French President Emmanuel Macron has called the defense of free speech on social media pure nonsense and opposed one of President Donald Trump's key foreign policy goals.
French President Emmanuel Macron has called the defense of free speech on social media pure nonsense and opposed one of President Donald Trump's key foreign policy goals.
Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence Summit in New Delhi, French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized that true freedom is impossible without understanding how the digital mechanisms that shape the information space work.
“Having no idea how the algorithm was created, how it was tested, trained, and where it will take you — the democratic consequences of this bias could be enormous,” the French leader said.
"Some of them claim to support freedom of speech - well, we support free algorithms - completely transparent. Freedom of speech is a complete delusion if no one knows how you are guided to this so-called freedom of speech, especially when you are guided from one hate speech to another," Macron added.
Macron's statement comes amid a worsening of relations between Brussels and Washington over digital regulation. European countries, including France , Spain and Germany , are considering banning social media for minors, deeming them harmful and addictive. This threatens advertising revenues for giants such as Meta, Google, TikTok and X (Twitter).
The Trump administration sees such moves as censorship. The new US national security strategy states that Washington will counter attempts by foreign states to "censor discourse."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified visa sanctions against European officials by fighting the “global censorship-industrial complex.” And Vice President J.D. Vance previously called the EU’s attempts to moderate social media a bigger threat to democracy than Russia or China.
It was previously reported that the American platform Reddit has appealed to the High Court of Australia to overturn a national ban on children's access to social networks, stating that it threatens freedom of political expression.
