X in Trouble Again Following Max Schrems Accusations

Elon Musk’s X seems to be in hot waters again. Lately, renowned privacy activist Max Schrems complained about X and accused the platform of infringing on the European Union’s hard-hitting privacy rules. The complaint was lodged by Schrems’ campaign group Noyb with the Dutch data protection authority. The complaint entailed that X illegally used the political views and religious beliefs of users to target them with personalized ads.

The EU is also accused of using X to target users with ads based on their political views and religious beliefs. In the complaint, Schrems alleges that X displayed him an ad from the European Commission that facilitated online content regulation to tackle child sexual abuse and the online grooming of children.

Schrems further said the ad explicitly targets Dutch users and leaves 44 “targeting segments,” such as political parties like Alternative for Germany, Vox, Sinn Fein, and the English Defense League, along with far-right politicians Viktor Orban and Marine Le Pen.

The ad also does not target users based on their use of terms related to “Euroscepticism and/or nationalist political views,” as per the complaint. The complaint filing remarks that the accusation is based on the ad storage of X.

In reply to an email to a media outlet, the European Commission said that it was aware of reports of the ad campaign and was carrying out a “thorough review.” It further said,

“Internally, we provide regularly updated guidance to ensure our social media managers are familiar with the rules and that external contractors also apply them in full. Also, given an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech on social media platforms in recent weeks, we advised Commission services already back in October to refrain from advertising at this stage on X.”

The Commission further said that under its Digital Services Act, a primary content regulation law in the EU, platforms including X “must not display targeted advertisements based on the sensitive data of a user.”

Furthermore, as per the complaint, X is able to take the clicking behavior of users and show them ads according to their preferences. This practice is called “microtargeting.” Microtargeting was used by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US presidential election.

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