Telegram co-founder says France applies double standards to X social media platform

MOSCOW, May 10. /TASS/. French authorities accuse Elon Musk’s X social network of illegal actions that they themselves engage in, Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov said. "The French government is accusing X of the very things the French government itself is doing," he wrote on X. According to Durov, the French authorities are illegally collecting personal data, processing it without proper security, extracting data from automated systems, and violating the secrecy of electronic communications. "The free world should stand with Elon Musk and X against this immoral assault by the French state," Durov noted. In February, Paris prosecutors, Europol and a French cybercrime unit raided the French offices of Elon Musk’s X social media platform. According to the Agence France-Presse media outlet, the move was part of an investigation launched in January 2025, following complaints about X’s algorithms, its integrated Grok chatbot, which published materials denying the Holocaust, and artificially generated sexual images. The Paris prosecutor’s office summoned Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino for questioning on April 20.