2023-06-30 17:41:46
As the government prepares for another night of violence following the death of Nahel, a 17-year-old minor killed by a policeman’s gunshot, Emmanuel Macron calls parents but also social networks to responsibility. The former are invited to keep their children at home who are likely to participate in the riots. The latter are asked to remove from their platforms certain videos encouraging excesses.
“Platforms and social networks have played a considerable role in the movements of the last few days”, argued the President of the Republic during a speech from the interministerial crisis unit devoted to the events. Friday evening, the heads of Meta (Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp), Snap, Twitter and TikTok were urgently summoned for a meeting with the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the Minister of digital, Jean-Noel Barrot.
“Mimicry of violence”
Contacted, none of these platforms might count the number of messages related to the riots or the number of these messages which would prove to be problematic. But a quick tour of their applications shows that the subject agitates Internet users. The “riot” theme was the first on Twitter in France this Friday. Videos of store looting were widely seen on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
However, the government notes “a form of mimicry of violence” which it estimates from the diffusion of this type of videos. The organization of violent group actions would also go through these platforms. The executive will demand “support” from social networks in order to remove “the most sensitive content” and identify the authors of calls for violence.
No anonymity
Concretely, these violent videos are already prohibited according to the platforms’ own moderation rules. “We prohibit any violent threats, any incitement to violence or any promotion of criminal activities that may harm others, animals or private property”, is it for example indicated in the community rules of TikTok. Snap does not allow content that encourages or incites violence but does allow content that factually reports a situation. The ephemeral messaging application is particularly in the sights for its geolocation features (Snap Map).
On all platforms, penalties for breaking the rules can range from removing the offending content to suspending the author’s account. But the moderators, sometimes few in number, can quickly become overwhelmed by the flow of videos to be evaluated, sometimes cloned hundreds of times on different accounts. And the law does not require the removal of violent content if it is not terrorist or if it calls for hatred.
On the issue of the identification of perpetrators, the 2004 law on confidence in the digital economy already requires social networks to keep data to identify each account holder on their platforms. Even a pseudonymous call is not anonymous. But the procedure allowing the Justice to obtain this information is often long. The challenge this weekend for the government will be to lift these brakes, to orchestrate an immediate response to an urgent situation.
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