Elon Musk speaks onstage during The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 29, 2023 in New York City.
Slaven Vlasic | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s X has been hit with a complaint from privacy activist Max Schrems, which alleges the platform broke the European Union’s hard-hitting privacy rules.
Lodged on Thursday by Schrems’ campaign group Noyb with the Dutch data protection authority, the complaint purports that X unlawfully used people’s political views and religious beliefs to target them with ads.
The European Union is also accused of using X to target users based on their political views and religious beliefs.
In the complaint, Schrems alleges that X showed him an ad from the European Commission that promoted online content regulation to tackle child sexual abuse and the grooming of children online.
Schrems says the ad explicitly targets users from the Netherlands and excludes 44 “targeting segments,” such as political parties like Alternative for Germany, Vox, Sinn Fein, and the English Defense League, as well as far-right politicians Viktor Orban and Marine Le Pen.
The ad also does not target people based on their use on X of terms related to “euroscepticism and/or nationalist political views,” according to the complaint.
The filing states that the allegations are based on the ads repository of X.
X was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. In reply to a CNBC email, the Commission said that it was aware of reports of the campaign and was conducting a “thorough review.”
“Internally, we provide regularly updated guidance to ensure our social media managers are familiar with the rules and that external contractors also apply them in full,” the Commission said.
“Also, in view of an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech on social media platforms in recent weeks, we advised Commission services already back in October to refrain from advertising at this stage on X.”
The Commission added that, under its Digital Services Act, a major content regulation law in the EU, platforms including X “must not display targeted advertisements based on the sensitive data of a user.”
Per the complaint, X is able to take users’ clicking behavior and replies to tailor content to them — a practice known as “microtargeting.” Microtargeting was used by Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump win the vote by a narrow margin, the complaint notes.
Who is Max Schrems?
Schrems is a high-profile figure in European privacy campaigning. He most notably won a legal battle against Meta parent company Facebook, defeating the company’s use of the EU-U.S. so-called safe harbor data-transferring mechanism to send Europeans’ information to the U.S.
Scrutiny of the complaint is in its early days. It has been filed with the Dutch data protection authority, which is tasked with investigating the main highlights of the complaint to assess whether there was a breach of GDPR.
X has its main European headquarters in Ireland, meaning that the Dublin data watchdog is the primary privacy regulator for the platform in Europe. Schrems is submitting the complaint to the Dutch authority, rather than Ireland, as he is a Dutch citizen.
The complaint could ultimately lead to a full-blown investigation under the European Union’s General Data Protection, a strict EU privacy regulation introduced by the bloc in 2018.
GDPR has led to massive fines for U.S. technology giants, including Amazon and Meta. Under GDPR, firms can be fined up to 4% of their global annual revenues for breaches.
X has been in a hard place lately, with brands including Apple, Disney and Microsoft, pulling ads from the platform due to controversies surrounding Musk, including sharing a post that explored a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.