order the raids, they order the arrest etc, without involvement from the 'procureur'.
The 'procureur' ask for a 'juge d'instruction' to lead an investigation on X/Y or Z (this fucking company name makes everything worse FFS). The judge will then collect evidence, for and against the procureur case, and then if necessary will ask for raids and auditions to finalise. When that's done and all the new evidence is collected (it can take on average 2 years, but if it's an international case like for our ex-president, it can take 10+), the 'juge d'instruction' will present all the gathered evidence to the procureur (who will decide to pursue or not) _and_ the accused.
This system exists to avoid as much as possible the executive (police and politicians) to use investigations as a scare tactic. Of course the magistrates know each other, and both corruption and influence is possible, and maybe that's the case here, but you ought to know the raid can't be at the behest of the procureur/president. We take separation of powers seriously here
Seems like you'd want to subpoena source code or gmail history or something like that. Not much interesting in an office these days.
lol, they summoned Elon for a hearing on 420
"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,
Or is there any France-specific compliance that must be done in order to operate in that country?
Good luck with that...
X didn't raid the prosecutors offices, the prosecutors did
1. The "procureur" and "juge d'instruction" are chosen from the same pool of judges, with the former appointed by the government executive, and the latter nominated by the judges themselves.
2. Does the executive choose one "procureur" to serve a particular region for a particular span of time, or do they choose a "procureur" every time there's some sort of criminal activity they think needs investigation?
3. How is the pool of judges themselves chosen? In the US, for example, federal judges are chosen by the president and confirmed by the senate, and serve for life. While state court judges are typically elected for a specified term.
4. Supposing we both live in France and I break into your house and steal from you. What happens next? For the sake of telling a story, suppose that you have a security camera from which I could be recognized, but not so clearly that anybody can be certain it's me until someone searches my garage and finds your stolen things. Walk me through the process of who does what?
Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.
We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.
The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.
The warrant will have detailed what it is they are looking for, French warrants (and legal system!) are quite a bit different than the US but in broad terms operate similarly. It suggests that an enforcement agency believes that there is evidence of a crime at the offices.
As a former IT/operations guy I'd guess they want on-prem servers with things like email and shared storage, stuff that would hold internal discussions about the thing they were interested in, but that is just my guess based on the article saying this is related to the earlier complaint that Grok was generating CSAM on demand.
and the things about negligence which caused harm to humans (instead of e.g. just financial harm) is that
a) you can't opt out of responsibility, it doesn't matter what you put into your TOS or other contracts
b) executives which are found responsible for the negligent action of a company can be hold _personally_ liable
and independent of what X actually did Musk as highest level executive personal did
1) frequently did statements that imply gross negligence (to be clear that isn't necessary how X acted, which is the actual relevant part)
2) claimed that all major engineering decisions etc. are from him and no one else (because he love bragging about how good of an engineer he is)
This means summoning him for questioning is legally speaking a must have independent of weather you expect him to show up or not. And he probably should take it serious, even if that just means he also could send a different higher level executive from X instead.
Yes.
Interesting point. There's a top gangster who can buy anything in the prison commissary; and then there's the warden.
I'm not at all familiar with French law, and I don't have any sympathy for Elon Musk or X. That said, is this a crime?
Distorted the operation how? By making their chatbot more likely to say stupid conspiracies or something? Is that even against the law?
I'm sure they have much better and quieter ways to do that.
Whereas a raid is #1 choice for max volume...
I mean, if you're a sole caretaker and you've been arrested for a crime, and the evidence looks like you'll go to prison, you're going to have to decide what to do with the care of your kids on your mind. I suppose that would pressure you to become an informant instead of taking a longer prison sentence, but there's pressure to do that anyway, like not wanting to be in prison for a long time.
On a related note given AI is just a tool and requires someone to tell it to make CSAM I think they will have to prove intent possibly by grabbing chat logs, emails and other internal communications but I know very little about French law or international law.
I remember something (probably linked from here), where the essayist was comparing Jack Ma, one of the richest men on earth, and Xi Jinping, a much lower-paid individual.
They indicated that Xi got Ma into a chokehold. I think he "disappeared" Ma for some time. Don't remember exactly how long, but it may have been over a year.
Elon has ICBMs, but France has warheads.
>That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France.
lawfare is... good now? Between Trump being hit with felony charges for falsifying business records (lawfare is good?) and Lisa Cook getting prosecuted for mortgage fraud (lawfare is bad?), I honestly lost track at this point.
