hckrnws
Honest question: What does it mean to "raid" the offices of a tech company? It's not like they have file cabinets with paper records. Are they just seizing employee workstations?
Seems like you'd want to subpoena source code or gmail history or something like that. Not much interesting in an office these days.
Sadly the media calls the lawful use of a warrant a 'raid' but that's another issue.
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.
Gather evidence against employees, use that evidence to put them under pressure to testify against their employer or grant access to evidence.
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.
> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.
Interesting point. There's a top gangster who can buy anything in the prison commissary; and then there's the warden.
No, state decides on the rules of the game any business is playing by.
I think both you and the comment you're replying to agree with the gp.
It's legal to just put kids in foster care for no reason but to ruin someone's life?
In France it's possible without legal consequences (though immoral), if you call 119, you can push to have a baby taken from a family for no reason except that you do not like someone.
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.
I can't believe theres a country out there that has recreated the DMCA but for child welfare
Canada and Germany are no different.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-mom-cfs-bac...
[1] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ariha-family-visit-t...
I mean, that's surely not as simple as you make it out to be.
Its not.
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've seen that during harassment; in one YouTube live the woman claimed:
"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.
> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.
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.
From what I hear, Ma made 1 speech critical of the government and Xi showed him his place. It was a few years, a year of total disappearance followed by slow rehab.
But China is different. Not sure most of western europe will go that far in most cases.
Trump kidnapped Maduro to show the latter his place, but then the US is neither China nor Western Europe so that does not count.
Comment was deleted :(
Yes but using such power unscrupulously is a great way to lose it.
Wait, Sabu's kids were foster kids. He was fostering them. Certainly if he went to jail, they'd go back to the system.
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.
>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.
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?
fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.
Again: the threat is so clear that you rarely have to execute on it.
>fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.
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.
Don’t forget that captain of the plane makes decisions not Elon.
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.
> lawfare is... good now?
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.
> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.
Elon has ICBMs, but France has warheads.
France has Ariane, which was good enough to send Jame Web Telescope to some Lagrange point with extra precision. It's all fun and and games until the French finish their cigarette, arms French Guyana and fire ze missiles.
Comment was deleted :(
> Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.
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.
> defendents have rights and due process.
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.
We are not entirely sure the rule of law in America isn't already over.
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.
> We're really near the point of no return and a lot of people don't seem to notice.
A lot of people are cheering it (some on this very site).
> Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
It's a nice sentiment, if true. ICE is out there, right now today, ignoring both individual rights as well as due process.
They were talking about western liberal democracies, though.
/s
> Also, they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
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.
> As we're seeing with the current US President
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.
>> they are restricted in how they use it, and defendents have rights and due process.
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.
> Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care.
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.
One can also say we do too little for children who get mistreated. Taking care of other peoples children is never easy the decision needs to be fast and effective and no one wants to take the decision to end it. Because there are those rare cases were children dies because of a reunion with their parents.
[dead]
Offline syncing of outlook could reveal a lot of emails that would otherwise be on a foreign server. A lot of people save copies of documents locally as well.
Most enterprises have fully encrypted workstations, when they don't use VM where the desktop is just a thin client that doesn't store any data. So there should be really nothing of interest in the office itself.
It sounds better in the news when you do a raid. These things are generally not done for any purpose other than to communicate a message and score political points.
Whether you are a tech company or not, there's a lot of data on computers that are physically in the office.
Except when they have encryption, which should be the standard? I mean how much data would authorities actually retrieve when most stuff is located on X servers anyways? I have my doubts.
The authorities will request the keys for local servers and will get them. As for remote ones (outside of France jurisdiction) it depends where they are and how much X wants to make their life difficult.
Musk and X don't seem to be the type to care about any laws or any compelling legal requests, especially from a foreign government. I doubt the French will get anything other than this headline.
Getting kicked out of the EU is extremely unattractive for Twitter. But the US also has extradition treaties so that’s hardly the end of how far they can escalate.
I don't think US will extradite anybody to EU. Especially not white people with strong support of the current government.
White people already extradited to the EU during the current administration would disagree. But this administration has a limited shelf life, even hypothetically just under 3 years of immunity isn’t enough for comfort.
> But this administration has a limited shelf life, even hypothetically just under 3 years of immunity isn’t enough for comfort.
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.
> don't think US will extradite anybody to EU
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.
> France? A nuclear state? Paris is properly sovereign.
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.
> 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
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.
Comment was deleted :(
No need for nukes. France can issue an Interpol Red Notice for the arrest of Elon Musk, for whatever excuse is found.
France doesn't extradite its citizens, even absolute scumbags like Roman Polanski. Someone like Musk has lots of lawyers to gum up extradition proceedings, even if the US were inclined to go along. I doubt the US extradition treaty would cover this unless the French could prove deliberate sharing of CSAM by Musk personally, beyond reckless negligence. Then again, after the Epstein revelations, this is no longer so far-fetched.
