Has Facebook France censored satirical articles from Nordpresse on the Benalla affair?



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Question by Flo 22/07/2018

Hello,

Case in the case or simple bug? The question has been bothering you since Sunday, July 22. While the revelations follow one another around Alexandre Benalla, close adviser in charge of the security of the President of the Republic involved in violence on May 1, netizens are surprised: it is impossible for them to share publications on Facebook on this subject.

More precisely, the social network seems to block the diffusion of articles of the Nordpresse parodic site. At first (and this is the purpose of many of your questions), many netizens think that this "censorship" only refers to articles about the Benalla affair. In fact, the whole Nordpresse site is concerned. Here is what has already written Libération about it in a paper published Sunday, at the time of the controversy:

Announced with force tweets and Facebook status (a paradox that does not seem to have shocked large world ), the "censorship" of Nordpresse was quickly propelled to the top of the topics most discussed in France on Twitter. A certain number of people immediately took the defense of the site, adhering to its hypothesis according to which it was to see there a voluntary action of the social network, which is "in direct link with the Elysée" according to Nordpresse. The latter has, moreover, argued, initially, that only his articles on the Benalla case were concerned. In reality, it was the whole site.

For convenience, we choose here to describe Nordpresse as "satirical", but the name is debatable. As our blogger Vincent Glad noted at the beginning of the year, the site is on the border with false information on the grounds (also discussed) of media education.

"Technical problem"

Contacted by CheckNews, the manager of Nordpresse Vincent Flibustier tells the day of Sunday: "The blockage [des partages] began around 4am or 5am. At 6am, netizens told me that the posts they had shared on their wall were removed. Sunday at 11am, all links Nordpresse.be were blocked. " The situation returns to normal at " 17h50 ", adds the man behind the satirical site.

Several hypotheses were issued on the reasons for this blockage. Online, netizens point out that Nordpresse sometimes hides behind other URLs like nicesoir.press, soirmatin.com or actubelge.be, for example. This allows us to believe that this is a "real" info site and "[les] to lead by boat" adds Vincent Flibustier. However, Facebook forbids "deceiving people as to the destination of external links to [ses] services (for example by providing a display URL that does not match the destination URL)."

But for the head of Nordpresse, this explanation "does not hold" . According to him, during the blocking of Facebook links Nordpresse.be, it was always possible to share other links (in nicesoir.press for example) redirecting to the satirical site. He continues:

In my opinion it is an individual action of someone from Facebook. Like the guy who had disabled Trump's account [Twitter]

On the Facebook side, as Liberation noted on the evening of Sunday, there is a "technical problem" Independent of the content of Nordpresse's articles

"Elucubrations"

Contacted Monday by CheckNews, the Silicon Valley company persists and signs. Accused of having notably censored NordPresse because its contents would be badimilated to fake news it tells us that the new policy of suppression of fake news (within the framework, in particular, of the partnership with various media outlets, including Liberation (1)) has nothing to do with the incident concerning Nordpresse. Indeed this policy would not yet be applied in France: for the moment the algorithm of Facebook is content to diminish the visibility of the contents judged to be misleading.

Facebook also lets us know that this explanation of «technical problem excludes in fact human error, and especially the intervention of French political power. Because as a result of the publication shared 45,000 times on the social network, where Flibustier argues "direct link" between the boss of Facebook France and the Elysée, many felt that the censorship of Nordpresse plunged its roots at the highest level of the state. For proof, the "Assessment of this funny day of" censorship Facebook " published by Nordpresse points to an article of the Parisian published Saturday night. An anonymous Matignon estimates that "the case [Benalla] will fall again " because on "Facebook where are all the French it does not take more than that." [19659002] At the Elysee it is badured "obviously did not ask anything Facebook" . At Matignon it is indignant that "the French press can lend credit a second to these rantings." And again, to the question of possible censorship, we answer "obviously" in the negative

"No worries on my side"

On Facebook, in reaction to Nordpresse's publications, internet users claim to have met the same problem of sharing with posts from the League of Human Rights . Nordpresse even drew a parallel with his own situation. The problem (which also concerned all contents, and not only those related to the Benalla affair) has since been corrected, and here is what the LDH tells CheckNews:

Several of our publications have been blocked by Facebook this weekend, and early July for a short time. They were considered undesirable. It seems that the content as such is not in question, but that it is the publications that contain short links made with the free and free service Frama.link to shorten the URL links, which are affected. [19659006AsacommentunderNordpressepublicationsanetizenalsobaduredthatthecartoonistNawakwashavingproblemsbroadcastingcontentabouttheBenallaaffairovertheweekendContactedtheartistbaduresthatitisnothing: "No worries on my side" . To our knowledge, there have been no other pages concerned with this type of problem.

(1) To fight against fake news, Facebook has set up a partnership with five French fact-checkers (including Release ). Articles widely shared on the social network and reported by users are verified by the French media.


Fabien Leboucq
    
  

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