>The same way the president of the USA can order a Drone strike on a Taliban war lord, the president of France could order Musks plane to be escorted to Paris by 3 Fighter jets.
What's even the implication here? That they're going to shoot his plane down? If there's no threat of violence, what does the French government even hope to achieve with this?
Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
> Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
Though things like that can happen, which are very serious.
For a net company in 2026? Fat chance.
What, thinking HQ wouldn't cancel them?
Covered here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-bosses-tol...
No. It's 20 April in the rest of the world: 204.
Obviously, the government can just threaten to fine you any amount, close operations or whatever, but your company can just decide to stop operating there, like Google after Russia imposed an absurd fine.
They will explain that it was done remotely and whatnot but then the company will be closed in the country. Whether this matters for the mothership is another story.
What happened to due process? Every major firm should have a "dawn raid" policy to comply while preserving rights.
Specific to the Uber case(s), if it were illegal, then why didn't Uber get criminal charges or fines?
At best there's an argument that it was "obstructing justice," but logging people off, encrypting, and deleting local copies isn't necessarily illegal.
This is pretty messed up btw.
Social work for children systems in the USA are very messed up. It is not uncommon for minority families to lose rights to parent their children for very innocuous things that would not happen to a non-oppressed class.
It is just another way for the justice/legal system to pressure families that have not been convicted / penalized under the supervision of a court.
And this isn't the only lever they use.
Every time I read crap like this I just think of Aaron Swartz.
PARIS (AP) — French prosecutors raided the offices of social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into allegations including spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes. They have also summoned billionaire owner Elon Musk for questioning.
X and Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI also face intensifying scrutiny from Britain’s data privacy regulator, which opened formal investigations into how they handled personal data when they developed and deployed Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.
Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage last month after it pumped out a torrent of sexualized nonconsensual deepfake images in response to requests from X users.
The French investigation was opened in January last year by the prosecutors’ cybercrime unit, the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a statement. It’s looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.
Prosecutors asked Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino to attend “voluntary interviews” on April 20. Employees of X have also been summoned that same week to be heard as witnesses, the statement said. Yaccarino was CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.
[](https://apnews.com/article/spacex-xai-musk-space-2079f03fa888652b7fe836afe8b670a1)
3 MIN READ
[](https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-talks-drones-starlink-3ae862c4713a378b2d2ebb809b39120a)
2 MIN READ
[](https://apnews.com/article/indonesia-grok-x-musk-ai-deepfakes-9dab729bf61d54257cc772b02fbf21c0)
1 MIN READ
A spokesperson for X did not respond to multiple requests for comment. X’s lawyer in France, Kami Haeri, told The Associated Press: ″We are not making any comment at this stage.”
In a message posted on X, the Paris prosecutors’ office announced the ongoing searches at the company’s offices in France and said it was leaving the platform while calling on followers to join it on other social media.
“At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory,” the prosecutors’ statement said.
European Union police agency Europol “is supporting the French authorities in this,” Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth told the AP, without elaborating.
French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system.
It expanded after Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said.
Grok wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.
In later posts on X, the chatbot reversed itself and acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, saying it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to kill more than 1 million people in Auschwitz gas chambers.
The chatbot also appeared to praise Adolf Hitler last year, in comments that X took down after complaints.
In Britain, the Information Commissioner’s Office said it’s looking into whether X and xAI followed the law when processing personal data and whether Grok had any measures in place to prevent its use to generate “harmful manipulated images.”
“The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualised images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this,” said William Malcolm, an executive director at the watchdog.
He didn’t specify what the penalty would be if the probe found the companies didn’t comply with data protection laws.
A separate investigation into Grok launched last month by the U.K. media regulator, Ofcom, is ongoing.
Ofcom said Tuesday it’s still gathering evidence and warned the probe could take months.
X has also been under pressure from the EU. The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm opened an investigation last month after Grok spewed nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform.
Brussels has already hit X with a 120-million euro (then-$140 million) fine for shortcomings under the bloc’s sweeping digital regulations, including blue checkmarks that broke the rules on “deceptive design practices” that risked exposing users to scams and manipulation.
On Monday, Musk ’s space exploration and rocket business, SpaceX, announced that it acquired xAI in a deal that will also combine Grok, X and his satellite communication company Starlink.
___
Associated Press writers Nicolas Vaux-Montagny in Lyon, France, Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, Sylvia Hui and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.
The second part of your question remains a mystery :-)
>French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system. It expanded after Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said.
