France's digital affairs minister, Anne Le Hananff, convened an emergency meeting with social media companies on Tuesday, after platforms were blamed for amplifying the country's worst civil unrest in years. According to French TV station BFM, the goal was to remind platforms to moderate content, including livestream video, that could encourage violence or violations of the imposed curfew. A WIRED review of TikTok found that the search term "blocus" was surfacing potentially altered or AI-generated videos and promoting further protests, prompting the platform to add an "evolving situation" label to the search results.
A separate meeting, confirmed by Serge Papin, minister for small and medium-size enterprises, was held Monday with major online reselling platforms. French newspaper Le Monde reported that Vinted, eBay, Amazon, LeBonCoin, Meta, and TikTok attended. Papin said an agreement was signed to crack down on the resale of looted goods, with platforms committing to forward reports to investigators, monitor ads for goods stolen during the protests, and send the government reports of their actions within 48 hours.
The emergency measures follow a weekend of peaceful demonstrations over living costs and public services that erupted into rioting and looting of more than 1,500 shops and businesses. Interior minister Laurent Nuñez admitted police "lost control" in some cities, and authorities have arrested more than 2,400 people. The French Alliance of Marketplaces said its members are relying on user reports, human oversight, and tech tools to monitor ads, with eBay stating that fake ads are removed and seller accounts may be permanently suspended, though action time depends on verification. Several platforms, including Vinted, Amazon, and Meta, did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.