If I'm an employee working in the X office in France, and the police come in and show me they have a warrant for all the computers in the building and tell me to unlock the laptop, I'm probably going to do that, no matter what musk thinks
Witnesses can generally not refuse in these situations, that's plain contempt and/or obstruction. Additionally, in France a suspect not revealing their keys is also contempt (UK as well).
100%. Only additional troubles for yourself personally, for practically no benefit (nobody in the company is going to celebrate you).
The game changed when Trump threatened the use of military force to seize Greenland.
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.
You're implying that France is going to become a terrorist state? Because suspicious accidents do not sound like rule of law.
Counter-point. France has already kidnapped another social media CEO and forced him to give up the encryption keys. The moral difference between France (historically or currently) and a 3rd wold warlord is very thin. Also, look at the accusations. CP and political extremism are the classic go-tos when a government doesn't really have a reason to put pressure on someone but they really want to anyway. France has a very questionable history of honoring rule of law in politics. Putting political enemies in prison on questionable charges has a long history there.
We are also talking about a country who wants to ban anonymous VPNs in the name of protecting the children and ask everyone to give their ID card to register account on Instagram, TikTok, etc.
OpenDNS is censored in France... so imagine
Killing foreigners outside of the own country has always been deemed acceptable by governments that are (or were until recently) considered to generally follow rule of law as well as the majority of their citizen. It also doesn't necessarily contradicts rule of law.
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).
Comment was deleted :(
No difference in a strike like that and the strikes against fishing boats near Venezuela trump has ordered
> You're implying that France is going to become a terrorist state? Because suspicious accidents do not sound like rule of law.
Why not? After all, that's in vogue today. Trump is ignoring all the international agreements and rules, so why should others follow them?
Become? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
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.
You got that backwards. Greenpeace for all its faults is still viewed as a group against which military force is a no-no. Sinking that ship cost France far more than anything they inflicted on Greenpeace. If anything, that event is evidence that going after Musk is a terrible idea.
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.
I had the same thought - not just about raids, but about raiding a satellite office. This sounds like theater begging for headlines like this one.
They do what they can. They obviously can't raid the American office.
These days many tech company offices have a "panic button" for raids that will erase data. Uber is perhaps the most notorious example.
It wasn't erasing as far I know, but locking all computers.
Covered here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-bosses-tol...
>notorious
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.
> if it were illegal, then why didn't Uber get criminal charges or fines?
They had a sweet deal with Macron. Prosecution became hard to continue once he got involved.
It is aggressive compliance. The legality would be determined by the courts as usual.
> aggressive compliance
Put this up there with nonsensical phrases like "violent agreement."
;-)
violent agreement is when you're debating something with someone, and you end up yelling at each other because you think you disagree on something, but then you realize that you (violently, as in "are yelling at each other") agree on whatever it is. Agressive compliance is when the corporate drone over-zealously follows stupid/pointless rules when they could just look the other way, to the point of it being aggressively compliant (with stupid corporate mumbo jumbo).
Comment was deleted :(
This is a perfect way for the legal head of the company in-country to visit some jails.
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.
Of course they will not lock the data but hide it, and put some redacted or otherwise innocent files in their place.
That sounds awfully difficult to do perfectly without personally signing up for extra jail time for premeditated violation of local laws. Like in that scenario, any reference to the unsanitized file or a single employee breaking omertà is proof that your executives and IT staff conspired to violate the law in a way which is likely to ensure they want to prosecute as maximally as possible. Law enforcement around the world hates the idea that you don’t respect their authority, and when it slots into existing geopolitics you’d be a very tempting scapegoat.
Elon probably isn’t paying them enough to be the lightning rod for the current cross-Atlantic tension.
These days you can probably ask an LLM to redact the files for you, so expect more of it.
Nobody does that. It is either cooperation with law enforcement or remote lock (and then there are consequences for the in-country legal entity, probably not personally for the head but certainly for its existence).
This was a common action during the Russian invasion of Ukraine for companies that supported Ukraine and closed their operations in Russia.
It's sad to see this degree of incentives perverted, over adhering to local laws.
How do you know this?
From HN, of course! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32057651
Why don't you think they have file cabinets and paper records?
> Are they just seizing employee workstations?
Yes.
> Seems like you'd want to subpoena source code or gmail history or something like that.
This would be done in parallel for key sources.
There is a lot of information on physical devices that is helpful, though. Even discovering additional apps and services used on the devices can lead to more discovery via those cloud services, if relevant.
Physical devices have a lot of additional information, though: Files people are actively working on, saved snippets and screenshots of important conversations, and synced data that might be easier to get offline than through legal means against the providers.
In outright criminal cases it's not uncommon for individuals to keep extra information on their laptop, phone, or a USB drive hidden in their office as an insurance policy.
This is yet another good reason to keep your work and personal devices separate, as hard as that can be at times. If there's a lawsuit you don't want your personal laptop and phone to disappear for a while.
Sure it might be on the device, but they would need a password to decrypt the laptop's storage to get any of the data. There's also the possibility of the MDM software making it impossible to decrypt if given a remote signal. Even if you image the drive, you can't image the secure enclave so if it is wiped it's impossible to retrieve.
