French Green Leader Demands X Ban During Elections
France's Green party leader Marine Tondelier has called for the power to ban social media platform X during elections, claiming it spreads disinformation and threatens democracy.
Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Les Ecologistes and a candidate for France’s 2027 presidential race, told the French newspaper Libération that X should be classified as a content editor rather than a neutral platform, according to Brussels Signal.
Tondelier branded X a “source of fake news” with a “rigged algorithm” and said the platform’s influence on public discourse outweighs even foreign interference operations in terms of structural impact on disinformation.
She urged strict enforcement of the European Union’s Digital Services Act against X, including the option of temporary bans if the platform fails to comply with content moderation requirements.
“If X stopped for a month, it would do a lot of good to the French public debate,” Tondelier said, as reported by Brussels Signal. She accused Musk of promoting a “supremacist ideology” and openly backing nationalist leader Marine Le Pen.
The Green politician justified her call by citing concerns over Russian and foreign interference ahead of France’s 2027 presidential election, pointing to digital attacks on French politicians during recent municipal campaigns.
However, official investigations concluded that such interference had minimal effect on the municipal elections, and authorities determined the attempts failed to influence voting outcomes.
Undeterred by these findings, Tondelier insisted that X’s algorithm is a much stronger interference in French democracy due to its constant, structural impact on the spread of disinformation.
“Threatening platforms like X with a ban during the elections seems necessary to me and this sanction must be applied in the event of interference observed beforehand,” she stated.
Broader Media Control Agenda
Tondelier also called for action against media concentration, singling out conservative media owner Vincent Bolloré, and demanded increased support for state-controlled public broadcasting.
Her remarks align with recent statements by former European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who has advocated for the EU to secure its “digital borders” following the Ceuta migration crisis, which he described as a “hybrid algorithmic attack.”
Breton has pushed for expanding Digital Services Act-style regulations—including risk assessment, content moderation, and data access obligations—to countries outside the European Union.
The proposals come amid growing tensions between European political establishments and Musk’s X platform, which has resisted pressure to censor content and restrict speech in line with EU regulatory demands.
With information from Brussels Signal
