Yellow Vest Facebook group with 350k members frozen on European election day

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/28/vest-m28.html

by mmoez • 7 years ago

78 31 7 years ago

wyxuan• 7 years ago

I'm sure there just be more to this story. World socialist web site doesn't seem like a particularly trustworthy source.

arthur50052• 7 years ago

Yeah, very generic title, full of trash articles.

Seems like an outlet for disinformation itself.

nailer• 7 years ago

It's not a trustworthy site, but I can't find any mainstream news sites covering this.

There's a https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/technology/facebook-franc... which has some background on the French Facebook group though.

mmoez• 7 years ago

It is worth noting that FB made an agreement with the French government last year to directly cooperate with them on filtering and controlling spread of shared content:

Zuckerberg’s meeting with Macron on May 10 reviewed the first half of a year-long collaboration—the first of its kind with any government in the world—in which French officials have been invited directly into Facebook’s content “moderation” offices to analyze the material censored from users’ news feeds. Because what shows up in a given user’s news feed is determined by Facebook’s own algorithms, the company and the state can control the spread of material.

yllus• 7 years ago

There's a Yellow Vest Canada group on Facebook that is in full-on tinfoil hat conspiracy mode (wildfires in Alberta are being set by Muslims, stuff like that; see https://twitter.com/theBurlyChef/status/1133592129639313409 ). I wouldn't be surprised if the use of a European group to spread disinformation or even promote violence caused this to happen.

tapland• 7 years ago

These rapid growing movements seldom have any requirements to join and allow the spread of all kinds of misinformation really well.

Another group will pop up in x weeks and the facebook groups will have people doubting vaccines, blaming immigrants, blaming the current government, and as an average user you can't sort who's just an angry middle aged person or a russian bot.

rat99882• 7 years ago

Actually in France, the government has been way more often caught lying about the yellow vests than the opposit.

nscalf• 7 years ago

This is actually normal, and is done in a lot of countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence. According to this, France acts "on the Saturday before the Sunday election; polling silence included"

sasasassy• 7 years ago

A ban on political campaigning is very different from banning speech on politics in general.

keymone• 7 years ago

No, it’s really not with such politicized Facebook groups. In fact access to any medium where one’s opinion can get distributed to unreasonable number of consumers should be banned. Contemplate your choice on your own.

aikah4• 7 years ago

This is actually normal, and is done in a lot of countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence. According to this, France acts "on the Saturday before the Sunday election; polling silence included"

The yellow vest aren't a political party, they may have individuals running but that page wasn't one of a political party, they aren't even an organisation. This is purely Facebook enforcing political censorship to please the French government, there is nothing normal about it.

People are not forced to stop talking about politics on a public forum the day of the elections, that's complete bullshit.

It would be like saying, that people gathering into a bar on election day are barred from talking about politics. There is absolutely no such law that mandates that in France.

So please explain us what is normal about it again?

NotPaidToPost2• 7 years ago

I disagree.

French law states:

"A partir de la veille du scrutin à zéro heure, il est également interdit de diffuser ou de faire diffuser par tout moyen de communication au public par voie électronique tout message ayant le caractère de propagande électorale." [Article L49 of the Code Electoral]

I.e. it is illegal to disseminate or to have disseminated any "electoral propaganda" message through any electronic communication mean from the Saturday before polling day (which always takes place on a Sunday).

Any Facebook post, tweet, email, SMS text, etc which content is aimed at influencing the poll is thus illegal and it is not hard to understand why they blocked that group during the weekend.

nestorD• 7 years ago

Well some candidates where affiliated with the yellow vest.

wtdata• 7 years ago

People are not forced to stop talking about politics on a public forum the day of the elections, that's complete bullshit.

They actually are in some European countries. France included.

EDIT: Link to the law in question in the official site for FRance with English translation:

"From the day before the election at midnight, it is forbidden to distribute or have distributed newsletters, circulars and other documents.

From the eve of the poll at midnight, it is also forbidden to broadcast or cause any message that has the character of electoral propaganda to be disseminated by any means of communication to the public by electronic means."

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticl...

village-idiot2• 7 years ago

Different countries have different norms around political speech. Report at 11.

scohesc• 7 years ago

What I'd like to see is if there's any other social media pages on the other side of the political spectrum that have been blocked.

Miner49er• 7 years ago

Does anybody know if this effected other FB groups? Were any other political groups silenced around this time in France?

petre• 7 years ago

There's a lesson to be learned here and noboby lerns it every time this happens. They should have been using Discourse or something else rather than being at the mercy of facebook. France also has some draconian telecom laws. Like the requirement for obtaining a license to operate a public WiFi AP.

Yellow Vest Facebook group with 350k members frozen on European election day

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