Gather evidence.
I assume that they have opened a formal investigation and are now going to the office to collect/perloin evidence before it's destroyed.
Most FAANG companies have training specifically for this. I assume X doesn't anymore, because they are cool and edgy, and staff training is for the woke.
If that training involves destroying evidence or withholding evidence from the prosecution, you are going to jail if you follow it.
What a strange assumption. The training is "summon the lawyers immediately", "ensure they're accompanied at all times while on company premises", etc.
That can start with self deleting messages if you are under court order, and has happens before:
“Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was ‘lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation’ and ‘with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation.’”
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.37...
VW is another case where similar things happens:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-12/vw-offici...
The thing is: Companies don’t got to jail, employees do.
[dead]
>withholding evidence from the prosecution, you are going to jail if you follow.
Prosecution must present a valid search warrant for *specific* information. They don't get a carte blanche, so uber way is correct. lock computers and lets the courts to decide.
The training is very much the opposite.
mine had a scene where some bro tried to organise the resistance. A voice over told us that he was arrested for blocking a legal investigation and was liable for being fired due to reputational damage.
X's training might be like you described, but everywhere else that is vaguely beholden to law and order would be opposite.
Why is this the most upvoted question? Obsessing over pedantry rather than the main thrust of what's being discussed
I read somewhere that Musk (or maybe Theil) companies have processes in place to quickly offload data from a location to other jurisdictions (and destroy the local data) when they detect a raid happening. Don't know how true it is though. The only insight I have into their operations was the amazing speed by which people are badged in and out of his various gigafactories. It "appears" that they developed custom badging systems when people drive into gigafactories to cut the time needed to begin work. If they are doing that kind of stuff then there has got to be something in place for a raid. (This is second hand so take with a grain of salt)
EDIT: It seems from other comments that it may have been Uber I was reading about. The badging system I have personally observed outside the Gigafactories. Apologies for the mixup.
That is very much illegal in the US
It wouldn't be the first time a Musk company knowingly does something illegal.
I think as far as Musk is concerned, laws only apply in the "don't get caught" sense.
give any country a gift / investment of 100B USD
-> crimes ? what crimes ?
Guess that will be a SpaceX problem soon enough. What a mess.
I wonder if the recent announcement spurred them into making a move now rather than later.
How was that move legal anyway? Like... a lot of people and governments gave Musk money to develop, build and launch rockets. And now he's using it to bail out his failing social media network and CSAM peddling AI service.
Once he launched the rockets he can do whatever he wants with the profit. And he wants to train Grok.
CSAM in space! At least he isn’t reinventing the cross town bus.
Ok, that's the second article on this that doesn't mention how it works in France.
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
This is really useful for those of us who are really only familiar with the US system. Let me restate a few things to make sure I understand, and follow with some questions:
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?
Thanks for this, it's really important to reflect the fact that aside from anything else, the common law tradition practiced in most anglophone countries is fundamentally at odds with a lot of European countries.
What's the distinction you're making between "state" and "judiciary"?
The procureur is part of the executive, and thus represents, and is directed by, the government. The other is independent from the executive, as part of the judicary branch.
Traditionally, in France, l’État (likely translated into "the state" here) refers to the national-level executive branch.
Once you've worked long enough in the software industry, you start to understand it's all just a fully planned economy.
Why would X have offices in France? I'm assuming it's just to hire French workers? Probably leftover from the Pre Acquisition era.
Or is there any France-specific compliance that must be done in order to operate in that country?
X makes its money selling advertising. France is the obvious place to have an office selling advertising to a large European French-speaking audience.
Yes, Paris is an international capital and centrally located for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Many tech companies have sales offices there.
I guess this means that building the neverending 'deepfake CSAM on demand machine' was a bad idea.
France24 article on this: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260203-paris-prosecutor...
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,
>The Paris prosecutor's office said it launched the investigation after being contacted by a lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms in X were likely to have distorted the operation of an automated data processing system.
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?
Holocaust denial is illegal in France, for one, and Grok did exactly that on several occasions.
Also, csam and pornographic content using the likeness of unwilling people. Grok’s recent shit was bound to have consequences.
> 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?
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.
[flagged]
I wonder how he'll try to get out of being summoned. Claim 4/20 is a holiday that he celebrates?
It's voluntary
They'll make a judgement without him if he doesn't turn up.
An "audition en tant que témoin libre" is more or less the way for an investigation to give a chance to give their side of the story. Musk is not likely to be personally tried here.
> Claim 4/20 is a holiday that he celebrates?
Given his recent "far right" bromance that's probably not a good idea ;)
It hadn't occurred to me that might be the reason they picked 420
It’s unlikely, because putting the month first is a US thing. In France it would be 20/04, or “20 avril”.
Still, stoner-cultures in many countries in Europe celebrate 4-20, definitively a bunch of Frenchies getting extra stoned that day. It's probably the de-facto "international cannabis day" in most places in the world, at least the ones influenced by US culture which reached pretty far in its heyday.
