PARIS — French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference.”

Magistrate Laure Beccuau said in a statement Friday that prosecutors had launched the probe on Wednesday and were looking into whether the social media giant broke French law by altering its algorithms and fraudulently extracting data from users.

The criminal investigation comes on the heels of an inquiry launched in January, and is based on complaints from lawmakers and an unnamed senior civil servant, Beccuau said.

A complaint that sparked the initial January inquiry accused X of spreading “an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”

POLITICO has reached out to X for comment.