Social networks: "A derealization of the other and a disaster", according to Philippe Val

Europe 1 2:09 p.m., September 23, 2022

Are social networks a public health hazard?

They would be "a diversion of the use of the Internet, a war machine and it is as if after having invented the atomic bomb, we had hastened to distribute it to everyone, under the pretext that there was a market", writes Philippe Val, in his 

Invited this Friday morning to the microphone of Europe 1, in the company of Abel Quentin, writer and lawyer, who has just published the novel

, he returned to the problems posed by social networks in our society.

"It threatens the very foundations of our civilization of respect for others and freedom"

"It's an anthropological revolution. It's a paradigm shift because during, almost since antiquity, European culture has been constantly trying, right down to human rights, to make the other real. The reality of he other is the strength of our civilisation. And all of a sudden, there is a machine of incredible power that renders the other abstract," explains Philippe Val.

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Taking the example of Mila, the young woman cyberharassed after her controversial videos on Islam, the journalist considers that "Mila is abstract. When the accused say: 'we didn't know it was serious', it's because that it does not exist. When terrorists, in front of a café terrace, with a machine gun, kill fifteen people, they kill fifteen abstractions. Otherwise, they would not do it. They have become radicalized on social networks. It is a derealization of the other and it is a disaster. It threatens the very foundations of our civilization of respect for others and freedom."

"It strengthens dictatorships and it weakens democracies"

As for the possibility of a release of the voices of public opinion thanks to social networks, Philippe Val does not believe in it.

"It's often with lies that it works. What's happening right now in Iran, the regime can't control social networks so it's in its flaws that it serves young women who come forward , while in China, where the regime has perfect control of social networks, it serves the dictatorship. It strengthens dictatorships and weakens democracies."

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An observation shared by the author Abel Quentin.

"It is not because the technology exists that it improves day by day, that we are not entitled to question whether it is real progress. For me, the balance sheet is negative. The account is not there," he said.

According to him, even if social networks have enabled progress, such as the Arab Spring, "you have to have a cost-benefit analysis, as in economics, to ask yourself the question of what is it destroying? what does it bring today in the West? suggestion algorithms", concludes the writer and lawyer.