Oh, that was 100% in my mind when I wrote that. I was wondering how explicit to be with Musk's celebrating being for someone's birthday.
Wouldn't celebrating hitler's birthday be good for his far-right bromance?
We'll know he's gone too far if he has to take another "voluntary" trip to Israel
you would perhaps be shocked to learn how right-leaning the money folks behind the legal and legacy cannabis markets actually are. money is money.
[dead]
Why "lol"?
420 is a stoner number, stoners lol a lot, thought of Elmo's failed joint smoking on JRE before I stopped watching
...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
Well yes, if France24 was using "20 April 2026" as we write here, there would be no misunderstanding.
I believe people are looking too much into 20 April → 4/20 → 420
April 20th most definitely is international stoners day. And I like what the French have done here!
Thanks for the cultural perspective / reminder, yes that is definitely an American automatic translation
Comment was deleted :(
> lol, they summoned Elon for a hearing on 420
No. It's 20 April in the rest of the world: 204.
Facebook offices should routinely raided for aiding and profitting from various scams propagated through ads on this platform.
Governments don't care about minor scams. Political speech against them, on the other hand...
That would apply to any and all social media though
Sounds awesome, when do we start?
Elon's in the files asking Epstein about "wild parties" and then doesn't seem to care about all this. Easy to draw a conclusion here.
All I've seen is Elon tried to invite himself to the "wild parties" and they told him he couldn't come and that they weren't doing them anymore lol. It's possible he went but, from what I've seen, he wasn't ever invited.
Elon is literally in the files, talking about going to the island. It's documented
He was only going to the island to get rid of bots on Twitter. Just like OJ spent the rest of his life looking for the real killer.
It's timestamped like 2013, I think. Years before he bought Twitter (yes, I know you're joking)
He was planning way ahead, like a real genius.
Who knows who did what on this island, and I hope we'll figure it out. But in the meantime, going to this island or/and being friend with Epstein doesn't automatically make someone a pedo or rapist.
As part of the irrational mob that is out to find the witch, you are just being too rational. Down vote!
No, but they all knew he was a pedo/rapist, and were still friends with him and went to the island of a pedo/rapist, and introduced the pedo/rapist to their friends...
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.
Neither does your wife divorcing you at about the same time things started to go through legal process...
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"
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868998
> They have also summoned billionaire owner Elon Musk for questioning.
Good luck with that...
the thing is a lot of recent legal preceding surrounding X is about weather X fulfilled the legally required due diligence and if not what level of negligence we are speaking about
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.
I guess he could just never enter the EU ever again. Maybe he can buy Little St. James.
@dang The title here is misleading. The original not.
X didn't raid the prosecutors offices, the prosecutors did
@mentions aren’t a thing on HN. To contact the moderators, email hn@ycombinator.com (contact is at the bottom of the page).
I think they meant to put a period after raided.
Fixed. That period was one char too long but I used an "&" instead of "and" to fix it.
Comment was deleted :(
What X and why did the prosecutors raid their own office?
Some people are calling Twitter "X".
The second part of your question remains a mystery :-)
[flagged]
if a user uses a tool to break the law it's on the person who broke the law not the people who made the tool. knife manufacturers aren't to blame if someone gets stabbed right?
This seems different. With a knife the stabbing is done by the human. That would be akin to a paintbrush or camera or something being used to create CSAM.
Here you have a model that is actually creating the CSAM.
It seems more similar to a robot that is told to go kill someone and does so. Sure, someone told the robot to do something, but the creators of the robot really should have to put some safeguards to prevent it.
If the knife manufacturer willingly broke the law in order to sell it, then yes.
If the manufacturer advertised that the knife is not just for cooking but also stabbing people, then yes.
if the knife was designed to evade detection, then yes.
Text on the internet and all of that, but you should have added the "/s" to the end so people didn't think you were promoting this line of logic seriously.
If a knife manufacturer constructs an apparatus wherein someone can simply write "stab this child" on a whim to watch a knife stab a child, that manufacturer would in fact discover they are in legal peril to some extent.
I mean, no one's ever made a tool who's scope is "making literally anything you want," including, apparently CSAM. So we're in a bit of uncharted waters, really. Like mostly, no I would agree, it's a bad idea to hold the makers of a tool responsible for how it's used. And, this is an especially egregious offense on the part of said tool-maker.
Like how I see this is:
* If you can't restrict people from making kiddie porn with Grok, then it stands to reason at the very least, access to Grok needs to be strictly controlled.
* If you can restrict that, why wasn't that done? It can't be completely omitted from this conversation that Grok is, pretty famously, the "unrestrained" AI, which in most respects means it swears more, quotes and uses highly dubious sources of information that are friendly to Musk's personal politics, and occasionally spouts white nationalist rhetoric. So as part of their quest to "unwoke" Grok did they also make it able to generate this shit too?
This is really amusing to watch, because everything that Grok is accused of is something which you can also trigger in currently available open-weight models (if you know what you're doing).
