EU should set up alternative social media platform to rival X, say MEPs

A group of 54 MEPs believe the EU should support initiatives to develop European social media alternatives to platforms like X.

In a joint letter, the MEPs argue that European users are trapped on X because there is no real alternative, and want the commission and European governments to use their resources to incentivise and fund private alternatives.

The deputies from the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), socialist S&D, liberal Renew, Greens, and The Left are responding to the recent flood earlier this month of sexualised deepfakes of women and minors, produced by xAI chatbot Grok, and publicly visible on X. 

“Hundreds of thousands of offensive deepfake images have been generated, with children and women suffering irreparable damage. The European Commission is doing nothing to combat this,” said German Greens MEP Alexandra Geese, in a statement. 

“We have the DSA and very clear legislation to combat CSAM, but no courage to enforce it,” she added. 

The letter was released on Monday (19 January), the night before the European parliament debated AI deepfakes and sexual exploitation on social media. 

The MEPs suggest backing a platform that allows users to migrate their data to another platform, thereby avoiding being locked into any one ecosystem.

They also call for the enforcement of the EU’s digital rules, while also arguing that EU governments should stop using X.

“The European Commission and national governments should not communicate on a platform where women cannot participate in the debate without risking image-based sexual violence,” the letter states. 

The commission has denounced the content generated by Grok, confirmed that it was in dialogue with X, and ordered them to retain all documentation regarding Grok. 

But the executive has not been as strong in responding to the surge as other regulators, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, which temporarily banned Grok in their jurisdictions over the deepfakes.

X previously restricted image generation to paying X users only. And on 14 January, the platform's safety team released a statement saying they had made changes to Grok’s X account to prevent it from producing images of real people in revealing clothing.

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