Macron Blasts Social Media’s Free Speech Defense as ‘Bullshit’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-18/macron-blasts-social-media-s-free-speech-defense-as-bullshit
Posted by bloomberg
Macron Blasts Social Media’s Free Speech Defense as ‘Bullshit’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-18/macron-blasts-social-media-s-free-speech-defense-as-bullshit
Posted by bloomberg
35 Comments
*From Bloomberg News reporter Ania Nussbaum:*
French President Emmanuel Macron said the free speech defense of social media platforms is “pure bullshit,” pushing back against a key foreign policy goal of President Donald Trump.
European nations including the UK and Germany are weighing social media bans for minors, with regulators saying the services are harmful and addictive. That could have an impact on critical advertising dollars for companies including Instagram and Facebook, Snap, Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Google’s YouTube.
“Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech — OK, we are in favor of free algorithms — totally transparent,” Macron said. “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it is guided from one hate speech to another.”
Free speech is indeed bullshit if judged by some American companies and US administration. Free speech is speech that suits them …. if it doesn’t suit them it’s no longer allowed.
Social Media companies don’t give a flying fuck about free speech – or any other moral guideline for what it’s worth.
The only metric they care about is engagement, which leads to more clicks, which leads to more ad revenue, that’s it. And algorithmically steered infinite scroll ragebait and fake bullshit is one hell of an engagement machine.
Yeah, when Americans say free speech, they mean unregulated, intransparent algorithms owned by far-right billionaires lol. And they’re perfectly aware of it themselves.
EU made a mistake during the tariff rift in the last year in my opinion, this was a good chance to respond calmly while in fact regulating US-owned social media fucking up our public debate for good.
Free Speech in the context of Social Media is indeed bullshit. But People getting Brainwashed to think being able to access social media is somehow free speech.
I mean if internet Profiling and ID verification stopped at Social Media I’d be all for it
Free speech existed way before socials were a thing. Social medias aren’t a requirement for free speech.
I’ve said this before, these fascist types are clever in using free speech as way to spread discord in society. They have the “don’t look behind the curtains” attitude and expect everyone to be placid while they destroy civil society.
God I love having a first amendment enshrined in a written constitution
That’s a great quote IMO
Just like food standards, why shouldn’t consumers know how online content are cooked up and served? It’s being ingested hourly and raising our blood pressure, cholesterol levels.
Bill Hicks: You are free! – To do as we told you.
Il problema é confondere libertà di espressione con libertà d odio e libertà di insulto. Inoltre Cambridge analytica ha mostrato che é possibile manipolare le masse.
The title is quite misleading tbh. The full quote sounds much better.
Des carabistouilles donc ?
Free speech – from the same platforms that are running to hand over data about people making “non positive remarks about ICE / DHS etc” – that free speech??
You all better be careful here. You might say something Macron doesn’t like and get in trouble.
Honestly, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, social media (and big tech companies in general) are a menace to society, and young people are very, very vulnerable to them, especially when they are born in this age.
On the other hand, the whole ban for minors is a slippery slope for ID control, which is a severe violation of privacy and opens another can of worms for security issues.
Can we just… get rid of the algorithm of something?
ITT: functional illiteracy as redditors read “Macron blasts Free Speech *defense* [from these companies] as bullshit” as “Macrom blasts *Free Speech* as bullshit”.
Looks like half the commenters here were completely unable to tell the important difference between these two. And Bloomberg here riding the wave of ragebait probably knowing we’re too stupid to even read the title of an article correctly at this point.
I just don’t understand why every company has to use that Persona crap.
Anonymous speech is free speech
Because it is bullshit. It always has been bullshit.
https://theurbanist.org/2026/02/14/washington-legislature-toys-with-age-verification-for-big-tech
Maya Morales, founder of Washington People’s Privacy, said laws like these are extremely troubling for democracy.
“The stated intention of these laws when they were originally pushed federally and across states was to remove the last bastions and shreds of the massive democratizing effect a free and open internet has had on our world,” Washington People’s Privacy wrote in a statement. “It’s undeniable that access to a free and open internet has empowered people’s movements, people’s speech rights, climate justice, LGBTQ+ visibility and rights, people’s education efforts, people’s ability to connect and communicate privately and securely, and even the ability of people to orchestrate uprisings and protest under authoritarian rule.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote that age-verification systems are “at their core, surveillance systems.” Among the myriad of problems and risks of age verification systems, the EFF lists:
Loss of anonymity, ranging from journalistic sources to whistleblowers to domestic violence survivors.
Loss of access to the internet for anyone without a legal ID, credit cards, or mortgage information, which disproportionately affects people of color, immigrants, unhoused people, and poor people.
Higher error rates for age inference facial recognition for people of color, people with disabilities, and transgender people.
Young people’s, and especially young LGBTQ+ people’s, loss of access to vital information and affinity communities.
Increased privacy risks around sensitive data such as ID photos and biometric data that could be obtained through data breaches or sold to data brokers and marketers.
Loss of access to, and the chilling of, freedom of speech.
It’s so distorted, manipulated, and transformed that its message becomes the opposite of what’s understood from reading the title. Very poor quality post.
Whole comment section of lemmings so eager to let the government decide what is allowed to be said.
Free speach? Not against their “friends”.
I answer in a post about a known trafficker of women who is, I don’t know why, some type of influencer. Said “person” thinks (?) that reading is stupid. So I guess how he could have a bank account or just sign a contract.
I got banned for making threats against his life.
I. The reader. Against the slaver and abuser of women. I threaten him. Absurd.
They’re pissed because they can’t control it anymore, particularly X. Back when it was controlled by the left and banned all opposition none of these politicians cared.
This is also why you don’t see them going after Reddit.
Yep
Europe needs its own social media and not be dependent and therefore targets of American corporations.
I have a feeling social media, ultraprocessed food and microplastics are going to be our generations asbestos and smoking. Hugely profitable, deeply embedded in everyday life and harmful in ways we are only starting to understand. In a few decades we will be asking ourselves what the heck we were thinking.
He’s right
Social media has massive arbitrary censorship. There is no free speech there.
Earning money from russian bot farms manipulating people in europe is not free speech.
These platforms are coming from a country where you get shot in the face in front of everyone to see if you don’t agree to their government 🤡 Reminds me of Pol Pot’s cousin or whatever she was, “they (west) say we murder people who wear glasses because they’re intellectuals, I wear glasses and I’m still alive”
Robbespierre‘s reincarnation.
“you can have free speech just as long as it’s not free and we are taking you what to say”