There's nothing special about Grok in this regard. It wasn't trained to be a MechaHitler, nor to generate CSAM. It's just relatively uncensored[1] compared to the competition, which means it can be easily manipulated to do what the users tell it to, and that is biting Musk in the ass here.
And just to be clear, since apparently people love to jump to conclusions - I'm not excusing what is happening. I'm just pointing out the fact that the only special thing about Grok is that it's both relatively uncensored and easily available to a mainstream audience.
[1] -- see the Uncensored General Intelligence leaderboard where Grok is currently #1: https://huggingface.co/spaces/DontPlanToEnd/UGI-Leaderboard
> everything that Grok is accused of is something which you can also trigger in currently available open-weight models (if you know what you're doing)
Well, yes. You can make child pornography with any video-editing software. How is this exoneration?
I'm not talking about video editing software; that's a different class of software. I'm talking about other generative AI models, which you can download today onto your computer, and have it do the same thing as Grok does.
> How is this exoneration?
I don't know; you tell me where I said it was? I'm just stating a fact that Grok isn't unique here, and if you want to ban Grok because of it then you need to also ban open weight models which can do exactly the same thing.
> that's a different class of software. I'm talking about other generative AI models
And the article is talking about a social media site. A different class of software and company.
> if you want to ban Grok
Straw man. Nobody has suggested this.
I think he is talking about France who does very much seem like they want to ban X and Grok?
> France who does very much seem like they want to ban X and Grok?
Source? I’m not seeing that in the French-language press.
Well you could not sue the video-editing software for someone making child pornography with it. You would, quite sanely, go after the pedophiles themselves.
We don't go after Adobe for doing that. We go after the person who did it.
Maybe tying together an uncensored AI model and a social network just isn't something that's ethical / should be legal to do.
There are many things where each is legal/ethical to provide, and where combining them might make business sense, but where we, as a society have decided to not allow combining them.
Whataboutism on CSAM, classy. I hope this is the rock bottom for you and that things can only look up from here.
No. I'm just saying that people should be consistent and if they apply a certain standard to Grok then they should also apply the same standard to other things. Be consistent.
Meanwhile what I commonly see is people dunking on anything Musk-related because they dislike him, but give a free pass on similar things if it's not related to him.
Every island is capable of hosting pedophiles, but they don't. The one island that's famous for pedos is the one Musk wanted to be invited to. Find me more pedo islands, I'll dunk on them too very consistently. Whether it's AI with CSAM or islands with pedos, Musk is definitely consistent.
[flagged]
Every AI system is capable of generating CSAM and deep fakes if requested by a savvy user. The only thing this proves is that you can't upset the French government or they'll go on a fishing expedition through your office praying to find evidence of a crime.
>Every AI system is capable of generating CSAM and deep fakes if requested by a savvy user.
There is no way this is true, especially if the system is PaaS only. Additionally, the system should have a way to tell if someone is attempting to bypass their safety measures and act accordingly.
Grok makes it especially easy to do so.
What makes Grok special compared to random "AI gf generator 9001" which is hosted specifically with the intent of generating NSFW content?
If AI GF Generator 9001 is producing unwilling deepfake pornography of real people, especially if of children, feel free to raid their offices as well.
> What makes Grok special
X. xAI isn’t being raided. X is. If Instagram bought a girlfriend generator and built it into its app, it would face liability as well.
> if requested by a savvy user
Grok brought that thought all the way to "... so let's not even try to prevent it."
The point is to show just how aware X were of the issue, and that they chose to repeatedly do nothing against Grok being used to create CSAM and probably other problematic and illegal imagery.
I can't really doubt they'll find plenty of evidence during discovery, it doesn't have to be physical things. The raid stops office activity immediately, and marks the point in time after which they can be accused of destroying evidence if they erase relevant information to hide internal comms.
Grok does try to prevent it. They even publicly publish their safety prompt. It clearly shows they have disallowed the system from assisting with queries that create child sexual abuse material.
The fact that users have found ways to hack around this is not evidence of X committing a crime.
https://github.com/xai-org/grok-prompts/blob/main/grok_4_saf...
Comment was deleted :(
[dead]
>Every AI system is capable of generating CSAM and deep fakes if requested by a savvy user. The only thing this proves is that you can't upset the French government or they'll go on a fishing expedition through your office praying to find evidence of a crime.
If every AI system can do this, and every AI system in incapable of preventing it, then I guess every AI system should be banned until they can figure it out.
Every banking app on the planet "is capable" of letting a complete stranger go into your account and transfer all your money to their account. Did we force banks to put restrictions in place to prevent that from happening, or did we throw our arms up and say: oh well the French Government just wants to pick on banks?
Every artist is capable of drawing CSAM. Every 3D modeler can render CSAM. Ban all computers !!
Well every human can be an artist with some training. I guess the solution is to ban humans.
And the artist is punished for doing so. Thank you for proving my point.
You can use photoshop to create CSAM too, should that be banned?
