The European Commission has invoked the EU’s online censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), to tell online platforms to curb what it considers to be the amplification of violence and incitement to violence during the ongoing unrest in France, and to share information with the police.
This happened at the Commission’s midday press briefing on Monday, October 19, when spokesperson Thomas Regnier was asked if the EU’s executive had found “potential information manipulation activities by foreign actors” and how it was “monitoring the potential online disinformation activity that could be fueling the unrest in France and elsewhere.”
Regnier did not confirm that any such foreign operation had been discovered, nor did he name any platform that could be in breach of the DSA or announce any formal investigation.
He then went into three points that these platforms must consider.
The first is “the amplification of violence online and incitement to violence”: “any attempts from wherever they come from have to be assessed and mitigated by online platforms. So they need to take this seriously and make sure that their algorithms and services are not being misused in this context.”
The second point is that platforms must enforce their own terms of service: “on all these platforms incitement to violence is prohibited according to the platform’s own terms and conditions. They have to diligently enforce their own rules.”
Thirdly, they must cooperate with the police: “cooperation with the law enforcement authorities at national level is crucial in this regard”; orders “from national law enforcement authorities to online platforms to share information have to be respected”; “this is a two-way street” – platforms that suspect a crime must “proactively” “inform national authorities and national law enforcement authorities.”
The Commission is “in close contact” with Arcom, the French media regulator that enforces the DSA in France, and had “another meeting” with French authorities scheduled for the same day.
The DSA’s Article 34 states that the largest platforms must assess “systemic risks” including “any actual or foreseeable negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes, and public security.”
Article 35 says they must mitigate these risks, which can mean “adapting content moderation processes” and “the expeditious removal of, or the disabling of access to, the content notified.”
Article 10 of the law says that platforms must comply with “an order to provide specific information about one or more specific individual recipients of the service” – i.e., their users.
Article 18 states that a platform that suspects “a criminal offence involving a threat to the life or safety of a person or persons has taken place, is taking place or is likely to take place” must “promptly inform the law enforcement or judicial authorities” and “provide all relevant information available.”
On September 25, the European Board for Digital Services adopted good practices for Article 18 reports; the offenses listed include “public incitement to violence or hatred.”
However, Article 14 of the DSA says that when enforcing their rules, platforms must have “due regard” to “the freedom of expression.”
It is not clear from the DSA who decides what constitutes incitement to violence, but French Renaissance party’s 2027 presidential candidate and former prime minister Gabriel Attal seems to have a broad interpretation. On the same day Regnier spoke, Attal told RTL that the problem is people watching videos of looting: “You have young people who are at home, who see their classmates, who are going to loot, who give the impression that it’s in impunity, they see it on social media. So they go there too.”
He called for “a temporary, targeted block on the territories where the riots take place.”
Attal’s logic is that footage of looting is itself an incitement to violence – which makes a video of a riot something that a platform must “mitigate” in the way it presents it to users, or delete.
This is not the first time the EU has invoked the DSA to put pressure on platforms during a crisis in France. In July 2023, during the Nahel riots, then Commissioner Thierry Breton said, “Platforms that foster content inciting hatred, revolts, and harm including property damage will be obligated to expunge such content instantly,” and warned that platforms could face “a potential ban from operating within our jurisdictions.”
At the time, nearly 70 rights groups wrote to Breton to express their concern over this stance.
On September 29, 2026, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the DSA to be used “much more, much faster, much more forcefully.”
In May 2026, it was revealed that the European Commission employs 127 people to police online speech and is hiring 60 more. A Commission official said at the time that 17 investigations had already proved that the DSA “delivers.”
The question asked at the press briefing was about foreign meddling – but the answer was a list of what platforms must do for the EU and the police, regarding their own users, during a protest, with no foreign operation found. The DSA is proving to be a handy tool for the authorities to use in many different situations.
In the context of a riot, risk mitigation means reducing the reach of whatever the platform guesses is “incitement to violence” – and the safest guess is, everything filmed on the street and posted online. The duty to report means that the police will be informed about the people who posted it.
