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Comment by Keirmot | Hacker News Reader

Let me give my 2 cents as an EU citizen.

The way I see it is a mix of all of that, but number 3 is the biggest.

Twitter is not big here. There’s people who use it, sure, but there’s a reason you don’t see that many EU issue trending on Twitter. Here’s an example out of the top of my head: France is rioting and it barely registered on Twitter.

The biggest European market for Twitter is the UK and it has 19M users, the second biggest is France with 9.5M [1]

The only time I see EU events surging on Twitter is during continental sporting events like Champions League, or Eurovision.

Twitter is just that that big around here.

Instagram on the other hand, I don’t know anyone without an IG account - so that might muddy the waters on this dynamic.

This however is just my personal experience.

[1] https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/number-of-twitter-users-by...

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> France is rioting

Your point is well taken, and if anything that's a significant understatement. This is one of the most significant protests (or nearly civil war) to occur in France since the Revolution.

> and it barely registered on Twitter.

Indeed. I saw videos of what was happening in Wuhan in late 2019, but tbh it was mostly linked by comments on (where else) HN, so I may not have discovered it via Twitter's own tools.

> Your point is well taken, and if anything that's a significant understatement. This is one of the most significant protests (or nearly civil war) to occur in France since the Revolution.

As someone from Europe who isn't French. It's just another France rioting story. It might be big in France but for the rest of us, it's just looks like another France rioting story which they were doing for the past few months.

It's not just that it's barely registering on Twitter, it's barely registering anywhere because lots of us are just so used to France rioting that it's not really news. It's like mass shootings in the US. I think there was a new one over 4th July holiday period but I am not 100% sure because we're so numb to mass shootings out of the US. They need to do something super wtf like have the police stand outside a classroom while a school shooter is shooting children for us to register.

Yeah, but that may not be accurate. These aren't quite "just more French riots" - they have been unusually serious, violent and destructive. At least, the French seem to think so. (Though this might partly be because it's non-white kids from the banlieu rather than white gilets jaunes from the countryside, I don't know.)

It's very much racism

Essentially it's like how the average protest with minorities is treated vs Jan 6....

The former the cops toss tear gas, kettle them and beat them with baton and "rubber" bullets while the latter theres cops literally moving the barricades aside and escorting the rioters around....

Pretty much all videos I've seen of the current riots (mostly filmed via phones from bystanders) in France show a very different picture then racism.

Even that unfortunate incident when they killed the teen was very much reactionary, as people have been throwing Molotov cocktails etc at them for weeks now.

Honestly, i do understand the perspective of the rioters. Not having a chance to improve your life would make me violent too, i think... But framing the police as racists acting out is misguided considering that most of the issues are social in nature and not caused by the police.

And this might be too nitpicky for such an emotional topic, but the term racism gets thrown around way too much. I think it's more akin to classism, as it seems like you're still gonna get discriminated against if you originate from the poor areas, no matter what the color of your skin is.

As a person who has been to many protests I must point out that it's not that the police act exclusively because of racism but rather that thier decisions and choice of tactics are heavily influenced thereby.

Because of thier racism and prejudices they are too quick to use force, tear gas and other "compliance methods" against those they deem undesirable, while they consistently avoid use of such methods at all when they self identify with the protesting group.

That's what's being referred to

It's not overt kkk or Nazi shit, it's the subtle underlying racism that makes them shoot tear gas on the first day into a group of entirely peaceful people, which then result in the escalation to this extreme violence we now see.

It's a well established fact that the police are the source of escalation in many cases, choosing to attack the whole instead of seeking to address the problematic few.

The cops even send in fake protesters to engage in violence so they can then attack the protest. It was caught in Quebec on video, so I highly doubt it doesn't also happen in France where tensions and racism are far more significant. (See agent provocateur)

You aren't wrong, but Twitter's importance comes from who is using it, not the raw numbers.

By contrast, when I was on Twitter (up until rumours of the Musk purchase), 75% of what I saw was European-centric.

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