This tweet claiming that French President Emmanuel Macron declared a total ban on social media reportage of protests in the country is FALSE.

There has not been such a ban, according to a statement by the French Ministry of Interior and Overseas.

“A press release from @PoliceNationale would announce temporary restrictions on internet access in certain districts. ❌ This document is a FALSE: no decision has been made in this regard,” the ministry wrote in a tweet on its verified Twitter account.

Instead, Macron said in a government emergency meeting that social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat have fueled the violence in France.

“Social media platforms play a significant role in the events of the past few days. On several platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, and several others, we have both the organisation of violence and the mimicking of violence, which among the youngest leads to a feeling of unreality. It sometimes feels like some of them are experiencing on the streets the video games that have intoxicated them,” Macron said during the televised meeting.

The French President urged parents to keep children off the streets, as a third of the rioters arrested were young. Macron noted that the government will collaborate with social media platforms so that they can withdraw “the most sensitive types of content”. The President further asked the social media platforms to disclose to the authorities the identities of “those who use these social networks to call for disorder and promote violence”.

There has been unrest in France since 27 June 2023, when 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was fatally shot by a police officer at a traffic stop in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. The shooting was caught on camera, and the accused police officer was detained and charged with manslaughter.

The shooting of the teenager sparked a debate on police violence and racism. Buildings and vehicles have been set ablaze and stores looted in the nationwide urban riots. More than 1,300 people have been arrested in connection with the violence.

On 30 June 2023, the Interior minister deployed 45,000 police officers to quell the riots.

PesaCheck has looked into a tweet claiming that French President Emmanuel Macron declared a total ban on social media reporting of protests in France and found it to be FALSE.

This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.

By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.

Have you spotted what you think is fake or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.

This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Naomi Wanjiku and edited by PesaCheck senior copy editor Cédrick Irakoze and acting chief copy editor Francis Mwaniki.

The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck managing editor Doreen Wainainah.

PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visitpesacheck.org.

PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.