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French investigators have officially opened a criminal investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

Getting into it: The investigation, launched on the same day former X CEO Linda Yaccarino resigned, is being led by the cybercrime division of the French gendarmerie. French authorities are examining whether the platform, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, violated national laws by deliberately manipulating its algorithms and extracting user data in a fraudulent and organized manner. The investigation centers on suspicions that X used its algorithm to favor certain narratives and suppress others, potentially amounting to foreign interference in France’s democratic processes.

The origins of the case trace back to January 2025, when a French member of parliament and a senior official from a government institution filed formal complaints. They accused X of promoting hate speech and distorting public discourse through algorithmic bias. Following preliminary verifications and the receipt of additional information from researchers and public bodies, French prosecutors decided to escalate the matter into a full criminal investigation.

The timing of Yaccarino’s resignation — coinciding with the official launch of the probe — has raised further speculation about internal instability at the company.

This French case is unfolding alongside a broader, ongoing investigation into X by the European Commission under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The EU has been scrutinizing X for nearly two years over concerns related to the spread of misinformation, lack of content moderation, and breaches of platform transparency obligations. In January 2025, European regulators expanded their probe to specifically include X’s algorithm after Musk hosted and streamed an interview with far-right German politician Alice Weidel, an action seen as amplifying extremist content.

X has not commented on the investigation.