Pressure grows to hold Elon Musk accountable for interfering in world politics using X  

Brasil de Fato

Conservative billionaire Elon Musk has increased his number of enemies in the last week due to the provocations and political interference he makes through the social network X, which he owns.  

In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on Monday (12), Bruce Daisley, Twitter’s former vice-president for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, argues that Musk should face “personal sanctions” and even the threat of an “arrest warrant” if proven that he is causing public disorder on his social media platform.  

“He has done absolutely nothing to combat fake news or to try to stop X being used as a mechanism to call for fascist protests. Many political leaders in the UK have expressed that he should be held responsible for these strong protests that have taken place,” points out Luigino Bracci, a journalist T.I. expert from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV).  

A few days earlier, on August 5, the billionaire clashed with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer when he said that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK, which is facing its worst riots in 13 years, including xenophobic and racist attacks on mosques and migrant centers. 

The disturbances were caused by the dissemination – via X – of fake news by far-right “influencers” claiming that the perpetrator of a crime that killed three children was a Muslim asylum seeker.   

The Brazilian filmmaker Alex Carvalho, who has been living in London for over 20 years, calls Musk’s statement “irresponsible and dangerous.”

“Comments like this, coming from influential figures, increase tensions and can provoke real violence. The British government needs to take these statements seriously and act to reduce its impact. In Brazil, we also face similar challenges, where inflammatory and polarizing speeches have the potential to generate violence and social instability.”  

On Thursday (8), Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suspended the social network for ten days and accused Musk of “inciting hatred and fascism.”  

Bracci points out that Musk has publicly aligned himself with far-right leaders in Latin America, such as the presidents of El Salvador, Nabil Bukele, and Argentina, Javier Milei, and his interest in the region is focused on the extraction of lithium and other natural resources used by his companies.  

“He’s not thinking about helping these countries escape poverty and to be on the same level as the developed countries. He doesn’t think about any of that; he only thinks about us in terms of getting the resources that he needs as cheaply as possible.” 

Illegal data collection  

In addition to the political interference promoted by Musk, the European Center for Digital Rights, based in Vienna, Austria, stated on Monday (12) that the social network X is facing complaints in eight European countries for the ‘illegal’ use of internet users’ data to feed its Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology without their consent. 

The organization, also called Noyb (“None Of Your Business”), claims that the X network “never proactively informed users that their data was used to train its AI technology Grok.”  

Noyb has filed lawsuits in Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands, requesting an “urgent procedure” against X to allow data protection authorities to intervene in these eight European countries. “We want to ensure that Twitter (now X) fully complies with EU law, which, at the very least, requires asking people for their consent,” said Schrems, who cited the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

The GDPR aims to make it easier for people to control how companies use their personal information. According to Noyb, the social network recently started feeding the data of more than 60 million European users into its AI technology Grok “without ever informing or asking for their consent.”  

The organization filed the lawsuits after Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) took legal action against X for its information-gathering practices to train AI. The DPC stated last week that X had agreed to suspend the questioned processing of users’ data for its AI.  

However, Max Schrems, founder of Noyb, said in a statement that the DPC “has not questioned the lawfulness” of the current processing, apparently taking action at the margins, not at the heart of the problem.” The organization also warned that what has happened to the data already incorporated is not clear yet. 

*With AFP