This Tuesday, September 6, Facebook banned FranceSoir from publishing for a period of 24 hours following the posting on our site of an analytical article produced by Patrice Taravel, scientist and former engineer at the CNRS, and Xavier Azalbert, publication director of FranceSoir. This text was intended to facilitate understanding of the mortality data published by the EuroMomo site, (contraction of European mortality monitoring which translates into French as European Mortality Surveillance), a statistical network that compiles mortality statistics in 24 countries or federal regions of Europe, including France. A disturbing action by the American giant against freedom of the press in France.
Posted at 6:45 p.m., within hours the article was censored by Facebook. The social network indicated that our media could not publish for a period of 24 hours on the grounds that this content ” goes against our (Facebook) Community Standards “and would have been reviewed by a” review team to remove anything that goes against our standards as quickly as possible “. However, the digital giant does not bother to specify the incorrect information in the article, thus granting itself the right to censor a newspaper without any explanation justifying its decision.
“We do not allow vaccine information that authoritative health organizations deem false”
The aim of the article was to propose a method and a representation, perhaps, more easily understandable » using the data transmitted by EuroMOMO. We thus find in the article various information related to the increase in mortality, particularly among young people compared to previous years: “TheThe 0-14 and 15-44 age groups show a greater increase in mortality than the other age groups for the year 2022 “. In their analysis, the authors ask questions about the link between vaccination against Covid-19 and this observed increase in mortality within the different age groups.
As a reminder, in March 2022, we are relating the links of interest between the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the social network. Indeed, the pharmaceutical giant finances part of the journalism training programs used by Facebook to train its partners in “ fact-checking “charged with” fight misinformation and to censor publications critical of Covid-19 vaccines.
In the past, our newspaper had already been subject to numerous censorships by digital giants. Thus, Facebook had previously deleted some of our articles, without however prohibiting all publication for an entire day. Twitter and Instagram also practice the shadow banning against us, in order to use their algorithms to hinder the circulation of the information that we publish. The YouTube platform has also censored our videos on many occasions, even though they gave the floor to renowned scholars, recognized experts in their field, whose discourse based on scientific data, is at odds with that health authorities.