Yet another nail
It's cool that not every law enforcement agency in the world is under the complete thumb of U.S. based billionaires.
Surprised the EU hasn’t banned it yet given that the platform is manipulated by Musk to destabilize Europe and move it towards the far right. The child abuse feels like a smaller problem compared to that risk.
In my opinion I think the reason they raided the offices for CSAM would be there are laws on the books for CSAM and not for social manipulation. If people could be jailed for manipulation there would be no social media platforms, lobbyists, political campaign groups or advertisements. People are already being manipulated by AI.
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.
It's broader and mentioned in the article:
>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.
hold on, are you saying that you should be able to be jailed for manipulation? Where would that end? could i be jailed if i post a review for a restaurant if you feel it manipulated you? or anyone stating an opinion could be construed as manipulation. that is beyond a slippery slope, that is an authoritarian nightmare.
So you think writing a review is somehow on the same magnitude as social media platforms with 300 million-3 billion users?
And how is that different from TV channels/media en large having laws to abide by? Slippery slope arguments are themselves slippery slopes..
I had to make a choice to not even use Grok (I wasn't overly interested in the first place, but wanted to review how it might compare to the other tools), because even just the Explore option shows photos and videos of CSAM, CSAM-adjacent, and other "problematic" things in a photorealistic manner (such as implied bestiality).
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.
Given America passed PAFACA (intended to ban TikTok, which Trump instead put in hands of his friends), I would think Europe would also have a similar law. Is that not the case?
Are you talking about this [1]? I don't know the answer to your question whether or not the EU has the same policy. That is talking about control by a foreign adversary.
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
EngineerUSA needs to vastly change his tone to avoid being flagged. I vouched it because it's broadly true but the wording could be a LOT better.
[flagged]
True, dissidents commiting wrongthink by not submitting to the far-left regimes' ideology should be prosecuted.
Comment was deleted :(
"Manipulated by Musk to destabilize Europe and move it towards the far right" - this is a very strong claim to make about a fairly open platform where people can choose what to post and who to follow.
Also, could you clarify what the difference is between the near right and the far right? Do you have any examples of the near right?
> fairly open platform where people can choose what to post and who to follow.
It is well known Musk amplifies his own speech and the words of those he agrees with on the platform, while banning those he doesn’t like.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m...
> could you clarify what the difference is between the near right and the far right?
It’s called far-right because it’s further to the right (starting from the centre) than the right. Wikipedia is your friend, it offers plenty of examples and even helpfully lays out the full spectrum in a way even a five year old with a developmental impairment could understand.
My friend Wikipedia tells me that far right means anything from outright fascism to mild restrictions on immigration. So the term is just meaningless, then?
I was surprised by your claim that Wikipedia would categorize mild restrictions on immigration as an element of far-right politics, so I read that article to see it for myself. I didn't see anything about mild restrictions. Would you care to point out where you saw that?
It calls National Rally in France "far right".
Well, far right is a spectrum, obviously. But a party that equates immigration of a particular religion as terrorism is not "mild immigration restrictions" in my reading.
I cross-checked Wikipedia's information with another source: https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/french-election-is-it-c...
I don't know about that party, but National Rally doesn't say that, and also polls around 34% of French people. So it remains that the Wikipedia "far right" definition is a very wide spectrum.
This is obviously diversion but anyway: Bunch of "American and European" "patriots" that he retweets 24/7 turned out to be people from Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia. These accounts generate likes by default by accounts with "wife of vet" in bio and generic old_blonde_women.jpeg aka bots.
So he retweets accounts which get likes, and this destabilizes Europe... how?
People having different opinions other than globalists elites is destabilizing to their reign :))
You meant to write "Literal russian state-sponsored bots"
They can’t fathom that their opinions are unpopular and probably wrong.
Elon fiddles with the algorithm to boost certain accounts. Some accounts are behind an auth wall and others are not. It’s open but not even.
And this destabilizes Europe... how?
It's pretty obvious, media is called the 4th power.
Control the media, you control the information that a significant part of Europeans get. Elections aren't won by 50%, you only need to convince 4 or 5% of the population that the far right is great.
Schrödingers social network: It's somehow irrelevant but somehow "destablizies our democracy" ;)
It gives people who aren't aware of the bot accounts / thumb on the scale the perception that insane crackpot delusions are more popular than they are.
There is a reason Musk paid so much for Twitter. If this stuff had no effect he wouldn't have bought it.
Right, european state media stould have the monopoly on spreading disinformation.
Social media should not allow algorithms to actively AMPLIFY disinformation to the public.
If people want to post disinformation that's fine, but the way that these companies push that information onto users is the problem. There either needs to be accountability for platforms or a ban on behavior driven content feeds.
People lying on the internet is fine. Social media algorithms amplifying the lie because it has high engagement is destroying our society.
The same way that social media has destabilized the USA.
By exposing people to a flood of misinformation and politically radicalizing content designed to maximize engagement via emotion (usually anger).
