Social Media ‘Didn’t Do Enough’ on Moderation During French Riots, Breton Says

Tara Patel and Benoit Berthelot, Bloomberg News

Protesters clash with CRS riot police in Marseille, on June 30. Photographer: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images , Photographer: CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP

(Bloomberg) -- Social media platforms didn’t adequately moderate harmful content during recent riots in France, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said.

“Social media didn’t do enough,” Breton said in an interview Monday on France Info radio, naming apps from Snap Inc. and TikTok Inc. in particular.

A representative for TikTok said the company does not allow violent threats or incitement to violence, and actively removed posts that violated its rules during the riots. Snap had a dedicated task force reviewing reports from areas affected by the rioting and found that the vast majority of content in question did not promote violence, a spokesperson said.

French cities were hit with violence and looting in the days after police fatally shot a teenager on June 27, and video footage of the fallout was shared widely on social media. President Emmanuel Macron blamed the content for encouraging unrest among young people and exacerbating the riots.

Read More: TikTok Media Are Gaining Subscribers From French Riots

From Aug. 25, European law will allow fines and suspensions of platforms that don’t comply with rules requiring them to remove “content that is hateful, that calls to revolt and to kill,” Breton said in the radio interview, referring to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which gives governments more power to force large tech companies to take down illegal content. “If they don’t do it they will be sanctioned immediately.”

Read More: The EU Passed New Tech Rules. That Was the Easy Part

Interventions by authorities against the platforms “will be extremely fast,” he said. “Platforms will have to show us that they are in a position to apply the law.”

Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has hired an additional 1,000 people to moderate content, Breton said. The commissioner said in the interview that it would be “good policy” for Meta to check that the company’s new Threads app is in compliance with EU law before launching in the bloc.

(Updates with TikTok and Snap comments in the third paragraph.)