Social networks “very quickly removed thousands of illegal content and suspended hundreds of accounts” at the request of the state during the riots after Nahel’s death, the ministry delegated to Digital told AFP on Wednesday.
Representatives of the Ministry of the Interior (Pharos platform) and Justice (prosecutor’s office) sent hundreds of requests to the main platforms -Twitter, TikTok, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Snapchat- related to illegal content, such as calls for violence or disclosure of personal data of police officers.
The collaboration with the platforms went “very well”, greeted the ministry, underlining the speed of the withdrawal decisions.
Since Jean-Noël Barrot and Gérald Darmanin summoned representatives of TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter and Meta on Friday, “we put a lot of pressure on them to remove illegal content and they responded very quickly to requests,” the ministry stressed.
The government also asked these platforms for “the greatest vigilance over their functionalities that can be misused to undermine public order,” Jean-Noël Barrot told Challenges on Wednesday.
On TikTok, the means of moderation was thus reinforced during the riots, its spokesperson told AFP.
“We carry out automatic moderation of illegal content, reinforced by human moderators. Due to the urgent need in France, we have reinforced our moderation efforts,” he said.
“Zero tolerance”
When a prosecutor or the police request the removal of content, they use a particular form and their request is processed very quickly, “it can be in less than an hour,” he added, citing calls for violence, the disclosure of personal data. or even videos with weapons and calls for revenge.
TikTok said it had never faced requests to block features, a hypothesis suggested by the government on Wednesday.
Snapchat also said it has “zero tolerance for content that promotes or incites hate or violent behavior” and said that “when we find this type of content, either through proactive detection or when we are notified, we remove it.” , but that it “allows content that actually reports a situation.”
“As of Tuesday, we have been proactively reviewing the Snap Map (which geotags riot sites) and specifically riot-related content and removing content that violates our guidelines,” Snapchat added.
Meta also clarified that it “prohibits any content that incites hatred and violence” and has “set up a surveillance cell since the middle of the week to act as quickly as possible.”
Source: BFM TV
