The News
The French police’s hate crime unit is investigating Algerian boxer and Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif’s cyberbullying accusations after she filed a criminal complaint against X in France, Politico reported.
The social media platform’s high-profile figures including its owner Elon Musk, British author J.K. Rowling, and former US President Donald Trump wrote posts on X questioning her gender identity and eligibility to compete in the Paris Games.
The complaint alleges the 25-year-old was the victim of “misogynistic, racist and sexist” cyberbullying. “I was born a woman, lived a woman and competed as a woman,” Khelif said after she was harassed online following her win.
SIGNALS
French law drafted to specifically help women
French women are particularly vulnerable to cyberbullying and harassment: 55% of French people believe that women are not treated fairly on social media, and more than 21% of women have reported being victims of cyberbullying — the second highest rate in the EU — according to gender equality watchdog High Council for Equality. The group has warned that sexism in France is on the rise, partly due to lack of comprehensive sex education, and partly due to the rise of social media echo chambers. “Behind a screen, behavior is uninhibited, which makes it easier to talk about sexuality…and women can immediately be judged on their bodies,” said one sociologist. Khelif’s complaint is based on a 2022 cyber law to combat digital harassment against women.
France’s courts have leeway to investigate international incidents
The country’s penal code gives prosecutors and courts “ wide-ranging powers to investigate events that happen outside France,” according to the Local France newspaper. This has been used before to charge and convict perpetrators accused of harming French citizens abroad. But Khelif’’s case is a legal “gray area” because it’s hard to pinpoint where the cyberbullying took place, the paper wrote. Neither Khelif nor the people mentioned in the complaint are French citizens, further complicating the case.
EU risks its digital regulator reputation by jabbing at Musk and X
French prosecutors’ probe into X’s alleged role in bullying Khelif is the latest EU thorn in Elon Musk’s side. Previously, British lawmakers accused Musk’s X posts of fueling far-right riots in England, and on Monday, EU internet commissioner Thierry Breton publicly warned Musk against violating EU social media laws on misinformation ahead of his interview with Donald Trump. Europe’s “reputation as the world’s digital regulator is at stake,” Politico wrote, after Musk and Trump then accused the EU of interfering in the US election. The bloc wants to lead the world in reigning in tech giants, and the implementation of its digital law is “too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job,” one EU official said.