How France Invented the Censorship Industrial Complex

September 3, 2025

By Pascal Clérotte and Thomas Fazi

Executive Summary

The EU and France may soon compel U.S. social media platforms, including Elon Musk’s X, to censor American users. As of the date of the publication of this report, September 3, 2025, the EU’s demand for censorship is part of the ongoing trade talks with the Trump administration. Already, the EU’s top digital censor last year, French politician and former EU commissioner for the internal market, Thierry Breton, threatened action against Elon Musk when he hosted a conversation on X with Donald Trump. And many believe social media companies may, for political and economic reasons, be forced to accept European censorship.

Now, this report reveals an apparently coordinated effort by the Macron government and state-affiliated NGOs to force the world’s most influential social media platform to censor people for legal speech, turn over sensitive internal data, and change Twitter’s “content moderation” worldwide.

The investigation shows: 

— Macron tried to personally communicate with the then CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey

— France sought global censorship

— French state-affiliated NGOs demanded special access to Twitter’s internal data and content moderation process

— French authorities attempted to circumvent the law by urging pre-censorship of user-generated social media content

This report is illustrated by the Twitter Files - France, a series of three case studies stemming from Twitter’s internal communications. The Twitter Files - France reveals how the French government, through supposedly non-governmental actors, operates a censorship complex involving many moving parts. At the heart of it is the use of NGOs by governments to demand censorship, whether as supposedly independent and public interest advocacy organizations, or as fact-checkers. 

Today, the Trump administration is stripping the US Censorship Industrial Complex of government funding and authority, even as the Censorship Industrial Complex grows in power in Europe, particularly in France, which in many respects laid the legal groundwork for the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the bedrock of the bloc’s censorship framework.

President Emmanuel Macron, during his speech before France’s national day, on July 14, 2025, underlined the urgent need for “cognitive security.” This extension of the national security state to the minds of citizens is the apex of a long evolution of coordinated narrative control by the state. 

The French public broadcasting system is to this day the largest media group in the country. Private mainstream media are owned by billionaire oligarchs who owe a significant part of their wealth to the state — through government contracts, operating licenses, government funding, or the purchase of privatized government assets at heavily discounted prices in the 1980s and 1990s. The press is subsidized by the state up to one-third of its revenues.

Free speech in France is tightly managed — and so is French democracy. The elite, which overwhelmingly stems from the high-ranking civil service cadre, determines by law or regulation the spectrum of acceptable opinions in the national debate. Moreover, certain speech offenses are treated as criminal acts, meaning they can lead to fines or imprisonment. When criminal offenses are not listed in the criminal code but in other laws — when the state cannot prosecute, which is the case of free speech — indictments are requested by state-accredited NGOs in what is nothing short of privatized prosecution. 

For the past thirty years, technological advancements have almost annihilated all barriers to entry to publishing and broadcasting. Consequently, the state cannot manage speech as it used to, and has thus striven to exert the same control on digital media through increased regulation. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the allegations of Russian interference — a manipulation orchestrated by factions within the US intelligence community — sparked a legislative frenzy in Europe. The political establishment suddenly grasped that social media, which had previously fueled the downfall of authoritarian regimes during the Arab Spring, could just as easily threaten their own demise. At the same time, the failures of neoliberalism, globalism, multiculturalism, and the European Union have become so glaring that the establishment increasingly sees tighter control as the only way to preserve its power and privilege in the face of rising populist and sovereigntist movements.

Thus far, the French state has developed the most effective Censorship Industrial Complex in Europe, even while refraining from outright law enforcement raids and arrests like in the UK or Germany, because the law does not allow it for speech offenses. This is achieved through a subtle mix of social, administrative, and judicial pressure exerted on citizens and platforms. Since 2018, a series of liberticide laws to regulate online speech has been passed under the guise of protecting children, minorities, and society as a whole against “hatred” and illegal content. The French state and the European Union are seeking to build a panoptical system of online social control, including censorship delegated to NGOs and the end of anonymity and privacy, enforced through an increased administrative and judicial suppression of both citizens and digital platforms, bullied into automatic pre-bunking of content. The French state envisions going as far as to build its own algorithm as a benchmark to detect platform biases and mandate corrections of algorithms accordingly.

These actions are paralleled by broader initiatives at the EU-NATO level. Aside from the aforementioned DSA, the EU has introduced biometric ID cards linked to the possible introduction of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) digital euro, as well as a repository for health and other data. Its adoption among the population is currently very low beyond the function of an ID card. Plans exist to bolster it by making services only accessible through its use. France’s push to ban social media for under-15s is a means to compel all citizens to identify through this method for social media activity. 

Meanwhile, the EU-NATO partnership is built on a series of joint declarations. A key aspect is cybersecurity and combating disinformation. Examples include the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn and the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, working hand in hand. 

The management of the Covid pandemic sidestepped close to all individual liberties, but turned out to be a miserable failure in the long run. Continued efforts to stymie free speech online may ultimately meet the same fate, as technology evolves faster than regulation. In the meantime, freedom of expression is dwindling to a mere shadow of its former self and is increasingly turned into a privilege granted to those who do not deviate from official narratives.

To read the full report, download the PDF above.