Elon Musk's X Faces Privacy Complaint Over Alleged Unlawful Ad Targeting In Europe

Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, is facing a new privacy complaint in Europe related to its ad targeting tools.

The complaint, which is being lodged with the Dutch data protection authority by privacy rights group Noyb, accuses X of failing to enforce its own advertising guidelines.

The platform has been accused of unlawfully using people’s political views and religious beliefs to target them with ads.

In the complaint, the campaign group alleged that X showed ads from the European Commission that promoted online content regulation to tackle child sexual abuse and the grooming of children online.

This breaches the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which prohibits the “display targeted advertisements based on the sensitive data of a user”. The violation threatens fines of up to 4% of global annual revenues of X.