European lawmakers are demanding the creation of a European Union social media source to counter the influence of X following the Grok scandal.
X allowed users to post highly sexualised videos of women and children generated by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, although the company has claimed to have cracked down on misuse.
“Millions of European citizens are stuck on X, as there is no clear alternative and no simple way for people to transfer their data and the connections they have built there,” MEPs wrote in a letter yesterday.
“Now is the moment to back European alternatives to the dominant social media platforms.”
The letter, signed by 54 left-wing and Liberal MEPs, urged the European Commission and European countries to “support this build out by providing funding for private initiatives that encourage European social media innovation”.
“X is no longer an open and balanced tool for political communication or journalism, since algorithm changes in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover,” they wrote.
“It is not a ‘public square’ – it now resembles a deepfake pornography website, and a one-way broadcast system for Musk himself,” they added.
They also urged the EC to stop communicating on the platform.
“The European Commission and national governments should not communicate on a platform where women cannot participate in the debate without risking image-based sexual violence,” they insisted.
In the plenary debate session today in the European Parliament, EU lawmakers called for stronger enforcement of the bloc’s digital rules and insisted that the EC should not bow to US threats, whether coming from Big Tech or directly from the White House.
Speaking in the European Parliament today, Henna Virkkunen, the EC’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, agreed that deep fakes are a form of “digital violence” and the EC must work so that online spaces “remain a secure space”.
“We need to co-ordinate a stronger enforcement of our existing rules across different platforms, providers and deployers of AI systems and AI models,” she said.
New regulations may worsen the relationship with the US, as US Republican lawmakers equate EU rules with “outright regulatory imperialism”.
Virkkunen also told MEPs that the EC is willing to reinforce the EU AI Act following the Grok scandal: “We will consider whether explicit prohibitions are needed in the AI Act,” she said.
EU lawmakers’ fight against X and US social media platforms comes as transatlantic relations are worsening amid growing concerns over EU dependency on US tech.
