Speech On the Continent

By: Spiro N. Kass

Elon Musk’s social media platform X, perennially in the news, was recently raided at its Paris headquarters by French police, who are investigating the company. The authorities allege X’s “complicity” in controversial content generated by Grok, the company’s AI chatbot. Grok reportedly generates sexualized AI-generated images of real people, known as “deepfakes,” as well as Holocaust denial talking points. The latter can be considered a crime in France, and some French government ministers have described Grok’s activity as “manifestly illicit.”

It’s not just France looking into X at the moment – the European Union police force Europol and two British watchdogs/regulators are also on the case. The investigations also deal with algorithm manipulation and concerns that X could be used for foreign interference in European politics.

AI-generated photo and video content has had an increasingly large presence online. Sexualized deepfakes portraying real people have alarmed governments across the world. British Secretary of Technology Liz Kendall said that victims of deepfakes “will not accept any delay” in investigating the platform. Northern Irish politician Cara Hunter announced she was quitting X last month after being disappointed with the lack of protection for women online. Hunter had previously been “targeted” by a deepfake.

These investigations come at a time when media companies are growing increasingly wary of state power. Elon Musk himself has not responded extensively to the investigations but, taking to X, he referred to the actions of the French government as a “political attack,” characterizing the Labor government as wanting “any excuse for censorship.” X itself, in a more detailed response, said the raid “circumvents due process” and is “an abusive act of law enforcement theater.”

“Today’s staged raid reinforces our conviction that this investigation distorts French law, circumvents due process, and endangers free speech… We will not be intimidated by the actions of French judicial authorities today,” said the company.

The founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, also weighed in, criticizing the French actions, labeling France “not a free country.” Durov himself was arrested in France for an alleged lack of moderation on Telegram but was let go after the platform agreed to share its users’ data with the authorities if they have search warrants or “other legal requests.”

There has been heightened attention to alleged oversteps of censorship in Europe. Soon into Trump’s second term, at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President J.D. Vance lambasted the Europeans. “In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he said.

What is going on here?

The X fiasco reflects a profound divergence in Western liberalism. It pits free speech, a foundation of American culture, against the contemporary European way of treating speech. On one side, you have the “anything goes” crowd – tech entrepreneurs, like Elon Musk, along with a strange American folk cult (I think they call themselves Libertarians). It’s clear that not everything can reasonably go, though.  On the other, we have the Europeans and Brits, whose attitudes regarding speech are a far cry from those of the old English liberals. It is illegal in Britain to “cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety” to someone online.

 As an American (and not to say this doesn’t happen at all in the US), this strikes me as ridiculous. It’s not just putatively right-wing speech being crushed, though – the amount of arrests related to pro-Palestine protests have been staggering. Have the Brits not read their John Locke? And don’t the British police have anything better to do? Like, maybe, go after theft in London?

Notwithstanding my less than 100% trust in the Trump administration’s commitment to free speech, Vance’s remarks hit the Europeans in a vulnerable position in the speech. You have to notice that. Most Americans are shocked to hear about the legalism surrounding speech in Europe, especially Britain. To Americans, it’s a completely foreign notion that a police officer could show up at your door over a Tweet, for example. Could it be that this fundamental difference in outlook will become a defining fault line of America-Europe relations in the years to come? It certainly seems to be shaping up that way.

It’s also worth considering how technology has completely shifted the debate around what speech even is. If we went back to the 1970s and told people that, in the future, anyone could go online and generate hyper-realistic pornography featuring anyone they know at any time and post it for the world to see, I think their brains might quite literally melt. There is also the issue of Grok-generated explicit images of children, which is unacceptable in any moderately civilized society. The Founding Fathers did not have AI child pornography in mind when drafting the Bill of Rights.

As for John Locke, he would probably have abhorred sexual deepfakes of high school teachers being posted online. That’s just a hunch, though…

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Spiro N. Kass lives in Europe and studies politics and international relations.

Comments 5

  1. AI is leaving its mark. As a CFE I can attest that Fraud has grown leaps and bounds with the assistance of AI.

    I hope that no one trusts emails or anything internet related because things can be very manipulated to look like “the real thing”.

    Unfortunately society has taken the easy way and AI had become the tool of the road most traveled.

  2. Free Speech; It doesn’t exist. You mention Locke and the he had the idea of the social contract, where we all share responsibility. Your dad wrote about Jimmy DiLeo D (How you doin’). Vance is R (Theil), Trump is MAGA (Israel), Just like Sleepy Joe Biden was D (CHINA!). These punks take money from chooches like Musk and Theil and Israel and bend over for them and shower them with OUR money!

    The social contract has been broken by the greed which was always present, but that the basic decency of the people and our leaders kept somewhat in check. There are no guardrails anymore. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump and again, bigger sand more corrupt than ever. We murder women, children, blow up schools and hospitals with our “friends” the Israelis, who have essentially led us into hell in Iran.

    As JK reminded me, we do not live in a Democracy. We live in a Republic. We have elected representative who make decisions on our behalf. The problem is everything, and virtually everyone is owned by an oligarch or corporation. All of our leaders are bought and paid for.

    This is how we are engaged in bullshit wars which only serve to damage our prestige and our wallets. This is why the young generation is having so much trouble, all of the money is being sucked up by the oligarchs. They own the student loans, that is why you cannot lose them in bankruptcy. They own everything and their fortunes are such that with a phone call to an Epstein, they can have a young girl feed them grapes while young boys do perverted things.

    Biden had the LLC’s and took money from CHINA! And Ukraine. Trump is owned by the Edelsons, the Arab Sheiks, Oil companies, Israel. They have all his financial records and copious pictures and video of him en flagrante, dong disgusting things. Only this Epstein thing doesn’t stoop at one guy. It’s an international network of spies, cheats, and snitches, owned by the Davos crowd, Our Deep state, oligarchs and the CIA and Mossad.

    The Social contract, the moral conscience which kept somewhat semblance of order is gone. The oligarchs own the media. With Palentir and the Patriot Act, they are watching everything we do, listening to everything we say. You make a cogent argument about how the oligarchs are rat fucking us left and right, or about Israel, and there are legions of bots on Twitter, X, to call you any manner of disgusting names and hurl baseless accusations.

    This oligarchs fund “think tanks”, which you will probably work for. They get people like Victor Davos Hansen to peddle the party line. Hate Muslims, hate who we tell you too. They prop up this vision of Antifa, who are funded by other oligarchs, and rile up stupid people.

    Now the Iranians are mocking our president. Treating him as he deserves to be treated, as a clown. He is a clown and we elected him, because Biden was a clown, and Harris was a corporate stooge and neither could make one move without asking the donors.

    It was said on a podcast that Gorbachev proposed total nuclear disarmament when they were negotiating SALT II. Reagan said he had to take it back to his people. They said no.

  3. Well done here SK and thank you.

    AI may help humanity in many ways. But it can surely also help evildoers bring us to extinction. And the deep fake depictions of celebs is despicable.

  5. Very interesting and informative article.
    Vice Presidents warning to Europe was a wake up call.
    I’m sure most Americans, as well as, myself were surprised at the lack
    of free speech in European countries.
    Elon Musk et al bring a new twist to the thought police with
    borderless language and visuals. Cyber chaos is here.

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