Global Government Affairs

The voice of X's Global Government Affairs team

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

X is proud to fund Prof. Rebel Cole’s lawsuit defending free speech against Florida Atlantic University. The University punished Prof. Cole because of his posts on X criticizing those who celebrated Charlie Kirk's murder.

Judge Middlebrooks’ recent ruling allowing Prof. Cole's First Amendment claims to proceed is an important victory for free speech, affirming that public university professors can’t be retaliated against for speaking out on matters of public concern. X will continue to defend your right to speak freely.

https://t.co/V3xbuPaLBS

[Safety @Safety]

There is no place in our society for predators to share intimate photos and videos of others without their consent. X has zero tolerance for non-consensual intimate images, unwanted sexual content, or any kind of exploitative behavior. We have never allowed such behavior on X and will continue to hold the line.

Tomorrow, the US Take It Down Act goes into effect. X supported this law in Congress and has long followed its principles. Here’s what can be done to act quickly against content that violates the act:

- You should report posts by tapping the three-dot menu (⋯), selecting “Private or Non-Consensual Content” > “Report content under the US Take It Down Act” and then completing the form. Our team reviews these reports as fast as possible and well within the Act’s 48-hour timeline.
- You can also submit a report directly through our Help Center: https://t.co/tlpSWzE5X8.

We continue to improve our safety systems every day. This includes investing more in automation and working with external partners to better protect users who have been impacted. As part of these efforts, we have made progress to ensure copies of known cases of non-consensual intimate imagery are also proactively removed from the platform.

For more information on our policies and removal process for non-consensual intimate photos and videos, please visit: https://t.co/8GBE1bEiHH.

[Safety @Safety]

As we observe Self Harm Awareness month, X’s Safety team continues to strengthen protections against harmful content. Key changes we’ve made to our Self-harm policy include:

› Enhanced Detection: X is enhancing detection to spot predatory behavior targeting minors (especially those showing self-harm signs). Predatory accounts will be suspended and reported to law enforcement, where appropriate. Minors exhibiting self-harm behaviors and interacting with predatory accounts may also have their accounts suspended as a protective measure.

› Tougher rules on graphic self-harm content: Graphic or gory images/videos showing cutting, self-injury, or self-harm without recovery context is not allowed as it can normalize harm or attract predators.

› Improved signals to ensure supportive conversations about mental health are protected when they focus on recovery.

Read more here - https://t.co/1omk0A7uii

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

As states race to regulate AI, the White House’s National AI Legislative Framework is the clearest path forward — a pro-innovation blueprint designed to stop a fragmented 50-state patchwork that would kill competitiveness and create compliance nightmares. 38 states already passed nearly 100 AI laws in 2025. Now in 2026, lawmakers in 45 states have introduced ~1,500 AI bills (and counting) — many directly contradicting the federal framework’s preemption-focused approach.
Examples moving fast in red and blue states:
- Tennessee HB 1455/SB 1493
- New York S8828
- South Carolina SB 963
- Illinois SB 3444
As these bills advance, lawmakers and governors should carefully consider the risks of diverging from one federal rulebook, which ensures America’s AI edge.

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

The Trump administration is committed to WINNING the AI race for the American people. President Trump has unveiled a commonsense national policy framework in order to achieve this goal while keeping Americans safe. 🇺🇸

[James Burnham @BurnhamDC]

We recently filed in the Ninth Circuit to defend our successful challenge to AB 2655, a California law regulating political "deepfakes" and "deceptive conduct"--aka satire and commentary.

Foremost, we want to thank the diverse array of groups and people supporting us. 1/

[Engineering @Engineering]

https://t.co/FGvSl5xHQK

[Safety @Safety]

An update on how X maintains safety of X in times of crisis

As part of X’s incident response protocol, X initiated proactive manual sweeps to identify and remove violative content in less than 3 hours from the initial strikes. These sweeps have been running 24/7 since the response was initiated, and are supplemented by working group meetings bringing together experts across our company.

X is actively scaling its enforcement by building heuristics and Grok-based defenses that can detect and enforce against new forms of violative content that emerge on the platform. These defenses allow us to scale at speed, ensuring our users are protected in real time.

Additionally, conflict-related Community Notes have been shown on more than 20K posts and have been seen more than 119M times so far, and still growing. X applies media matching to ensure notes written on misleading videos and images are automatically applied to other posts with matching media.

