The European Commission said on Friday it was stepping up its investigation into whether Elon Musk's social media network X breached EU rules on content moderation with requests for information and an order for it to retain relevant documents.

X owner Musk has repeatedly clashed with EU regulators, while some European politicians have accused him of meddling in elections, such as with his streamed conversation with the leader of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany. Musk has said the criticism is an affront to democracy and free speech.

Google snubs EU's voluntary code of practice on disinformation before it becomes legally binding under the Digital Services Act

Google has told the EU it will not comply with a forthcoming fact-checking law, according to a copy of a letter obtained by Axios. The company states that it will not be adding fact checks to search results or YouTube videos and will not use fact-checking data when ranking or removing content.

Google has notified the European Union that it won’t integrate work from fact-checking organizations into Search or YouTube, ahead of the bloc’s plans to expand disinformation laws. Google had previously signed a set of voluntary commitments that the EU introduced in 2022 to reduce the impact of online disinformation,

TikTok, Shein, Xiaomi and three other Chinese companies were named in a privacy complaint filed on Thursday by Austrian advocacy group Noyb, which alleged the firms were unlawfully sending European Union user data to China.

Austrian privacy advocate NOYB has launched its first GDPR complaints against Chinese businesses. The organization has filed complaints against TikTok, Xiaomi, Shein, AliExpress, Temu and WeChat, alleging that these companies unlawfully shared information about European users with parties in China.

Austrian advocacy group Noyb has filed privacy complaints against TikTok and five other Chinese companies in the EU. Noyb claims that these tech firms are unlawfully transferring the data of users in the European Union to China.