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Comment by martius | Hacker News Reader

I have zero sympathy for Macron, but the article seems to miss an important aspect: it was mentioned in front of ~200 mayors of cities where the riots are happening.

I believe he said this to satisfy his audience, and maybe to try to put pressure on social media so that they cooperate with authorities (to identify leaders and/or limit coordination between rioters).

It's bad because he's still pushing the overton window to the right, pretending this is OK for a the leader of a democracy to consider this. But I don't think they are seriously thinking about cutting social media.

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they had already blocked Telegram for a day "by mistake", just last month

and the code of the page that said it was blocked showed they were gathering details about users. They are not allowed to gather these details even for lawfully blocked websites (terrorism and child abuse). But they did it for Telegram.

> I believe he said this to satisfy his audience

So Macron being Macron.

So a politician being a politician.

Those riots were indefensible and the state actually went very softly on them partly not to throw oil on the fire.

There is nothing authoritarian or 'right wing' in suggesting that limiting communication means of rioters, looters, and, frankly violent thugs, should maybe be considered. Rioting is not a human right, neither is communicating to organise violence and looting.

In fact, I believe that there are plans to cut mobile networks in some situations like terrorist attacks. Frankly what has just happened is getting close to that territory.

IMHO the events and the reactions are worrying and show that French society is now as dangerously divided as what we've seen in the US for instance in relation to the 6th January events.

For context, France has seen a constant wave of strikes and demonstrations for months and months now, with people getting beat to death, going blind, dying of gases etc. and the government not moving an inch. and doing almost nothing regarding police violence.

So sure, rioters are going overboard, but expecting pacific demonstrations at this point is kind of a lost cause.

People get hurt when they become violent and police responds. Let's not turn the table.

In a democratic society people are free to peacefully demonstrate but that does not entitle them to policy change, that's what elections are for.

There's also a problem with the way people react in France, specifically. With the recent pension reform retirement age in France is still lower than the EU average and yet some people react like this is the end of the world and deserves a bona fide revolution. Why is that? IMHO there is a deeper resentment at play.

> Let's not turn the table.

These tables have turned for a long time now. Whatever police's motivations are, we now have so many recorded evidence of them starting the violence that it's hard to argue they still work under the base assumption of protecting the order.

You might still have faith in the police in general and believe those were just "bad apples" and these number of incidents we somewhat isolated, but the fact they happened still remains and won't be forgotten.

> democratic society[...] that's what elections are for

The gov explicitely chose to pass laws bypassing the parliament's vote, the parliament being composed by directly elected deputees.

Again, there can be many arguments but it's a far more complicated situation than "manifestants bad"

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