
Yellow Vest Facebook group with 350k members frozen on European election day - mmoez
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/28/vest-m28.html
======
mmoez
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.

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

~~~
aikah
> This is actually normal, and is done in a lot of countries.
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence](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?

~~~
wtdata
> 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...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000023882997&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070239&dateTexte=20110420)

~~~
aikah
> They actually are in some European countries. France included.

No there is none in France. Discussing politics isn't the same as campaigning.

And again, your "edit" changes nothing to what I'm saying, the law you quoted
does not bar people from discussing politics, it bars candidates and their
supporters from promoting their candidates or their parties, the yellow vests
are not a political party.

~~~
jdietrich
A Facebook group exists in a meaningful grey area between "discussion" and
"publication". To argue otherwise is wilfully obtuse.

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yllus
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](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
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.

~~~
rat9988
Actually in France, the government has been way more often caught lying about
the yellow vests than the opposit.

~~~
deogeo
I haven't heard much about this - care to elaborate?

~~~
rat9988
One case: [https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/02/french-government-
claims...](https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/02/french-government-claims-
protesters-attacked-paris-hospital-but-yellow-vests-challenge-nar) There were
others, but I'm too lazy to search. I remember seeing one other at least.
Never seen any fake news problem with yellow vest. Usually Lemonde is prompt
to denounce them.

~~~
arthur5005
_Never seen any fake news problem with yellow vest._

That's just outright laughable.

Here's a 20 page report detailing how the yellow vest groups have been flooded
by fake news, presumably by foreign agents.

[https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/Report%20Yellow%20Vests%20FINA...](https://avaazimages.avaaz.org/Report%20Yellow%20Vests%20FINAL.pdf)

You can be sure where ever there's angry people in the world Russia will be
there to help fan the flames.

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petre
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.

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

~~~
nailer
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...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/technology/facebook-france-
yellow-vests.html) which has some background on the French Facebook group
though.

