The French Senate has just published a report on information gray areas, with the stated goal of combating interference and disinformation.
The trend is not new in France or elsewhere in Europe. For just over a year, Minister Aurore Bergé, who is responsible for combating discrimination, has been working on various measures to control public opinion through an increasingly structured strategy aimed at strengthening oversight of content deemed problematic on the internet.
Presented as a fight against online hate, racism or antisemitism, this policy has gradually led to the implementation of tools that bring together government agencies, regulatory authorities and activist organizations to speed up the reporting and removal of certain content.
A first step was taken in the summer of 2025 with the creation of a coalition of associations directly linked to Arcom, the independent French media regulatory authority. Twelve organizations, most of which are known for their left-wing or far-left leanings, were tasked with identifying content deemed hateful, which ensured that their reports received priority treatment. At the same time, the government announced an increase in public funding for these organizations so they could recruit teams specifically dedicated to this mission, sparking criticism over the risk of delegating a quasi-police role over online speech to ideologically committed actors.
The approach was subsequently extended in 2026 through a bill sponsored by Aurore Bergé, aimed at strengthening penalties for certain speech-related offenses. The bill notably provides for disqualification from holding public office for several offenses related to racism, antisemitism or Holocaust denial. It also facilitates legal action by certain organizations and encourages the rapid removal or blocking of controversial content.
The government presents the reform as a necessary response to the rise of hate speech, but it should above all be seen as a further broadening of the scope of crimes of opinion and a challenge to traditional guarantees of freedom of expression in the run-up to the presidential election.
Taken together, the two measures signal a more profound shift in government action: beyond traditional judicial enforcement, the state now seeks to establish a permanent system for monitoring, flagging and removing content, based on close cooperation between the administration, the audiovisual regulator and a network of subsidized organizations.
Social Media: Gray Areas of Information
The Senate report, drafted by a coalition of the three main parties on the left, right and center (Les Républicains, the Macronist party and the Socialist Party) and published on 9 July, points in the same direction.
Digital spaces where the boundaries between journalism, opinion, communication, advertising and content produced by influencers or artificial intelligence become blurred are described as “gray areas of information”. Faced with the rise of platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and X, senators believe that current measures are insufficient to protect democratic debate, particularly as the 2027 presidential election approaches. They are therefore proposing 56 recommendations, including the creation of an independent disinformation observatory tasked with identifying domestic information manipulation, modeled after Viginum, a tool currently limited to foreign interference.
The report also recommends strengthening the powers of Arcom so that it can take action against content creators or influencers who massively disseminate false information when they reach an audience comparable to that of traditional broadcast media.
A bill is expected to be introduced in the fall to incorporate some of these recommendations into French law before the 2027 elections.
In practical terms, this means that associations, researchers and fact-checkers will be given the power to identify narratives deemed problematic. It will then be possible to ask platforms to reduce their visibility, modify their algorithms or hide certain users.
Judges and Juries
Bergé’s proposed mechanism would entrust the role of arbiter to various organizations known for their left-wing or far-left leanings, while granting them an artificial aura of neutrality and objectivity. The Senate report does exactly the same: the supposedly independent arbiters on which it relies are anything but neutral.
At the heart of the senators’ analysis is Science Feedback, which has been funded by Meta, TikTok, Google, the European Commission and organizations central to the international fact-checking ecosystem, such as the EMIF (European Media and Information Fund, funded by Google), the IFCN (International Fact-Checking Network) and the EFCSN (European Fact-Checking Standards Network). These organizations are both judge and jury: the platforms and institutions calling for more regulation are funding the very organizations that produce the studies justifying that same regulation.
Without the slightest critical scrutiny, the Senate is placing itself in the hands of these organizations, which have, from the outset, defined their own terms for disinformation, tracked it down and ultimately sought funding to combat it in accordance with their own interests.
The term fact-checking is inherently misleading. One might imagine it involves tracking down objectively false facts, but that is not all: the scope of analysis has long since expanded to include the framing of information and the interpretation of facts, amounting to the control of public opinion.
Domestic Interference: A Denial of Democracy
The most dangerous element of the report lies in the new concept of domestic interference. Suspicions of Russian or American interference are nothing new and have been conveniently invoked by parts of the press to discredit unwelcome information simply because it echoed the views of supporters of Trump or Putin. Domestic interference goes further still: it suggests that a French citizen, media outlet or movement could be treated as a threat merely for exerting too much influence over public opinion.
It is not hard to guess who the public enemies thus designated are: the conservative network CNews, which has broken numerous viewership records in recent months, the alternative news site Fdesouche, which racks up several million page views per month and has helped the French public become aware of numerous security scandals ignored by the mainstream press, or, quite simply, the Rassemblement National, the leading opposition party.
As Pierre Sautarel, founder of Fdesouche, points out: “In a democracy, influencing public opinion is not called interference. It’s called politics.” CNews’s leading commentator, Mathieu Bock-Côté from Quebec, is alarmed that “political disagreement” is now being treated “as if it were a factional insurrection”.
In this regard, the Senate rapporteurs’ attack on social media is particularly revealing. Recognizing that social media allows citizens to bypass the mainstream media and its official line in order to disseminate alternative views, they are seeking to establish a mechanism designed to silence them.
“What would happen, in fact, if a public figure, a school of thought or a political party with substantial financial resources decided to put those resources to work for a political agenda by using social media as a weapon?” they asked with concern during their press conference. What they are describing is simply the normal battle of ideas in a democracy – something that, in their view, has become an anomaly or, worse, a danger.
The Senate's work is quite troubling in light of the upcoming presidential campaign in France. Far from protecting democratic debate, it is establishing tools that will effectively determine which opinions still deserve to be seen. Responsibility for this process is being entrusted to a small, authorized circle of actors who control the entire information dissemination chain.
The publication of the report is sparking much debate among French politicians, particularly on the right. Some right-wing commentators on X are concerned about the stance the Rassemblement National might take.
In its obsession with normalization, the party could end up supporting these initiatives, even though they risk backfiring on it once it becomes an easy target for accusations of racism or disinformation. The party would have far more to gain by positioning itself as the defender of civil liberties, particularly given that its recent political success owes much to the opportunities created by social and alternative media.