Remember when Elon Musk alleged that he was going to find a trillion dollars (a year) in waste fraud and abuse with DOGE? Did he ever issue a correction on that statement after catastrophically failing to do so? Do you think that kind of messaging might damage the trust in our institutions?
> Did he ever issue a correction on that statement after catastrophically failing to do so?
To be 'fair', finding fraud never was the real purpose of DOGE, just some fake argument that enough citizen would find plausible.
> where people can choose
How true is this really?
We certainly have data points to show Musk has put his thumb on the scale
[flagged]
While there may be some feeds on Xitter that are basic algorithms, (1) it's not the only one (2) there may still be less mechanical algorithmic choices within following (what order, what mix, how much) (3) evidence to the contrary exists, are you freeing yourself of facts?
I haven't dug into whatever they open sourced about the algorithm to make definitive statements. Regardless, there are many pieces out there where you can learn about the evidence for direct manipulation.
[flagged]
> You can just go on the app yourself and verify this
That's not how science and statistics works. Comprehensive evidence and analysis is a search or chat bot away. The legal cases will go into the details as well, by nature of how legal proceedings work
[flagged]
In case you're not playing dumb, the term you're looking for would be centre right.
Far right to me is advocating for things that discriminate based on protected traits like race, sex, etc. So if you’re advocating for “white culture” above others, that’s far right. If you’re advocating for the 19th amendment (women’s right to vote) to be repealed (as Nick Fuentes and similar influencers do), that’s also far right. Advocating for ICE to terrorize peaceful residents, violate constitutional rights, or outright execute people is also far right.
Near right to me is advocating for things like lower taxes or different regulations or a secure border (but without the deportation of millions who are already in the country and abiding by laws). Operating the government for those things while still respecting the law, upholding the constitution, defending civil rights, and avoiding the deeply unethical grifting and corruption the Trump administration has normalized.
Obviously this is very simplified. What are your definitions out of curiosity?
I think your definition is mostly fine, although deporting illegal immigrants is a moderate position, not near right.
And I would agree with the other reply that Musk is not far right by that definition.
By your definition Musk is not far right.
> Avoiding the deeply unethical grifting and corruption the Trump administration has normalized.
Care to give examples of these?
I hate to wade into this cesspool. How about some of the real obvious ones:
* Crypto currency rug pulls (World Liberty Financial)
* Donations linked with pardons (Binance)
* Pardoning failed rebels of a coup that favored him (Capitol rioters)
* Bringing baseless charges against political enemies and journalists (Comey, Letitia James, Don Lemon)
* Musk (DOGE) killing government regulatory agencies that had investigations and cases against his companies
[dead]
[flagged]
de Gaulle would be considered insanely far right today. Many aspects of Bush (assuming GW here) would be considered not in line with America's far-right today.
Assume good intent. It helps you see the actually interesting point being made.
> de Gaulle would be considered insanely far right today
As much as it pains me to say this, because i myself consider de Gaulle to be a fascist in many regards, that's far from a majority opinion (disclaimer: i'm an anarchist).
I think de Gaulle was a classic right-wing authoritarian ruler. He had to take some social measures (which some may view as left-wing) because the workers at the end of WWII were very organized and had dozens of thousands of rifles, so such was the price of social peace.
He was right-wing because he was rather conservative, for private property/entrepreneurship and strongly anti-communist. Still, he had strong national planning for the economy, much State support for private industry (Elf, Areva, etc) and strong policing on the streets (see also, Service d'Action Civique for de Gaulle's fascist militias with long ties with historical nazism and secret services).
That being said, de Gaulle to my knowledge was not really known for racist fear-mongering or hate speech. The genocides he took part in (eg. against Algerian people) were very quiet and the official story line was that there was no story. That's in comparison with far-right people who already at the time, and still today, build an image of the ENEMY towards whom all hate and violence is necessary. See also Umberto Eco's Ur-fascism for characteristics of fascist regimes.
In that sense, and it really pains me to write this, but de Gaulle was much less far-right than today's Parti Socialiste, pretending to be left wing despite ruling with right-wing anti-social measures and inciting hatred towards french muslims and binationals.
While de Gaulle being far-right is not a majority opinion (except in some marginal circles), he would undoubtedly be considered far-right if he was governing today, which is what GP seems to have meant.
I think that, for most Western people today, far-right == bad to non-white people, independent of intention (as you demonstrated with your remark about the PS), so de Gaulle's approach to Algeria, whether he's loud about it or not, would qualify him as far-right already.
All this to say, the debate is based on differing definitions of far-right (for example you conflate fascism and far-right and use Eco, while GP and I seem to think it's about extremely authoritarian + capitalist), and has started from an ignorant comment by an idiot who considers Bush (someone who is responsible for the death of around a million Iraqis, the creation of actual torture camps, large-scale surveillance, etc.) not far-right because, I assume, he didn't say anything mean about African-Americans.
They wrote "Bush was right wing" (unless it was edited), so what's your point in saying "Many aspects of Bush (assuming GW here) would be considered not in line with America's far-right today." ?