Looking at the prompts below some of those image shows that even now, there's almost zero effort at Grok to filter prompts that are blatantly looking to create problematic material. People aren't being sneaky and smart and wordsmithing subtle cues to try to bypass content filtering, they're often saying "create this" bluntly and directly, and Grok is happily obliging.
Well, when everything is lawfare it logically follows that it won't always be good or always be bad. It seems Al Capone being taken down for tax fraud would similarly be lawfare by these standards, or am I missing something? Perhaps lawfare (sometimes referred to as "prosecuting criminal charges", as far as I can tell, given this context) is just in some cases and unjust in others.
GDPR and DMA actually have teeth. They just haven't been shown yet because the usual M.O. for European law violators is first, a free reminder "hey guys, what you're doing is against the law, stop it, or else". Then, if violations continue, maybe two or three rounds follow... but at some point, especially if the violations are openly intentional (and Musk's behavior makes that very very clear), the hammer gets brought down.
Our system is based on the idea that we institute complex regulations, and when they get introduced and stuff goes south, we assume that it's innocent mistakes first.
And in addition to that, there's the geopolitical aspect... basically, hurt Musk to show Trump that, yes, Europe means business and has the means to fight back.
As for the allegations:
> The probe has since expanded to investigate alleged “complicity” in spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised group, and other offences, the office said in a statement Tuesday.
The GDPR/DMA stuff just was the opener anyway. CSAM isn't liked by authorities at all, and genocide denial (we're not talking about Palestine here, calm your horses y'all, we're talking about Holocaust denial) is a crime in most European jurisdiction (in addition to doing the right-arm salute and other displays of fascist insignia). We actually learned something out of WW2.
Elon would love it. So it won't happen.
As France discovered the hard way in WW2, you can put all sorts of rock-solid security around the front door only to be surprised when your opponent comes in by window.
I think we can and should all agree that child sexual abuse is a much larger and more serious problem than political leanings.
It's ironic as you're commenting about a social media platform, but I think it's frightening what social media has done to us with misinformation, vilification, and echo chambers, to think political leanings are worse than murder, rape, or child sexual abuse.
But whatever zombie government France is running can't "ban" X anyway because it would get them one step closer to the guillotine. Like in the UK or Germany it is a tinderbox cruising on a 10-20% approval rating.
If "French prosecutor" want to find a child abuse case they can check the Macron couple Wikipedia pages.
Again: the threat is so clear that you rarely have to execute on it.
But China is different. Not sure most of western europe will go that far in most cases.
Claim that you suspect there may be abuse, it will trigger a case for a "worrying situation".
Then it's a procedural lottery:
-> If you get lucky, they will investigate, meet the people, and dismiss the case.
-> If you get unlucky, they will take the baby, and it's only then after a long investigation and a "family assistant" (that will check you every day), that you can recover your baby.
Typically, ex-wife who doesn't like the ex-husband, but it can be a neighbor etc.
One worker explains that they don't really have time to investigate when processing reports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG9y_-4kGQA and they have to act very fast, and by default, it is safer to remove from family.
The boss of such agency doesn't even take the time to answer to the journalists there...
-> Example of such case (this man is innocent): https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/var-un-homme-se-mobilis...
but I can't blame them either, it's not easy to make the right calls.
As they say: you can beat the rap but not the ride. If a state wants to make your life incredibly difficult for months or even years they can, the competent ones can even do it while staying (mostly) on the right side of the law.
Given his recent "far right" bromance that's probably not a good idea ;)
...but then other commenters reminded me there is another thing on the same date, which might have been more the actual troll at Elmo to get him all worked up
[1] This was also something Google did which was change access rights for people in the China office that were not 'vetted' (for some definition of vetted) feeling like they could be an exfiltration risk. Imagine a DGSE agent under cover as an X employee who carefully puts a bunch of stuff on a server in the office (doesn't trigger IT controls) and then lets the prosecutors know its ready and they serve the warrant.
That due process only exists to the extent the branches of govt are independent, have co-equal power, and can hold and act upon different views of the situation.
When all branches of govt are corrupted or corrupted to serve the executive, as in autocracies, that due process exists only if the executive likes you, or accepts your bribes. That is why there is such a huge push by right-wing parties to take over the levers of power, so they can keep their power even after they would lose at the ballot box.
Paradox of tolerance. (The American right being Exhibit A for why trying to let sunlight disinfect a corpse doesn’t work.)
