Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, based in Barcelona, ​​announced today that it is no longer publishing content on X, which it says has become a “disinformation network”, a day after the British newspaper The Guardian made the same announcement.

“Ex-Twitter Makes Human Rights Violating Messages Go Viral”the newspaper said in an article, in which it emphasizes that it will in any case continue to monitor social media accounts of individuals or businesses in order to be able to accurately inform its readers of messages or discussions that may be exchanged or held there.

French media take legal action against Platform X

At the same time, French newspapers, including Le Figaro, Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Échos, announced that they are taking legal action against Elon Musk’s social network X for using their content without payment and, consequently, for violating the principle of “relative rights”.

According to a statement, the class action was filed in the General Court of Paris by the following media: Le Figaro, Les Échos, Le Parisien, Le Monde, Télérama, Courrier International, Le Huffington Post, Malesherbes Publications and Le Nouvel Obs.

Related rights were introduced in 2019 by the European Directive on digital platforms. They allow newspapers, magazines or news agencies to get paid when their content is used by the digital giants.

Prior to the class action, these newspapers, as well as the AFP (Agence France-Presse), had requested an emergency subpoena for X and his French subsidiary, accusing him of being unwilling to negotiate. In May, the court vindicated the French media and ordered the social network to hand over to them, within two months, the commercial data that would allow the revenue Musk’s platform earns from their content to be valued. X did not comply with this decision.

An ardent supporter of Donald Trump, Elon Musk is routinely accused of spreading misinformation through X, where he appears as an opponent of the media.

Before the action against X, about fifty French media outlets, mainly provincial ones such as Ouest-France or Ebra, announced on November 8 that they were taking legal action against Microsoft.

Related rights issues have poisoned relations between the French press and the digital giants for the last five years.

In 2021, after a tough battle, agreements were signed with Meta, the owner of Facebook, in October 2021, and then, in March 2022, with Google.

But last March, the Competition Authority fined Google €250m for failing to meet some of its 2022 commitments.

“Unlike Google and Meta, X/Twitter has never agreed to enter into negotiations with the publishers of the French press in order to respect the legal framework for intellectual and related rights…”, according to the statement of the French media which appealed against X.

In fact, while the issue of related rights has not been definitively settled, the media are facing a new problem in paying for the use of their content with the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) programs.

In September, ChatGPT’s OpenAI refused collective bargaining with two French press organizations over the paid use of the content of the 800 titles they represent.