“People convicted of cyberbullying may be banned from social networks for 6 months. This penalty will be increased to one year in case of recidivism. This May 10, Bruno Le Maire resumed the measures of a bill aimed at “securing” the Internet and led by the Minister of Digital Jean-Noël Barrot. Among the measures, the banning of social networks for stalkers, who would later be deprived of a Twitter, Facebook, TikTok or Instagram account.
But this sentence, which should be pronounced by a judge, seems difficult to apply. In fact, several prerequisites are essential to deprive an Internet user of their accounts on social networks… starting with the fact of knowing the existence of all the profiles created.
In the event of a ban on social networks, the judge must also ask the social networks, all based abroad, to block any attempt to connect or create an account. But, on what technical criteria?
“It could have worked in the days of the Minitel”
With Tech & Co, the Ministry of Digital evokes the use of “technical data” to identify an individual, starting with their IP address.
The use of the phone number could be very limited, since many social networks do not require you to provide such information. A ban based on an email address would be equally ineffective given the ease with which it is possible to generate a new one.
More pragmatically, this move faces a more basic risk: reprisals from the European Commission, due to the European scope of its ambitions. With, as a recent example, a notice that was to say the least severe about the minimum book delivery rate, which led the government to revise its copy of this “anti-Amazon” measure.
Source: BFM TV
