Social media: For Emmanuel Macron, X (formerly Twitter) is dominated by "far-right content," TikTok is being overtaken by "Salafism"

Emmanuel Macron is taking a tougher stance on social media. Invited to speak this Wednesday at the Paris Peace Forum, the president called for a "much stronger agenda for protection and regulation in Europe" in the face of foreign interference, but above all, the abuses of information on these platforms. He is targeting the harmful role of these applications in the proper functioning of democratic life, arguing that they are "driven by a process of creating maximum excitement, which will generate maximum traffic to maximize their advertising pages." "The entire meritocratic order that underpinned our democracies, a relationship to argumentation and truth, is completely undermined," he lamented.

Before warning about the daily use of these digital tools, to the detriment of traditional media, he declared: “We’ve made a mess of things; we’re completely wrong to go looking for information on these.” This premise led Emmanuel Macron to advocate for regaining “control of our democratic and informational life” through strengthened regulation, and then to support his argument with two telling examples. First, the social network X (formerly Twitter), which he accused of fostering a political bias in its algorithm. “Open X with unrestricted content; if you don’t immediately stumble upon far-right content, from France or around the world, it means you’re poorly organized,” he quipped.

Also read: Two years after Twitter's metamorphosis into X, the contrasting successes of competing platforms

And the president softened his stance against X by launching a broader attack on the "platforms (that) have decided to break neutrality because the owner of that neutrality has decided to engage in the democratic struggle and the reactionary international movement." This barb sounded like a full-blown attack on the transformation of the social network initiated two and a half years ago by Elon Musk , head of Tesla and former member of the Trump administration—whose ideological proximity to the American conservative right Emmanuel Macron implicitly highlighted. He made the same observation regarding the Chinese network TikTok , where, according to the head of state, "a young French person who creates an account without any personal information and types the word 'Islam' will be exposed to Salafist content after the third piece of content they see."

Regarding foreign interference, Emmanuel Macron directly targeted Russia, seen as "the biggest buyer of fake accounts, used to destabilize European democracies . " "We're dealing with interference on steroids," he declared, before outlining possible solutions to these new challenges. This "agenda of protection and regulation in Europe," which he advocates, must, in his view, remain compatible with "innovation" and certain "public interest actors," those offering "open infrastructure." "I deeply believe in innovation, but I don't believe for a second in innovation that serves the dark arts," he concluded, delivering a final barb.

In total, some thirty countries—including France, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Brazil, as well as several European and African states—adopted, on the sidelines of this Forum, a declaration “on multilateral action for information integrity and independent media.” All committed to “defending the principle that independent, pluralistic, and reliable information constitutes a public good essential to humanity, and to upholding democratic principles within the global information space.” They proposed strengthening “multilateral and multi-stakeholder cooperation” in this area.