Nope no stealth edit, my bad.
My point still stands, "politics change and assessments of politicians change accordingly".
Bill Clinton's crime bill would be considered far right today.
Ronald Regean's amnesty bill would be considered far left today.
Even at the time Bill Clinton was already very much right-wing. When he was in power, he oversaw the destruction of public services and the introduction of neoliberalism. Is that not right-wing?
It's not just me saying this. Ask anyone who was politically active (as a leftist) in the 90s. I'm not sure what was the equivalent of the Democratic Socialists of America (center-left) at that time, but i'm sure there was an equivalent and Bill Clinton was much more right-wing. That's without mentioning actual left-wing parties (like communists, anarchists, black panthers etc).
> Even at the time Bill Clinton was already very much right-wing.
He raised taxes, lowered military spending, and pursued universal healthcare. Those are not, and have never been, right-wing stances in the US.
>Is that not right-wing?
I don't think many self-described "right-leaning" people would have called Clinton "right wing" in the 90s.
I 100% see your point and agree with you that he had major policies that I would call right wing today.
Bad assumptions are just another form of stupidity.
No one can assume good intent with such question, at best it's bait.
But then again people on this very forum will argue Sanders is a literal communist so we circle back to the sub 70iq problem
It used to be a principle of the left to believe in free speech. Now that is called right wing.
MAGA talks about free speech but doesn't believe in or practice it.
Believing in free speech is neither left nor right, it's on the freedom/authority axis which is perpendicular. Most people on the left never advocated to legalize libel, defamation, racist campaigns, although the minority that did still do today.
The "free-speechism" of the past you mention was about speaking truth to power, and this movement still exists on the left today, see for example support for Julian Assange, arrested journalists in France or Turkey, or outright murdered in Palestine.
When Elon Musk took over Twitter and promised free speech, he very soon actually banned accounts he disagreed with, especially leftists. Why free speech may be more and more perceived as right wing is because despite having outright criminal speech with criminal consequences (such as inciting violence against harmless individuals such as Mark Bray), billionaires have weaponized propaganda on a scale never seen before with their ownership of all the major media outlets and social media platforms, arguing it's a matter of free speech.
There’s no such thing as free speech and there never has been. To believe there is, is to fundamentally fail to understand what a society even is.
There's no tool, technological or legal, to block/ban a website EU-wide.
They will set their DNS servers to drop all incoming connections to X. That can be done in each country. They can use Deep Packet inspection tools and go from there. If the decision is EU wide then they will roll that out.
There is no law that would permit the EU to do this. This would be a huge thing to introduce and implement, probably a 2-3 year project, and would almost certainly be strongly opposed by multiple member countries.
Deep packet inspection? What do you mean? Are you talking about domain name confiscation or building a Great Firewall of EU?
Comment was deleted :(
I am not surprised at all. Independent of whether this is true, such a decision from the EU would never be acted upon. The number of layers between the one who says "ban it" somewhere in Bruissels and the operator blackholing the DNS and filtering traffic is decades.
Why do you think that? It can take a few years for national laws bring in place, but that also depends on how much certain countries push it. Regarding Internet traffic I assume a few specific countries that route most of the traffic would be enough to stop operation for the most part.
Have you ever seen an actual EU-wide decision on such matters and an actual application?
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.
> The child abuse feels like a smaller problem compared to that risk.
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.
Those innocent "political leanings" get people killed. See the ICE killings in Minneapolis.
In fairness, AI-generated CSAM is nowhere near as evil as real CSAM. The reason why possession of CSAM was such a serious crime is because its creation used to necessitate the abuse of a child.
It's pretty obvious the French are deliberately conflating the two to justify attacking a political dissident.
It may not be worse "objectively" and in direct harm.
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.
Definitely agree on which is worse! To be clear, I'm not saying I agree with the French raid. Just that statements about severe crimes (child sexual abuse for the above poster - not AI-generated content) being "lesser problems" compared to politics is a concerning measure of how people are thinking.
Simply because if you were to ban this type of platform you wouldn't need Musk to "move it towards the far right" because you would already be the very definition of a totalitarian regime.
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.
What do you mean with "this type of platform"? Platforms that don't follow (any) national laws have been banned in multiple countries over the years.
By itself this isn't extraordinary in a democracy.
and France is known for filtering internet access where domains are blocked (over 4000 added per year), including porn, but also news websites
> if you were to ban this type of platform you wouldn't need Musk to "move it towards the far right" because you would already be the very definition of a totalitarian regime
Paradox of tolerance. (The American right being Exhibit A for why trying to let sunlight disinfect a corpse doesn’t work.)
Big platforms and media are only good if they try to move the populace to the progressive, neoliberal side. Otherwise we need to put their executives in jail.
Almost like the EU can't just ban speech on a whim the way US far right people keep saying it can.
[flagged]
Why? Has Reddit given their users tools to generate CSAM and non-consensual sexualized imagery? Bluesky certainly hasn't
[flagged]
Crafted by Rajat
Source Code