“We’ve seen them; Snapchat, TikTok and several others, serve as places where violent gatherings have been organized, but there’s also a form of mimicry of the violence which for some young people leads them to lose touch with reality.

“You get the impression that for some of them they are experiencing on the street the video games that have intoxicated them,” he added.

(This is the source in French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHpqbo7p38Y )

The ministers have been complaining about a "gamification" of the riots, where protesters push each other to destroy more stuff through social media. And that's what he was condemning.

I'm not aware of him having requested deletions of riot content. That would, indeed, by worrying for a western democracy... But France civil liberties have been on the downward-trend since the 2015 Paris attacks. So I could see this happening. But data to social media companies have been requested, which is IMHO not alarming, but always makes me uneasy...

[–] Nyefan@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

This is nonsense.

You cut out the sections above and below where this source quoted Macron calling for the suppression of speech on social media, but I'll pull it from AP regardless.

Macron, who in tandem castigated video games for the rioting, said the French government would work with social media sites to take down “the most sensitive content” and identify users who “call for disorder or exacerbate the violence.”

During his speech on Friday, Macron did not specify what type of content he viewed as “sensitive,” but he said he expected “a spirit of responsibility” from the social media platforms.

Talks between the government and social media platform, including Snapchat and Twitter, have started with the aim to speed up the process to remove content inciting to violence, the official said. The French government is also pushing for identifying people who launch calls for violence but it’s still at the “discussion” stage.