Here is a summary of the article:
• French President Emmanuel Macron has said the government should have the power to control social media networks during periods of unrest.
• Macron made the comments during an interview with a French TV station. He was referring to recent protests in France against the government's cost of living policies.
• Macron said during periods of crisis, the government needs the power to "block content that goes against republican values and is clearly creating confusion and putting people's lives at risk."
• Critics say Macron's call for more government control of social media raises concerns about censorship and freedom of speech.
• Opposition politicians accused Macron of attacking fundamental French freedoms and wanting to restrict the free flow of information.
• Macron countered that social media networks are already heavily regulated in France over issues like hate speech and terrorist propaganda. He argued the government needed similar powers during unrest.
The implementation of such measures in a democratic society should be viewed as an infringement on freedom of speech and expression, which are fundamental rights in a democracy. The balance between maintaining public safety and upholding civil liberties is a delicate one. Therefore, these measures must be considered as a last resort in extreme situations. The current situation doesn’t appear to be extreme.
French Revolution: May 5, 1789 – Nov 9, 1799
Turning off the internet/social-media will only throw gas on the fire grease on the guillotine me thinks.
Same way Iran China Russia etc do it. Put up a Great Firewall, block all the people not protesting anything from accessing their psychosis generating social media sites, meanwhile the protesters all figure out how to work around it. The benefit to the government is that it pisses off the non-participants and makes it easier for the government to crush dissent.
That sounds difficult. They would have to make a lot of exceptions in order to not shut down their economy. I've worked in China. Every foreign corporate building had a vpn allowed through the firewall, all the chinese workers had access to the global internet. It was a giant gushing hole. I think I asked and my chinese colleagues said that lots of chines tech companies also had global access. Now of course I also assume that the Chinese government monitored all the leaks, as they monitor everything else, as do we.
First they would try to block it on the ISP DNS servers. But this is easily circumvented if you know how.
My guess is he is just throwing out stupid ideas without knowing how to get them implemented.
They'd mandate French ISPs and mobile carriers to block/disable the DNS records related tot he big social media companies. Anyone savvy enough to use encrypted DNS, non-ISP DNS, or a VPN would see no impact. That said, this would be a huge impact to many non-savvy users that are just important to protests as those of the savvy crew, like us Lemmy kin.
If Orban had said this, it would have been outrage, and rightly so. But liberal darling Macron says it and from luminaries like Verhofstadt there is only crickets...
(I'm using "liberal" in the European sense, not the US sense.)
China's great firewall has joined the chat.
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If Macron persists in his autocratic style, I can't help but wonder—given France's historical penchant for the guillotine—what might be metaphorically 'cut off' next.
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