French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that the notion of free speech on social media platforms – is “pure bullshit,” because algorithmically served content can lead to hate speech (such as the right to say his elderly wife has a penis and gives him black eyes).
The comments come after the US recently imposed bans on a former European official and pro-censorship activists for trying to police online speech, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio justifies the moves as pushback against the “global censorship-industrial complex.”
Europe, including Germany and the UK, have been weighing social media bans for minors, a move that could impact critical advertising revenue for companies and platforms such as Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Snap, X, and others.
“Having no clue about how their algorithm is made, how it’s tested, trained and where it will guide you — the democratic consequences of this bias could be huge,” Macron said in New Delhi on Wednesday, Bloomberg reports.
“Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech — OK, we are in favor of free algorithms — totally transparent,” he continued. “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it is guided from one hate speech to another.”
French President Macron:
Free speech is a pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided through this so-called free speech—especially when it is to be guided from one hated speech to another hated speech.
I just want to have a transparent road through these different… pic.twitter.com/pFAQ62SsxU
— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 18, 2026
Earlier this month, Macron said he expects a battle with the Trump administration over the bloc’s regulation of digital services, and that countries such as France and Spain could be punished if they move forward with proposed social media bans for children.
The Trump administration has vowed to oppose efforts by foreign nations to “censor our discourse” or otherwise limit free speech that has been used to disadvantage anti-immigration political parties, and that the US would foster “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations.”
Vice President JD Vance, speaking last year at the Munich Security Conference, accused the EU of suppressing free speech and said Europe’s retreat from its fundamental values was a bigger threat to the continent than Russia or China. Calling Trump Washington’s “new sheriff,” Vance slammed attempts to moderate speech on social media.
Some EU officials were concerned that the US was using free speech as a pressure point to cow the bloc into softening its regulation of technology platforms, Bloomberg reported earlier. -Bloomberg
JUST IN: Vice President JD Vance rips European leaders to their faces at the Munich security conference, calls them out for criminalizing free speech.
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Vance specifically called out the United Kingdom for being the worst of them all.
“I wish I could say that this was a… pic.twitter.com/1bj9TKxP4q
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2025
In response, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that freedom of speech ends with hate speech.
German Chancellor Merz slams JD Vance:
The battle of cultures of MAGA in the U.S. is not ours.
Freedom of speech here ends where the words spoken are directed against human dignity and our Basic Law.
We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade. pic.twitter.com/fEn95nRRwk
— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 13, 2026
Hilariously, Bloomberg highlighted Elon Musk slamming Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, when he wrote “Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain.”
As the FT’s Stephen Bush opines regarding the UK’s push:
Children are a lot like terrorists, and I don’t mean that as a commentary on their behaviour. I mean that being defined as one in a liberal democracy means that you lose at least some of the rights and freedoms that other citizens take for granted. Your freedom to marry who you want, to work or not work, to vote, to seek or not consent to medical procedures; these and many other rights granted to adults are curtailed for anyone the state defines as a child.
Another way in which they are like terrorists is that invoking children is a good way to get people to stop asking difficult questions and arguing against policy proposals. One big reason why banning under-16s from social media is taking off as a policy idea is that it is more palatable than banning all of us. But it is far from clear that any of us are well served by algorithms that dish up addictive material, violent pornography or endless footage of atrocities. Nor is it clear that “protecting” the under-16s will not make 16, 17 and 18-year-olds more vulnerable. The large number of first-time internet users who are taken in by fraud or are susceptible to harmful behaviour online, suggests that all it may do is move the problem along.
Meanwhile…
This is what authorities in France should be focused on https://t.co/h8os2PYZXb
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2026
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