I didn't expect the EU to be this far gone yet, scary

@skibidist So my understanding is that it is not legal for non-EU citizens / groups to support parties in German elections, either financially or by providing free advertisement. This seems reasonable to me, outsiders trying to buy elections does not seem great.
Presumably, Musk will force-boost this interview onto X users artificially, that's something he does now. This sort of boosting would otherwise be an advertisement that you pay for.
So does this count as free advertising? I think there is at least a reasonable case to be made, I would not see this as the EU being far gone.

@rayman2000 Interesting. That does improve it, but only slightly.

• Why the first time (that I know of?) this comes up is related to AfD?

• Is conducting an interview advertising?

• Is it unique for a big foreign media site to interview a European political candidate and advertise the interview?

@rayman2000 Come on, they are talking about cities on Mars now. If the EU prosecutes anyone for that, it is very far gone.

@skibidist I am not an expert on any of this. I just threw this market up because the media was discussing this question. So, definitely take any answers here with a grain of salt.
- Conducting an interview is not advertising, boosting the interview is *possibly* advertising.
- I am unaware of previous cases of foreign media sites doing interviews with German politicians and advertising those interviews in Germany. I also did not go looking for them.

I can't evaluate what actually happened, I did not watch it. As far as I can tell, it currently looks like there will be no investigation or follow-up, so it looks like they are agreeing with you that this was fine :)

Zooming out a little, foreign entities using power to influence elections seems like something I would want to crack down on pretty hard as a society. Being at least critical of stuff like this seems reasonable to me.