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Comment by aikah | Hacker News Reader

> This is actually normal, and is done in a lot of countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_silence. According to this, France acts "on the Saturday before the Sunday election; polling silence included"

The yellow vest aren't a political party, they may have individuals running but that page wasn't one of a political party, they aren't even an organisation. This is purely Facebook enforcing political censorship to please the French government, there is nothing normal about it.

People are not forced to stop talking about politics on a public forum the day of the elections, that's complete bullshit.

It would be like saying, that people gathering into a bar on election day are barred from talking about politics. There is absolutely no such law that mandates that in France.

So please explain us what is normal about it again?

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> People are not forced to stop talking about politics on a public forum the day of the elections, that's complete bullshit.

They actually are in some European countries. France included.

EDIT: Link to the law in question in the official site for FRance with English translation:

"From the day before the election at midnight, it is forbidden to distribute or have distributed newsletters, circulars and other documents.

From the eve of the poll at midnight, it is also forbidden to broadcast or cause any message that has the character of electoral propaganda to be disseminated by any means of communication to the public by electronic means."

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticl...

> They actually are in some European countries. France included.

No there is none in France. Discussing politics isn't the same as campaigning.

And again, your "edit" changes nothing to what I'm saying, the law you quoted does not bar people from discussing politics, it bars candidates and their supporters from promoting their candidates or their parties, the yellow vests are not a political party.

A Facebook group exists in a meaningful grey area between "discussion" and "publication". To argue otherwise is wilfully obtuse.

It's not restricted to political parties, it's more generally defined to counteract any form of propaganda during the hours leading to the election. I agree it's still ethically dubious to apply it to discussions. They should have set the group to private.

I disagree.

French law states:

"A partir de la veille du scrutin à zéro heure, il est également interdit de diffuser ou de faire diffuser par tout moyen de communication au public par voie électronique tout message ayant le caractère de propagande électorale." [Article L49 of the Code Electoral]

I.e. it is illegal to disseminate or to have disseminated any "electoral propaganda" message through any electronic communication mean from the Saturday before polling day (which always takes place on a Sunday).

Any Facebook post, tweet, email, SMS text, etc which content is aimed at influencing the poll is thus illegal and it is not hard to understand why they blocked that group during the weekend.

"Tout message ayant le caractère de propagande électorale".

Tu vas devoir prouver que la page Facebook des gillets jaunes diffusait des messages ayant "le caractère de propagande électorale", en premier lieu, d'une. Il n'est pas interdit de discuter politique sur un forum le jour même de l’élection.

Il n'y a aucune loi en France interdisant les gens de discuter politique le jour du scrutin. Il est interdit aux candidats de faire campagne.

propagande électorale =/= propagande politique.

La différence est évidence.

What are people going to discuss on a Yellow vest Facebook group on an election weekend?

How is "political propaganda" different from "electoral propaganda" on an election weekend?

You're obviously in bad faith here.

My argument is intellectual honesty and the law in all its glaring clarity.

> You're obviously in bad faith here.

Look at you resorting to personal attacks since you have no other argument, mixing up two very different things: political discussion and campaigning. The former isn't outlawed the day of the election.

Well some candidates where affiliated with the yellow vest.

Different countries have different norms around political speech. Report at 11.

That's what Google execs said to justify building a censored Chinese search engine.

You can fit a few semi trucks in the gap between France’s political norms and China’s. Comparing the two is just silly.

Furthermore, if you’re positing that France is wrong in some absolute sense to do this, all you’re doing is just imposing your own conceptions of political norms into some other culture, which has historically worked out very poorly.

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