After tweets deemed "inciting violence", Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump's account.
A radical decision which is strongly reacting on both sides of the Atlantic.
The question of platform regulation, often mentioned, is coming back to the table, especially at European level.
ANALYSIS
No more photos, no more tweets and just two words: "account suspended".
This is what Donald Trump's Twitter page looks like since Friday and the social network's decision to indefinitely suspend the personal account of the President of the United States.
An unprecedented sanction that causes a stir, both in the United States and in France, on the role of social networks, their legitimacy to "censor" a politician and power, perhaps too important and too obscure, which rests in their hands.
And if some points of the decision are based on facts, others are questionable.
>> Find Europe Matin in replay and podcast here
Why did Twitter suspend Donald Trump's account?
According to Twitter, Donald Trump did not respect the general conditions of use (CGU) of the site, in particular the part concerning the "glorification of violence".
These regulations, public and accessible to all on the site, govern the uses of the platform by its members.
It is he who dictates what it is possible, or not, to publish and sets out prohibitions: child pornography photos, apology for terrorism, call to hatred, etc.
In Trump's case, there are two sets of problematic tweets, before and after his supporters invaded Capitol Hill.
At first, Twitter deleted three tweets deemed not to be contrary to the CGU, in particular because they did not condemn the ongoing violence in Washington.
This earned the @realdonaldtrump account a 12-hour suspension on Thursday with the threat of permanent suspension in the event of a repeat offense.
However, the next day, Donald Trump tweeted again, indicating in particular that he would not go to the inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden and addressing his support for "American patriots", two messages interpreted by the social network as "inciting to violence ".
It was this recurrence that led to the forced and permanent closure of his account.
>> DECRYPTION:
Why Donald Trump is more isolated than ever, eight days before the end of his mandate
For its part, Facebook also acted in two stages.
On the day of the Capitol events, the social network applied a 24-hour suspension to Donald Trump's account.
But the next day, Mark Zuckerberg himself announced his decision to extend the sanction until the handover.
"We believe that the risks of letting the President use our platform during this period are simply too great," said the founder of Facebook.
How do social networks decide to suspend an account?
It is a major subject.
Little, if at all, is known about the workings of social networks.
"The problem with suspending Donald Trump's account is that it's unilateral. There is no democratic oversight when we talk about the President of the United States, who speaks on Twitter to 88 million subscribers. Social networks can decide to delete the account of such or such based solely on their terms of use ", criticizes Cédric O, the Secretary of State for Digital, guest of
La France Bouge
, on Europe 1, Monday.
Behind the official messages published by Twitter and Facebook to explain themselves, some wonder about the timing of their sanctions.
Why have you waited so long before suspending Donald Trump, who had in the past thrown journalists and even approved the use of lethal weapons during the demonstrations of the Black Lives Matter movement?
And it is their entire policy of moderation, too obscure, which is now under fire from critics.
We don't know how social networks moderate content.
Facebook says it employs 35,000 people responsible for monitoring the publications of its members.
They are distributed in centers all over the world.
Centers which very rarely open their doors to the media and politicians and whose operation therefore remains abstract.
But Facebook is a good student next to Twitter which doesn't even communicate how many people are in charge of moderation, or in which countries they work.
Can such suspensions take place in France?
From Marine Le Pen to Jean-Luc Mélenchon via several government ministers, the French political class has unanimously condemned Twitter's decision to suspend Donald Trump's account, in the name of freedom of expression and the proper functioning of the democracy.
The suspension of Trump's account, the purging of digital giants against his supporters, should outraged any citizen committed to democracy.
Where will this control of any dissenting opinion end?
Who, tomorrow, will be digitally erased without the possibility of defending themselves?
MLP pic.twitter.com/iDdtD3yryS
- Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) January 9, 2021
Trump is not my cup of tea.
But the now definitive closure of his Twitter account seems scandalous to me.
Should we delegate our freedom of expression to the giants of Silicon Valley?
Tomorrow, it will be for all of us, this digital censorship, and private.
- François Ruffin (@Francois_Ruffin) January 9, 2021
What shocks me is that it is Twitter that is shutting down Trump's account.
The regulation of digital giants cannot and should not be done by the digital oligarchy itself.
It is necessary but it must be done by States and by Justice.
# le79interpic.twitter.com / kUFpiQmtlt
- Bruno Le Maire (@BrunoLeMaire) January 11, 2021
If Donald Trump is a "twittos" apart, he is not the only politician to have been suspended by Twitter.
In France, Facebook has already temporarily closed the account and deleted messages from the Generation Identity movement.
Another case, that of the deputy Emmanuelle Ménard (related RN).
Her Twitter account was suspended twice last year: in July, when she wrote that Greta Thunberg "deserved a good spanking";
and again in October when she claimed that the perpetrator of the Nice Basilica attack was a migrant, even before the investigation had concluded.
Can we regulate social networks?
The question may be surprising since we are talking about private companies.
But France has been pushing in this direction since the coming to power of Emmanuel Macron, whether on an economic level (the "Gafa tax") or on the moderation of content.
"We can not count on the goodwill of the platforms", we summarize at Bercy.
On the second point, the government supported MP Laetitia Avia's bill which aimed to regulate social networks to better fight online hatred.
Adopted by Parliament, the text was emptied of its substance by the Constitutional Council last year, on the grounds that it presented too many risks for freedom of expression.
France is now playing the European card with the Digital Services Act, a European text which must force platforms to take responsibility for the content published on their platform and to cooperate for their moderation with governments.
But the subject is "sensitive", according to a French minister, in particular because of the multiple European sensitivities on the question.
As a result, the adoption of the text will take time: at least 2 or 3 years.
But Donald Trump's suspension has shifted the lines.
"The positive point of this case is that by taking a position so clearly, social networks have put their finger in the gear. The machine is launched," said the same minister, very annoyed by the decision of Twitter.
The issue of the regulation of social networks, an old sea serpent, will therefore be on Joe Biden's desk from the day of his inauguration and will be at the same time at the heart of relations between the United States and the European Union.