Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against a right-wing US podcaster who claimed the spouse of the French president used to be a man.
The 218-page complaint against Candace Owens, who has millions of followers on X and YouTube, was filed by the Macrons in Delaware Superior Court and seeks a jury trial and unspecified punitive damages.
In a statement released by their lawyer, the Macrons said they filed the lawsuit after Owens repeatedly ignored requests to retract false and defamatory statements made on an eight-part YouTube and podcast series called “Becoming Brigitte.”
“Owens’ campaign of defamation was plainly designed to harass and cause pain to us and our families and to garner attention and notoriety,” they said.
“We gave her every opportunity to back away from these claims, but she refused.
“It is our earnest hope that this lawsuit will set the record straight and end this campaign of defamation once and for all.”
Right-Wing influencer Candace Owens.
The suit accuses Owens of using her popular podcast to spread “verifiably false and devastating lies” about the Macrons including that Brigitte Macron was born a man, that they are blood relatives and that Macron was chosen to be France’s president as part of a CIA-operated mind control program.
“If ever there was a clear-cut case of defamation, this is it,” Tom Clare, a lawyer for the Macrons, said in a statement.
“Owens both promoted and expanded on those falsehoods and invented new ones, all designed to cause maximum harm to the Macrons and maximize attention and financial gain for herself.”
Brigitte Macron, 72, has also taken to the courts in France to combat claims she was born a man.
Two women were convicted in September of last year of spreading false claims after they posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging that Brigitte Macron had once been a man named Jean-Michel Trogneux — who is actually her brother.
The ruling was overturned by a Paris appeals court and Macron appealed to the highest appeals court, the Court de Cassation, earlier this month.
US musician Chris Brown has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery over a docuseries detailing his alleged history of violence.
The R&B star is accusing Warner Bros. Discovery of moving forward with the film’s release even “after being provided proof that their information was false.”
According to Billboard magazine, the R&B artist who performed at a sold out concert in South Africa in 2024, filed the complaint on Tuesday, January 21, at the Superior Court of Los Angeles.
Brown’s attorneys, led by Levi G. McCathern II and Evan Selik, argue that the Investigation Discovery docuseries, “Chris Brown: A History of Violence”, has been ‘detrimental’ to the singer and is ‘full of lies’.
The suit further alleges that the documentary intentionally sensationalised these false claims to attract viewers and generate more revenue, ultimately harming Brown’s reputation.
“This case is about protecting the truth,” said Brown’s attorney Levi McCathern. “Despite being provided with evidence disproving their claims, the producers of this documentary intentionally promoted false and defamatory information, knowingly disregarding their ethical obligations as journalists.”
Adding, “Since the beginning of October of 2024, Ample LLC and Warner Brothers were put on notice that they were promoting and publishing false information in their pursuit of likes, clicks, downloads and dollars and to the detriment of Chris Brown.”
Additional reporting from Deadline says that the suit further claims the documentary was based on a Jane Doe lawsuit, regarding a reported 2020 incident on a yacht, which they claimed has been ‘discredited over and over’ and she was ‘a perpetrator of intimate partner violence and aggressor herself’.
The lawsuit accuses Warner Bros and company Ample LLC for portraying her as ‘credible’.
The new lawsuit added: “Mr. Brown has never been found guilty of any sex-related crime (rape, sexual battery, sexual assault, etc.) but this documentary states in every available fashion that he is a serial rapist and sexual abuser.”
Attorneys for the award-winning singer, songwriter and producer said that a portion of the $500m (KSh. 64.6B) in damages would be donated to ‘survivors of sexual abuse’.
According to a report done by Entertainment Weekly, the “Please Don’t Judge Me” singer has had a history of legal troubles. These include:
Feb. 2009: Chris Brown assaults then-girlfriend Rihanna
Oct. 2013: Brown is arrested on felony assault charge; pleads to misdemeanor
Nov. 2013: Brown is ordered to leave rehab and sentenced to live-in anger management
March 2014: Brown is kicked out of a Malibu rehab center and arrested
July 2015: Brown is detained in the Philippines
Jan. 2016: Brown is investigated over allegations of domestic violence
June 2016: Brown is sued by his ex-manager
Aug. 2016: Brown is arrested following a stand-off with police but is released without charges
June 2017: Brown is ordered to stay away from ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran
May 2018: Brown is sued for sexual assault. The lawsuit was settled out of court
July 2018: Brown is arrested on felony battery warrant after a Florida concert but charges are eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence
Jan. 2019: Brown is detained in France
Oct. 2021: Brown is sued on allegations of copyright infringement over several hit songs
Jan. 2022: Brown is sued by a woman who claims the singer drugged and raped her; judge dismisses case
July 2024: Brown is sued by concertgoers for $50 million alleging that they were “attacked and brutally beat” by Brown and his entourage following the show. The cas has not proceeded to trial.
