Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger has a new round of Twitter Files, this time exposing the censorship regime in a powerful European nation.
Shellenberger noted Wednesday that European Union censorship remains an obstacle as the U.S. tries to hash out a final trade agreement, but the anti-free speech campaign is worse even than many Americans realize. In a lengthy X thread, Shellenberger showed a “coordinated effort by France’s President Emmanuel Macron, legislators, and state-affiliated NGOs working together to force the world’s most influential social media platform to censor users for legal speech and influence Twitter’s worldwide ‘content moderation’ for narrative control.”
In 2020, Twitter’s then-Public Policy Director for France and Russia Audrey Herblin-Stoop wrote that Macron was repeatedly pestering her for then-CEO Jack Dorsey’s number, which she didn’t give out. Instead, multiple Twitter executives and Dorsey’s own office discussed various options for arranging the conversation.
Shellenberger accused Macron of orchestrating intense censorship, including by taking French opposition leader Marine Le Pen to court and arresting Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in 2024. Durov stated that the government was trying to force him to censor some “conservative” election-related content.
“The French government and its Censorship Industrial Complex have used various methods, including judicial intimidation, to demand censorship from social media platforms,” Shellenberger posted.
Macron requested Dorsey’s number even as four NGOs, apparently backed by the EU and French governments, sued Twitter for supposedly not censoring enough in France, Shellenberger continued. Then-Twitter Attorney Karen Colangelo opined that this lawsuit was “largely about painting Twitter as a dangerous actor in the press.”
Yet in a separate email, Colangelo expressed a willingness to settle the lawsuit in exchange for crushing what the NGOs deemed to be “hate speech.”
Twitter eventually caved to the censorship pressure, but the NGOs still pushed their suit, though Twitter executives promised a letter from Dorsey stating he “is committed to fighting hate speech.” However, the NGOs claimed even such a move was not enough, though legal mediators seemed more approving, Shellenberger noted. The case also coincided with the reemergence of French censorship legislation, the Avia bill.
Shellenberger argued that France has long had a history of censoring speech, but partially state-funded NGOs are a key part of the modern censorship regime thanks to the Pleven Law that targeted “hate.”
Ever since 2016, Macron personally led the charge on “misinformation detection” and “hateful” content. While Macron was legally disallowed from preemptive censorship measures, he used the NGOs as proxies to demand such “content moderation,” Shellenberger clarified. April Benayoum, a French beauty pageant queen with the title of Miss World France, also joined with the NGOs in demanding information in court on accounts she claimed were harassing her.
Shellenberger reported that French courts prosecuted then-Twitter France CEO Damien Viel in 2022, accusing him of “non compliance with a judicial injunction” and “complicity to libel.” The French Ministry of the Interior posted a picture of a civil servant and police enforcing COVID-19 lockdowns, whom users compared in the comments to 20th-century Nazi collaborationists. The Versailles prosecutor asserted “the total failure of Twitter's moderation.” The case did not end up succeeding in court, but Twitter‘s lawyer admitted the possibility of a raid on Twitter’s France office.
And now that Twitter is renamed X and under the new leadership of Elon Musk, a Paris prosecutor has launched an investigation into the company, alleging fraud and foreign interference. “Why is France prosecuting X?” Shellenberger asked. “The answer appears to be that it wants to force X into compliance with French government-approved narratives.”
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