Oops... yeah, in retrospect it was even worse... no... you can and should be judged by the friends you keep and hang-out with... The same ones who seem to be circling the wagons with innocuous statements or attempts to find other scapegoats (DARVO)... hmm, what was that quote again:
"We must all hang together or we will all hang separately"
They had a sweet deal with Macron. Prosecution became hard to continue once he got involved.
When they’re both private, fine, whatever.
As we're seeing with the current US President... the government doesn't (have to) care.
In any case, CSAM is the one thing other than Islamist terrorism that will bypass a lot of restrictions on how police are supposed to operate (see e.g. Encrochat, An0m) across virtually all civilized nations. Western nations also will take anything that remotely smells like Russia as a justification.
It's pretty obvious the French are deliberately conflating the two to justify attacking a political dissident.
By itself this isn't extraordinary in a democracy.
We don't know how many were pedo/rapists, but we know all of them liked to socialize with one and trade favours and spread his influence.
I think your interpretation would be more along the line of making 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and The Handmaid's Tale a reality.
This was a common action during the Russian invasion of Ukraine for companies that supported Ukraine and closed their operations in Russia.
It's a nice sentiment, if true. ICE is out there, right now today, ignoring both individual rights as well as due process.
And how is that different from TV channels/media en large having laws to abide by? Slippery slope arguments are themselves slippery slopes..
I believe people are looking too much into 20 April → 4/20 → 420
Elon probably isn’t paying them enough to be the lightning rod for the current cross-Atlantic tension.
Or they had a weak case. Prosecutors even drop winnable cases because they don't want to lose.
However - it has one big problem that is rarely discussed... Normalizing of behaviour, interests and attitudes. It just becomes a thing that Grok can do - for paid accounts, and people think - ok, "no harm, no problem"... Long-term, there will be harm. This has been demonstrated over decades of investigation of CSAM.
Well, that's particular to the US. It just shows that checks and balances are not properly implemented there, just previous presidents weren't exploiting it maliciously for their own gains.
The closest I can think of is GDPR which has its great aspects and also the cookies law (which is incorrectly interpreted). And some things like private IPs being PIIs which promotes nonsnsical "authorities notifications" that are not used afterwards.
We have consulting companies doing yearly audits on companies to close the books. And yet hacks happen all the time. Without consequences.
There is an ocean between what is announced and lives on paper vs. the reality of the application. If you work in compliance and cubersecurity you see this everyday.
Put this up there with nonsensical phrases like "violent agreement."
;-)
I think that would delve into whether or not the USA would be considered a foreign adversary to France. I was under the impression we were allies since like the 1800s or so despite some little tiffs now and again.
[1] - https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521
That's not a credible threat because there's approximately 0% chance France would actually follow through with it. Not even Trump would resort to murder to get rid of his domestic adversaries. As we seen the fed, the best he could muster are some spurious prosecutions. France murdering someone would put them on par with Russia or India.
People are putting a lot of weight on the midterm elections which are more or less the last line of defense besides a so far tepid response by the courts and even then consequence free defiance of court orders is now rampant.
We're really near the point of no return and a lot of people don't seem to notice.
/s
No, i am not saying that it is the same. I am saying that it would start as "We are just going after the tech companies" but if you give the government an inch they will take a mile. They would take that and expand upon the hate speech stuff you are already see around the world as an excuse to arrest whoever they wanted.
I am a free market person, so i think these sites are providing something to the market that people like or they wouldn't be there. If you wanted to rein them in, fine but you have to be careful how you word stuff or it gets pretty scary pretty quickly.
At this point a nuclear power like France has no issue with using covert violence to produce compliance from Musk and he must know it.
These people have proven themselves to be existential threats to French security and France will do whatever they feel is necessary to neutralize that threat.
Musk is free to ignore French rule of law if he wants to risk being involved in an airplane accident that will have rumours and conspiracies swirling around it long after he’s dead and his body is strewn all over the ocean somewhere.
"today it's my husband to take care of him because sometimes my baby makes me angry that I want to kill him"
-> Whoops, someone talked with 119 to refer a "worrying" situation, baby removed. It's already two years.
There are some non-profit fighting against such: https://lenfanceaucoeur.org/quest-ce-que-le-placement-abusif...
That being said, it's a very small % obviously not let's not exaggerate but it's quite sneaky.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-mom-cfs-bac...
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ariha-family-visit-t...
A lot of people are cheering it (some on this very site).
