“I need you”, “I am also going to multiply”: Emmanuel Macron invited on Tuesday some 200 experts and field workers gathered at the Elysée to propose ideas between now and the end of the year to fight against the threats of the Internet and social networks to democracy and elections.
We must “launch the work of resistance”, “create a small platform of action”, “build a common action project”, beyond legislative and regulatory measures, he told the researchers, heads of associations, neuropsychologists, businessmen and elected officials present.
“The rise of a new power”
The debate, which was held in the presence of some media outlets, including AFP, also focused on the impact of screens on children’s mental health, a topic already widely addressed by the Head of State in recent months.
For more than two hours, the speakers continued speaking in a sequence reminiscent of the National Refoundation Council (CNR), the tool initiated by Emmanuel Macron at the beginning of his second five-year term in 2022 to try to renew the democratic debate, with relative success.
The president, removed from the internal political scene since the failed dissolution of 2024, intends to make the harmful effects of screens and social networks his new workhorse in the final stretch of the five-year period before the municipal elections of 2026 and the presidential elections of 2027.
Among the key issues, the algorithms created by the platforms to capture the attention of users, directing it for ideological or advertising purposes, with colossal financial interests at stake.
“What is at stake with algorithms is the emergence of a new power,” along with the executive, legislative and judicial, which “still has no counterpowers” and against which it is necessary to create “countercontrol algorithms,” explained Hugo Micheron, a specialist in Islamist interference in networks.
The need for “public interest” social networks?
In the digital world, “the market of ideas is in the hands of a small number of large American, Chinese and Russian companies that have always made their interests prevail,” added David Colón, historian of propaganda and mass manipulation.
“In Moldova, Facebook’s first customer was the Kremlin in its election interference operations,” he said. Trolls and bots “distort user perceptions” and can also “deceive algorithms and multiply their effects.”
He suggested creating social networks of “public interest”, not based on a “predatory advertising model” but on “transparent algorithms.”
Axel Dauchez, founder of the site Make.org, a participatory democracy platform, suggested “creating reservation periods on social networks” before the elections, as well as in traditional media.
“We are losing our emotional and cognitive independence,” concluded Emmanuel Macron, suggesting that his interlocutors see them again at the end of December.
Source: BFM TV
