(Oct 30): French President Emmanuel Macron called for a ban on social media that fail to disclose their political bias, and said platforms are undermining democracy across the world.
“We must have transparency on algorithms in order to know if they are biased,” Macron said during a gathering on governance in Paris. “We must ban platforms that don’t provide it,” he added.
Macron said social media that use bots and anonymous accounts should also be forbidden.
“We want freedom, but we don’t want freedom for people who don’t exist,” he said.
The French leader pledged to push for stronger regulation as a way to tackle social media’s business model, which he described as a mechanism designed to maximise negative emotion, to the detriment of youth in particular. He also warned against foreign players using social media as a way to interfere in national elections.
“We are completely wrong to inform ourselves [on social media],” he said.
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While Macron has long been a champion of tech innovation and artificial intelligence (AI), he has been among the strongest voices calling for restrictions on social media companies, amid mounting concerns over their impact on the health of young people in particular. Australia last year approved a minimum age of 16 for social media users, due to come into force in December.
The European Commission last month said it would examine possible similar age restrictions on social media.
Earlier this month, the EU’s Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation, or TTPA, came into force to bring more accountability to online campaigning, and to help tackle foreign interference in European elections.
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Under the TTPA, which is regulation and not a guideline, platforms are required to explain why users are seeing certain ads, who paid for them, and how much the ads cost. Meta Platforms, Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google claim that TTPA creates “significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties”.
French lawmakers on Tuesday adopted an amendment to the 2026 budget, that would potentially raise the levy on the digital revenues of firms like Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc, and Facebook owner Meta Platforms to 6%, from 3% previously.
The change, if kept in the budget’s final version, may exacerbate transatlantic trade tensions and could lead to retaliatory actions from the US, with Republican lawmakers warning that a hike would be an “unwarranted attack” on American tech companies. US President Donald Trump has long threatened to retaliate against the measure with trade tariffs.
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