If captain of the plane disobeyed direct threat like that from a nation, his career is going to be limited. Yeah Elon might throw money at him but that guy is most likely never allowed again to fly near any French territory. I guess whole cabin crew as well .
Being clear for flying anywhere in the world is their job.
Would be quite stupid to loose it like truck driver DUI getting his license revoked.
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/venezuela-survey-trump-ma...
If you call 119 it gets assessed and potentially forwarded to the right department, which then assesses it again and might (quite likely will) trigger an inspection. The people who turn up have broad powers to seize children from the home in order to protect them from abuse.
In general this works fine. Unfortunately in some circumstances this does give a very low skilled/paid person (the inspector) a lot of power, and a lot of sway with judges. If this person is bad at their job for whatever reason (incompetence/malice) it can cause a lot of problems. It is very hard to prove a person like this wrong when they are covering their arse after making a mistake.
afaik similar systems are present in most western countries, and many of them - like France - are suffering with funding and are likely cutting in the wrong place (audit/rigour) to meet external KPIs. One of the worst ways this manifests is creating 'quick scoring' methods which can end up with misunderstandings (e.g. said a thing they didn't mean) ranking very highly, but subtle evidence of abuse moderate to low.
So while this is a concern, this is not unique to France, this is relatively normal, and the poster is massively exaggerating the simplicity.
I don't see aggressive compliance defined anywhere. Violent agreement has definitions, but it feels like it's best defined as a consulting buzzword.
>If captain of the plane disobeyed direct threat like that from a nation, his career is going to be limited. Yeah Elon might throw money at him but that guy is most likely never allowed again to fly near any French territory. I guess whole cabin crew as well .
Again, what's France trying to do? Refuse entry to France? Why do they need to threaten shooting down his jet for that? Just harassing/pranking him (eg. "haha got you good with that jet lmao")?
https://www.tampafp.com/rand-paul-and-marco-rubio-clash-over...
There was a huge mess right after metoo when a inspector went against the courts rulings. The court had given the father sole custody in a extremely messy divorce, and the inspector did not agree with the decision. As a result they remove the child from his father, in direct contrast to the courts decision, and put the child through 6 years of isolation and abuse with no access to school. It took investigative journalists a while, but the result of the case getting highlighted in media was that the inspector and supervisor is now fired, with two additoal workers being under investigation for severe misconduct. Four more workers would be under investigation but too long time has passed. The review board should have prevented this, as should the supervisor for the inspector, but those safety net failed in this case in part because of the cultural environment at the time.
This seems guaranteed to occur every year then… since incompetence/malice will happen eventually with thousands upon thousands of cases?
Seriously, every powerful state engages in state terrorism from time to time because they can, and the embarrassment of discovery is weighed against the benefit of eliminating a problem. France is no exception : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
It's just that the West has avoided to do that to each other because they were all essentially allied until recently and because the political implications were deemed too severe.
I don't think however France has anything to win by doing it or has any interest whatsoever and I doubt there's a legal framework the French government can or want to exploit to conduct something like that legally (like calling something an emergency situation or a terrorist group, for example).
Why not? After all, that's in vogue today. Trump is ignoring all the international agreements and rules, so why should others follow them?
EU, maybe not. France? A nuclear state? Paris is properly sovereign.
> people with strong support of the current government
Also known as leverage.
Let Musk off the hook for a sweetheart trade deal. Trump has a track record of chickening out when others show strength.
The second Donald Trump threatened to invade a nation allied with France is the second anyone who works with Trump became a legitimate military target.
Like a cruel child dismembering a spider one limb at a time France and other nations around the world will meticulously destroy whatever resources people like Musk have and the influence it gives him over their countries.
If Musk displays a sufficient level of resistance to these actions the French will simply assassinate him.
Not at all. This job will go to an "AI" any moment now.
/i
Depends on how much faith you have in the current administration. Russia limits presidents to two 6-year terms, yet Putin is in power since 2000.
OpenDNS is censored in France... so imagine
That is true. But nukes are not magic. Explain to me how you imagine the series of events where Paris uses their nukes to get the USA to extradite Elon to Paris. Because i’m just not seeing it.
PS Yes, Greenpeace is a bunch of scientifically-illiterate fools who have caused far more damage than they prevented. Doesn't matter because what France did was still clearly against the law.
Paris doesn’t need to back down. And it can independently exert effort in a way other European countries can’t. Musk losing Paris means swearing off a meaningful economic and political bloc.