Thunderclap in the small world of Reddit. Monday January 13, this community discussion and news website announced that it would ban from its columns all sources of information directly or indirectly linked to the Bolloré group. “Following an internal discussion, moderation decided to ban all sources of information held by Vincent Bolloré”was notified to users, without further explanation. Clearly, users of the French branch of the American site will no longer be allowed to quote or repeat information from CNews, Europe 1, Capitalor even Canal+. These media thus join Current Values et France Evening which had already been flagged as prohibited sources.
The announcement quickly caused users of the platform to react, with strong winds against the new rule published without any consultation: “It’s absolutely crazy that you arrogate to yourself the right to censor sources in the name of 2.2M people” ; “I find it problematic that you did not find it necessary to justify your decision to the large community that follows the forum” ; “They want to censor and call it “moderation”…” ; “It’s to fight against disinformation but they leave BFMTV. Let me laugh » ; “In the list of banned media, I only see far-right media. There must be left-wing or far-left media that are bullshit or highly biased, right? »etc.
Faced with the avalanche of angry comments, the moderators preferred to lock the forum.
The primacy of ideology
For those unfamiliar with Reddit, it is a content aggregator created in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. Halfway between a sprawling forum and a social network, the site hosts hundreds of thousands of communities linked by theme. Each country has its own subreddit.
Having gone public in March 2024, Reddit is the fifth most popular site in the United States. It remains little known in France, but nevertheless has more than 2 million members. One of the keys to its success would be its very strict content moderation policy, which would make it possible to avoid the pitfalls of calls for “hate” and the sharing of “fake news”. “We remain very vigilant about the rules”proudly explained François, a moderator, to the media DNA in 2019.
But now, how is “hateful” content defined? Who declares information to be “fake”? No one knows. Likewise, no argument has been put forward for banning the Bolloré media. No doubt the thinking heads of the social network know that they would be hard-pressed to prove that CNews or the JDD spread more fake news than public broadcasting. This censorship therefore seems perfectly ideological, in the purest tradition of the sectarian left.
A new anti-Bolloré charge
This ban is part of a broad movement of resistance to pluralism of opinions. While Matthieu Pigasse, owner of Monde and producer of public service programs (via Mediawan), openly assumes his activism and claims with complete impunity his « combat » against the far right, the few conservative media are ostracized.
This media war is led in particular by Arcom. After having unilaterally decided to close C8, the regulatory authority continues its crusade against CNews. From June 6, France's leading news channel will change its TNT channel. It will switch to number 14, leaving its channel 16 to FranceInfo, the big winner of this little game of digital chairs. As if by chance. Another channel from the Bolloré group, Canal+ will disappear to make way for France 4, whose audiences risk mechanically skyrocketing…
As it loses the battle of ideas, the left becomes more and more fractious. And less and less subtle.
Print, save this article as PDF
