Elon Musk's X under scrutiny over targeted advertising practices
The civil society organisations urged European Commission and the French media regulator Arcom to take action under the Digital Services Act (DSA) which prohibits ad targeting based on sensitive personal data such as religion, race, and sexuality
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Elon Musk's microblogging and social networking platform, X (formerly Twitter), is under scrutiny after nine civil society organizations filed complaints with the European Commission and French media regulator Arcom. The complaints allege that X's use of user data for targeted advertising may breach EU tech regulations.
The organizations — including AI Forensics, the Centre for Democracy and Technology Europe, Entropy, European Digital Rights, GFF, Global Witness, Panoptykon Foundation, Stichting Bits of Freedom, and VoxPublic — urged regulators to take action under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA prohibits ad targeting based on sensitive personal data such as religion, race, and sexuality.
A media report notes that the regulators expressed serious concern about X's data practices. However, they also added that major brands, along with public and financial institutions, are also using targeted advertising based on special categories of personal data — including political opinions, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and health conditions — which are protected under Article 9 of the GDPR (referring to EU data privacy law).