Brown launched a career comeback in November 2023 with his eleventh studio album, 11:11 before embarking on a North American and South African tour for the album in 2024.
A former Facebook content moderator in Kenya has put Mark Zuckerberg on notice of 21 days to iron out issues at the Nairobi office or face a lawsuit.
Daniel Motaung, the whistleblower from a report in TIME, sent a legal letter to Facebook and their outsourcing company in Kenya, Sama, telling them to make 12 big changes to improve conditions for moderators – or we’ll sue.
The office in Nairobi, Kenya, where Facebook content moderators began working in 2019, photographed on Feb 10, 2022. Sama was known publicly as Samasource until early 2021. Khadija Farah for TIME
“There is no doubt that Meta not only knew of Sama’s unlawful treatment of its employees but also ratified it in order to keep the cost of content moderation in Kenya low,” the demand letter says.
“This is regrettable and shows how little respect Meta has not only for human rights in general but also for the rights of Kenyans and Africans at large… It is not only discriminatory but also amounts to neo-colonialism in the worst possible form.”
The letter continues: “Sama’s dishonest branding as an ethical company committed to lifting the status of disadvantaged youth falls flat. Their business practices are not only immoral but also
unlawful.”
The letter says that Motaung’s lawyers are requesting the Kenyan government to revoke Sama’s license to operate as an outsourcing business in Kenya.
The list of demands, in full.
The letter adds: “SHOULD Meta and Sama fail to adhere to ALL our client’s demands within twenty-one (21) days of receiving this letter, we will institute a civil suit against both Meta and Sama.”
Screenshots credits Billy Peringo.
The letter accuses Meta and Sama of breaking section 45 of Kenya’s data protection act, by surveilling employees’ screen time during working hours.
And it accuses Meta and Sama of breaking section 5 of Kenya’s employment act, through discriminatory treatment, including pay discrimination and sub-par psychological support compared to content moderation offices in other countries.
Content moderation is essential to Facebook. It would go down overnight without it. But it is backbreaking, dangerous and poorly paid. Some moderators in Kenya were paid less than $2 an hour.
Their job is to sift through the social media posts of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion monthly users and remove posts that violate its rules – such as graphic violence, hate, and misinformation.
And it accuses Sama of breaking Kenya’s labor relations act in its handling of the unionization effort described in my story. The letter says Motaung was unlawfully terminated.
Sama fired Daniel after he began organising with his co-workers to form a trade union to fight for better conditions at his office in Nairobi. Not only is that despicable, it’s also against Kenyan law.
So much for a so-called ‘ethical AI company’
TIME revealed moderators from Kenya miss out on a monthly relocation bonus paid to staff from outside the country, worth $1.46 per hour, after tax. Bosses also warned Kenyan moderators they were more easily replaceable than staff from outside the country, which many took as a threat of being fired.
Sama had previously come under fire for its low wages. In 2018, company founder Leila Janah justified the levels of pay: “One thing that’s critical in our line of work is to not pay wages that would distort local labour markets. If we were to pay people substantially more than that, we would throw everything off.”
It also provides new detail on the consequences that Daniel Motaung suffered as a result of his work, including a PTSD diagnosis.
In his legal battle against Facebook supported by not-for-profit Foxglove. His confidence is fuelled by a legal settlement in 2020, in which 11,250 moderators from outsourcing company Cognizant received $52 million from Facebook in damages, including widespread symptoms of PTSD. This worked out to a minimum of $1000 of compensation, roughly enough to cover twenty hours of therapy. As a result, Facebook promised moderation tools such as muting audio by default and changing videos to black and white to minimise distress.
These latest revelations The about abuses at the content moderation centre in Nairobi, Kenya, expose a rot at the heart of Facebook.
On taking Facebook to court Daniel says, ““The violence I witnessed working for Facebook changed my life – I’m determined not to let Facebook damage others in the same way. I’m bringing this case for all the colleagues I left behind and for everyone who relies on Facebook to read the news and seek the truth. Facebook is one of the richest companies in the world and engages in colonial exploitation in Africa just to keep its profit margins high. And Sama, which claims to be ‘ethical’, is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing, exploiting impoverished Kenyans and other Africans under the guise of social uplift. We must force these companies to clean up their act.”
