Blast learned about the plan of the French Prime Minister to block social networks due to protests

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu asked a number of French telecommunications companies to temporarily block Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram (owned by Meta; Meta is recognized as extremist in Russia and banned) by filtering their domain names. The request relates to unrest in the country. This is stated in a letter to Lecorn to companies, reports Blast.

The letter said the riots in several French cities showed "a combination of several protest and opposition movements fueled by aggressive and particularly determined participants.".

Lecornu said several social media sites "played a crucial role" not only in spreading "illegal appeals" but also as tools for "operational coordination of violence during demonstrations: organising looting, exchanging information about targets, relocating groups and locating law enforcement forces.".

“In the event of a recurrence of such events, I would like to be able to temporarily suspend access to these services when urban unrest resumes.” It would be about temporarily blocking access to Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram apps by filtering their domain names (DNS).

The letter is dated October 22. The Prime Minister calls on Orange, Bouygues Telecom, Iliad and Altice France to prepare an appropriate measure, which could be adopted over the weekend of 24-25 October. “It is necessary to ensure readiness to temporarily suspend the work of the relevant services for several hours in case of my order without delay,” the letter says.

Each operator should also be able to immediately terminate the measure if it poses a threat to the functioning of its network.

“I would appreciate it if you provide the necessary confidentiality in the preparation of this measure, which at this stage is only preliminary, research in nature,” concluded Lecornu.

Demonstrations on Saturday, October 24, across France were attended by 410,000 people, including 110,000 in Paris, the interior ministry said.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the processions went smoothly despite "some cases of property damage or looting" in a number of cities. According to him, about 1,000 people were detained.

On the day of nationwide protests on October 17, about 800,000 people took to the streets in France. On October 20, the authorities announced the strengthening of police in the upcoming protests. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu admitted that during previous actions, the actions of law enforcement officers were “too static and not mobile enough”.

The action was a continuation of the protests of high school students, which began on September 21 with the blocking of the Lyceum of Saint-Exupery in the suburbs of Paris. Students spoke out against a shortage of teachers and a lack of social workers and school psychologists. Police's actions have come under fire after a series of injuries among demonstrators.