X’s incident and crisis response are robust protocols designed and tested for events that may lead to widespread proliferation of potentially violative content on the platform. We continue to monitor trends on X and ensure content is authentic and users are engaging safely.

[Nikita Bier @nikitabier]

Today we are revising our Creator Revenue Sharing policies to maintain authenticity of content on Timeline and prevent manipulation of the program.

During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground. With today’s AI technologies, it is trivial to create content that can mislead people.

Starting now, users who post AI-generated videos of an armed conflict—without adding a disclosure that it was made with AI—will be suspended from Creator Revenue Sharing for 90 days. Subsequent violations will result in a permanent suspension from the program.

This will be flagged to us by any post with a Community Note or if the content contains meta data (or other signals) from generative AI tools.

We will continue to refine our policies and product to ensure X can be trusted during these critical moments.

[Safety @Safety]

X is committed to protecting the real-time global public conversation and safeguarding the platform for all of our users. As part of our crisis response protocol, we are taking additional measures to enforce our X Rules and policies and take action as fast as possible.

As a reminder, abuse, harassment, hate, and threats of violence have no place on X. If you find posts or accounts that you believe violate X Rules, report them in the app. Our Safety team will review and take any necessary action, including removing content or suspending accounts.

X’s Community Notes complement our Safety team during these critical moments by enabling contributors worldwide to add evidence-based context quickly to potentially misleading posts, helping to combat misinformation in real time, ensuring accountability, and building trust for all our users.

For more information on our X Rules, policies, and range of enforcement options, please refer to our help pages.

https://t.co/t800PIvSPo
https://t.co/dZVoD8T2qQ
https://t.co/UGGrbv2riM

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

X Files Appeal Against €120M EU Fine Under Digital Services Act

X filed an appeal at the General Court of the European Union challenging the €120 million fine imposed by the European Commission on 5 December 2025, the first non-compliance fine under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

This EU Decision resulted from an incomplete and superficial investigation, grave procedural errors, a tortured interpretation of the obligations under the DSA, and systematic breaches of rights of defence and basic due process requirements suggesting prosecutorial bias.

This landmark case is the first judicial challenge to a DSA fine and could set important precedents for enforcement, penalty calculations, and fundamental rights protections under the 2022 regulation.
X remains committed to user safety and transparency while defending our users' access to the only global town square.

[Safety @Safety]

Child safety is our top priority. While X, as a service, is not primarily for children, we take our responsibility very seriously for the young users who are here. We’re continuously improving our tools and policies to protect them to keep their children safer. Here are some of the ways we’re doing it:

We have strict measures in place to protect minors:

- Users under 13 cannot create accounts
- Minor accounts are defaulted to 'Protected', which allows for more control of who can see their content
- Sensitive media is restricted from minors
- Location sharing is turned off by default
- Advertisers cannot specifically target users under 18 years old
- Where X is legally required to do so, we take a multi-faceted age assurance approach to verify or estimate user age and restrict prohibited content from known minors

What ‘Protected’ means for 13-17 year olds:

Under protected mode, the default for young people:

-DMs are restricted to receive DMs from accounts they follow by default
- A follow request is sent to approve or deny when someone new wants to follow them
- Posts are only visible to approved followers
- Followers cannot repost or repost with comment
- Protected posts do not appear in third-party search engines such as Google - they are only searchable on X by the poster and their followers
- Replies sent to accounts that are not following the minor will not be seen (only followers can see posts from protected accounts)

We work closely with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to report suspected CSAM through their CyberTipline, enabling rapid investigation, takedown, and law enforcement action as necessary

X is for everyone. Report any issues or concerns via our in-app tools or Help Center.

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

The small and talented xAI team continues to drive remarkable progress toward the next frontier of intelligence.

In just 30 months, our talented engineers have achieved leading multimodal models, massive generation scale, and breakthroughs in agency and real-world applications.

Our mission is clear. Join us @xai!!

The future has never looked more exciting!

[xAI @xai]

Since xAI was formed just 30 months ago, the small and talented team has made remarkable progress.

The future has never looked more exciting!

[Safety @Safety]

X supports #SaferInternetDay and remains committed to protecting children on the platform.

We maintain zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation—including AI-generated content—and enforce strict policies to keep minors safe and ensure a positive experience for everyone. Let’s keep building a better internet together.

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

AI Regulation Overload Hits 2026 Hard

Only 30 days into U.S. state legislative sessions, and we are tracking hundreds of AI bills across 40+ states (building on 2025's record 1,000+ introductions).

