Was the parody site Nordpresse.be really censored by Facebook?

The satirical Nordpresse.be has denounced an agreement between Facebook and the Elysee Palace regarding possible censorship of the site following humorous comments on the Benalla affair. Facebook is talking about a "technical problem." So who to believe?

Since Sunday, by putting in parallel the attack against Charlie Hebdo, and the suspension of the sharing of their contents on Facebook, the Belgian site sports on its Facebook page a banner: "I am Nordpresse". Sunday, while the sharing of his publications was blocked on Facebook, the Belgian site considered to be victim of the "censure", and in particular of a collusion between the network and the highest spheres of the State: " the boss of Facebook France is in direct link with the Elysee " explains Nordpresse in a post published on Facebook.

A censorship political content?

This Sunday morning, while the site shouted at political censorship and alerted on " a democracy that is more than ever in pe ril ", his message was heard, in particular, by the policies Raquel Garrido and Katell Favennec. Responsible for digital communication at La France Insoumise (FI) and head of the YouTube channel LeBonSensYT Antoine Léaument tweets: "I have no more words" . Aude Lancelin, editor at Media also reacts: " What is the name of a regime that puts humor outlaw ?", Without any intervention by the Elysée has always been demonstrated

Interviewed by 20 Minutes Vincent Flibustier, the thinking head of the site, said: "This morning 10am I could still post links #Northpress. Around 11 am it was no longer the case, the urls were blacklisted ". The "#Norpress" wave and its supposed censorship soon found themselves at the forefront of Twitter trends. The site stated in its post : " we received hundreds of messages from people who saw their shares of Nordpresse articles removed from Facebook as considered undesirable.All these articles concerned the case Benalla or Macron ". Le Monde was able to observe that all the articles of Nordpresse could no longer be shared, not only those targeting the president or Alexandre Benalla. Moreover the accusation of censorship on Facebook was denounced via posts on Facebook, the account was thus not blocked.

Facebook finally apologized to the Belgian site Sunday at the end of the afternoon. "We have identified a technical problem preventing the display of articles from Nordpresse.be, which we are currently working on, and we apologize for the inconvenience caused, which are technical problems that are not related to " defended the network in a statement sent to HuffingtonPost

Nordpresse is he really a" Belgian Gorafi "?

It is nevertheless undeniable that the social network has the particularity to hold a regulation of the fuzziest concerning the regulation of contents. This only fueled the confusion around the incident. But it is the very nature of Nordpresse's content that has divided on social networks. While many denounced an attack on freedom of expression, others like journalist Isabelle Kersimon, estimated: "" #Nordpress is not the equivalent of the excellent Gorafi . Under the guise of black humor, this site spreads far-right ideas. "

Last March, the media boasted of having managed to trap the journalists of Parisien on the support of Manuel Valls to Emmanuel Macron. Parisien reacted then: "Our paper is the result of a survey from multiple sources, it is obviously a hoax of Nordpresse" .

The news broadcast on the site is a humor that is often confused with false news. As their article " Excluded: Alexander Benalla was the neighbor of the child saved by Mamoudou Gbadama (video) " or " Vice procedure: Salah Abdeslam is free.The first pictures of his exit . " And difficult to know what proportion of readers share these "news" without understanding that they are completely invented. A member of the Republicans was the victim of confusion Monday on Twitter, with the article "General de Villiers: Benalla had the nuclear codes" .

The Belgian site is also used to using addresses similar to those of real media in order to propagate his jokes: FranceInfoTele.com, LeCanardEnchaine.net … By doing so, he deliberately deceives the reader on the source of the information he reads. Nordpress explains in a Facebook post this confusion maintained: " we make public health by highlighting the lack of critical thinking of people.The culprits are their parents, the national education, the media. we . "

As Vincent Glad demonstrated in an investigation for Liberation the creator of Nordpresse Vincent Flibustier, do not hesitate to publish his articles on Facebook pages of right-wing activists. According to the founder of Nordpresse, the sharing of one of these jokes on the group of "patriotic friends of Marine Le Pen" would be a hidden pedagogy: "A fool learns more understanding that he was trapped only with "fact-checking" articles that he does not read, because "the big media lie" ".