President Emmanuel Macron's government faced a backlash Wednesday after the centrist leader called for powers to "cut off" social media in case of widespread violence like riots over the past week.
I am glad that there is so much opposition to this within the French government. Because:
The French people have the means and the motivation to continue protesting, and this is going to piss them off.
The authoritarian country I was born in regularly does this during protests but they also have almost full control of the media and telecomms . People, also, have limited choices of social media (because almost everyone uses a cell phone because the power regularly goes out, and some social media apps use a lot of data). A lot of times people don’t know that they’ve been cut off until it’s already cut.
I’m not saying he is authoritarian but the idea is authoritarian. Macron is clearly panicked, but this is the wildest, and most extreme reaction. Plus, once people get to know of this then they will just create groups on other platforms. This idea is very short sighted.
I am glad that there is so much opposition to this within the French government. Because:
The French people have the means and the motivation to continue protesting, and this is going to piss them off.
The authoritarian country I was born in regularly does this during protests but they also have almost full control of the media and telecomms . People, also, have limited choices of social media (because almost everyone uses a cell phone because the power regularly goes out, and some social media apps use a lot of data). A lot of times people don’t know that they’ve been cut off until it’s already cut.
I’m not saying he is authoritarian but the idea is authoritarian. Macron is clearly panicked, but this is the wildest, and most extreme reaction. Plus, once people get to know of this then they will just create groups on other platforms. This idea is very short sighted.