Globally, 70+ countries are advancing AI policy. Key policy areas include topics like deepfakes, liability, disclosures, high-risk systems, elections, and more.

This team is engaged and will update along the way! 😅

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

French judicial authorities raided X’s Paris office today in connection with a politicized criminal investigation into alleged manipulation of algorithms and purported fraudulent data extraction. We are disappointed by this development, but we are not surprised. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s office widely publicized the raid—making clear that today’s action was an abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives rather than advance legitimate law enforcement goals rooted in the fair and impartial administration of justice.

The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office is plainly attempting to exert pressure on X’s senior management in the United States by targeting our French entity and employees, who are not the focus of this investigation. The Prosecutor’s Office has ignored the established procedural mechanisms to obtain evidence in compliance with international treaties and X’s rights to defend itself. These procedural mechanisms are well known and used on a daily basis by judicial authorities around the world.

The allegations underlying today’s raid are baseless and X categorically denies any wrongdoing. Today’s staged raid reinforces our conviction that this investigation distorts French law, circumvents due process, and endangers free speech. X is committed to defending its fundamental rights and the rights of its users. We will not be intimidated by the actions of French judicial authorities today.
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Les autorités judiciaires françaises ont perquisitionné ce jour les bureaux parisiens de X dans le cadre d'une enquête pénale reposant sur des motivations politiques et faisant suite à des allégations de manipulation d'algorithmes et de prétendues extractions frauduleuses de données. Nous sommes déçus par ce développement mais il ne nous surprend pas. Le parquet de Paris a donné un large écho médiatique à cette mesure, démontrant ainsi qu’elle constitue un acte judiciaire abusif visant à atteindre des objectifs politiques illégitimes plutôt qu’à favoriser la plus juste application de la loi dans le respect d’une administration loyale et impartiale de la justice.

Le parquet de Paris tente manifestement d’exercer une pression sur la direction générale de X aux Etats-Unis en visant notre entité française, étrangère aux faits poursuivis, ainsi que ses employés, au mépris des mécanismes procéduraux établis par les traités internationaux leur permettant de collecter des preuves ainsi que du droit de X de se défendre. Ces mécanismes et véhicules procéduraux sont parfaitement connus et utilisés quotidiennement par les autorités judiciaires du monde entier.

Les allégations ayant justifié cette perquisition sont infondées et X réfute catégoriquement avoir commis la moindre infraction. Cette mise en scène ne fait que renforcer sa conviction que cette enquête viole le droit français, constitue un détournement de procédure et porte atteinte à la liberté d'expression. X est déterminée à défendre ses droits fondamentaux ainsi que ceux de ses utilisateurs. Nous ne nous laisserons pas intimider par les mesures mises en œuvre aujourd'hui par les autorités judiciaires françaises.

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

Voter alert!

In 2026, a major midterm election year, voters will decide 6,122 state legislative seats across 46 states on November 3. That covers 82% of all seats nationwide (per NCSL data). With 88 of the 99 chambers on the ballot, this represents a huge opportunity for partisan shifts across the states.

As of January 2026, Republicans hold majorities in 57 of the 99 state legislative chambers nationwide, Democrats hold majorities in 39, Alaska’s House and Senate operate under multipartisan power-sharing coalitions, and Minnesota’s House is evenly split between the parties.

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

US state legislatures at a glance: As of January 2026, Republicans hold full control of 28 state legislatures, Democrats hold 18, and 4 are split or divided (Alaska with multipartisan coalitions, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania with mixed chamber control).

Nebraska's unicameral legislature remains officially nonpartisan (though often Republican-leaning in practice).

Source: @MultiStateAssoc

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

In the land of red & blue states, some currently have divided governments—no single party controls the governorship + both legislative chambers.

Examples: WI & KY (R legislatures, D governors); NV & VT (D legislatures, R governors).

How many states are currently ‘purple’?

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

Quick poli-sci check: A state supermajority (e.g. 2/3 in both chambers) lets the majority pass laws without minority votes & override a veto. Same-party governor creates a "trifecta" of control to enact laws with little opposition. Which party holds more state trifectas now?

[Global Government Affairs @GlobalAffairs]

Did you know?

State legislative session lengths vary dramatically. New Mexico runs one of the shortest at just 30 days (January 20–February 19), pushing rapid bill action, while Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania operate essentially year-round through December 31—plenty of time for in-depth work on complex tech and policy matters. @globalaffairs is tracking them all!