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Elon Musk’s plan to chat with the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on his X social media platform has angered European politicians, but they will be hard pressed to stop him.
The tech billionaire is set to speak with Alice Weidel, head of Germany’s far-right AfD party, on Thursday. He is currently running in second place ahead of the February 23 general election on a platform that includes “protecting free speech”, toughening asylum laws, ending financial support for asylum seekers and reversing planned restrictions on combustion engine cars, among another.
Despite the party being designated a “suspected extremist organization” by Germany’s domestic intelligence services — something it has tried to fight in court — Musk said in December that “only the AfD can save Germany” and published an op-ed in support of the party in a German newspaper.
“Don’t feed the trolls,” outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told a German weekly. Stern when asked about Musk’s attacks on himself and other politicians from the country, while German opposition leader Friedrich Merz called Musk’s intervention “intrusive and pretentious” in a conversation with Funke Media Group.
The outrage crossed borders, with French President Emmanuel Macron also criticizing Musk and former European Commissioner Thierry Breton, saying the interview would give Weidel a “significant and valuable advantage.”
However, live streaming will not violate any laws as long as the content of the interview is legal, Matthew Holman, a technology, privacy and artificial intelligence partner at law firm Cripps, told CNBC in emailed comments, noting that it ” an important part of free speech expression in a healthy democratic system.”
“However, if this was the only interview Musk had with German parties at a time when he didn’t give equal weight to all mainstream views or promote one party in a polarizing way, perhaps lawmakers believe that X and Musk have had a negative impact on civil discourse. and the electoral process in Germany only through interviews with the AfD or the lack of an effective third-party moderator in real time,” Holman added.
CNBC has reached out to X for comment.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) — a broad piece of legislation that aims to regulate content on major online platforms, including X — states that platforms are responsible for assessing and mitigating risks to, among other things, civil discourse and elections proceedings.
European Commission spokesman Thomas Rainier said in emailed comments that this includes “an obligation to analyze and mitigate risks arising from any preferential treatment or visibility of content on a given platform, including Mr. Musk’s content on his own platform.”
He added that the Commission will hold a round table on January 24 to discuss the risks ahead of the German elections, and will be joined by the German Coordination of Digital Services and very large internet platforms, including X.
While there are currently only a few reports that Algorithm X is pushing content from the AfD, there are many accounts that Musk’s own messages are preferred, Simone Ruf, deputy head of the Center for User Rights at Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, a German rights group and human rights, CNBC said via email.
“If he uses this treatment to support the AfD through political statements and live broadcasts promoting his candidate, it could easily violate the DSA,” she said.
Roof also noted that the European Commission is already requesting information from X over is reducing its content moderation resourcesit can order temporary measures to prevent harm to users. “This could potentially include shutting down X’s recommendation algorithm before the federal election,” she suggested.
However, it is unclear whether requests for such measures will succeed and how they might work in practice.
The German civic initiative LobbyControl, meanwhile, claims that the interview could even be seen as an illegal party donation. The group notes that Musk has made it clear that his goal is to push the AfD and is using his platform’s resources to do so, with the interview likely to be played more widely than content from regular X users.
“So we can really talk about political advertising in this case because Platform X usually sells this kind of reach for a lot of money,” the group said in a statement. statementas translated by CNBC. Election campaigning through third parties is legally considered a donation, and donations from non-EU countries are prohibited, LobbyControl notes.
This is not the first time that Musk has supported right-wing parties and figures in Europe. Until recentlyhe supported Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform Party in the UK. He also started tirade against the current British governmentled by Labour’s Keir Starmer, asking whether America should ‘free the people of Britain’.
