Social media shutdown: Macron concedes "discussions", the law must set the limit

The facts

On Wednesday 28 October, Emmanuel Macron explained himself to Hugo Travers on the YouTube channel HugoDécrypte, after five weeks of high school and university student mobilisation. The president admitted to mistakes. According to France Mag, he conceded that the executive should have reacted faster, "moi le premier" (myself first), and that intelligence services had underestimated the scale of the anger.

One passage drew attention: the shutdown of social media. According to BFM TV, the head of state said the executive had not considered cutting off these platforms during the protests. According to France Mag, however, he acknowledged that "discussions" had taken place at the Prime Minister's initiative, and mentioned work led by Sébastien Lecornu to regulate the actions of certain people online.

These discussions left a paper trail. On 24 October, the outlet Blast revealed a letter dated 22 October, signed by the Prime Minister and addressed to Orange, Iliad, Bouygues Telecom and Altice France. According to Blast, whose revelations were picked up by Clubic, Matignon asked operators to stand ready to suspend Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram for a few hours through DNS filtering, mainly on mobile networks. X was reportedly added later. The letter cited no legal basis and described the measure as "exploratory". Still according to these revelations, the operators' lawyers judged the scheme hard to apply, easy to circumvent and disproportionate, and demanded a signed and published act. In the end, no blocking was triggered on 24 October.

At the same time, on 27 October the Senate adopted, by 219 votes to 115 according to Univers Freebox citing BFM TV, a government amendment to the so-called "casseurs-payeurs" (rioters pay) bill. According to Public Sénat, it would allow the administrative authority, notably through the Pharos platform, to demand within 24 hours the removal of content calling for violence, theft or damage when it seriously threatens public order. In case of refusal, operators could be asked to block the platform and search engines to delist it. The text has not yet been definitively adopted.

The positions

The government points to a real emergency. According to Public Sénat, calls to commit offences circulated on TikTok around 17 October, a day marked by violence and looting. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez defended in the Senate a text that, in his view, aims to have specific content removed rather than to cut off social media.

Rapporteur Olivier Bitz called this removal "indispensable". The Senate majority, the Les Indépendants group and the RN-UDR group voted in favour. According to Clubic, Matignon also relied on case law: in a decision of 1 April 2025, the Conseil d'État accepted that a temporary interruption of a social network could be lawful in exceptional circumstances.

On the other side, criticism does not come only from the left.

A security-driven and authoritarian drift — Thomas Dossus, Green senator for the Rhône, quoted by Public Sénat

According to Public Sénat, Socialist Audrey Linkenheld denounced "liberticidal" administrative measures, and Communist Fabien Gay the risk of control over social movements. Two centrists, Loïc Hervé and Catherine Morin-Desailly, expressed doubts, the latter about the constitutionality of the scheme. The climate of distrust is heightened by a Mediapart investigation, published on 19 October, in which a member of the territorial intelligence service claims that an instruction was allegedly given to blame the violence on La France insoumise. The Interior Ministry denied this to Mediapart, and Emmanuel Macron called the article "not serious", according to accounts of the interview.

The analysis

It is legitimate for the state to seek to prevent networks from being used to organise looting. The question is one of means and oversight. The Conseil d'État set three conditions: an interruption must be indispensable in the face of particularly serious events, there must be no measure less harmful to freedoms, and it must be limited to the time needed to put such alternatives in place. It was for failing to respect these limits that the blocking of TikTok in New Caledonia, in May 2024, was ruled unlawful.

Yet a nationwide shutdown of three apps used by millions of young people, prepared through a mere confidential letter, with no legal basis cited and no publication, falls far outside this framework. It would have struck indiscriminately those calling for violence and those who were demonstrating peacefully, getting informed or reassuring their parents. The Senate amendment, more targeted, retains a major flaw: it entrusts the administration alone, without a prior judge, with deciding what threatens public order at a time of political protest.

The Gaullist tradition is that of a state that is strong because it is respected, and respected because it acts in the open. A government that secretly prepares to cut off the digital voice of a generation already angry risks deepening the distrust it claims to soothe.

Conclusion

New demonstrations are announced for Saturday 31 October. As the bill continues through Parliament, deputies could demand three simple safeguards: swift intervention by a judge, in summary proceedings, before any platform is blocked; publication of every decision in the Journal officiel; and a public report after each use. Will the executive accept that digital public order be defended with the same safeguards as public order itself?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.