The French are trying to block social media because they are embarrassed their country has fallen to illegal migrants.
— Katie Miller (@KatieMiller) October 25, 2026
Full text in English and translated letter attached
Madam, Sir,
The urban riots that occurred in several French cities during the day of mobilization on October 17, 2026, and that continued on Sunday, October 18, revealed the convergence of several protest and grievance movements, stoked by violent and particularly determined elements. Other individuals took advantage of the resulting disorder to smash, vandalize, set fires, ransack, and loot.
It is evident that several social networks played a decisive role not only in the crystallization and viral spread of unlawful slogans (“mots d’ordre illicites”) but also as levers for the operational coordination of violence during the demonstrations (organization of looting, exchanges about targets, movement of groups, or positions of the security forces).
In the event that such events were to recur, I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence. This would mean temporarily blocking access to the applications Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram by filtering their domain names (DNS), while preserving, as far as possible, fixed-line Internet access to these applications and, in any case, access to other Internet sites and services on both fixed and mobile networks.
In order to prepare such a measure, which could be decided on the weekend of October 24 and 25 depending on the operational context, I ask you to anticipate as of today the technical operations necessary to implement it. The point is to put you in a position, if I give the instruction, to proceed without delay with the temporary suspension of the services concerned, for a duration of a few hours.
I would like you to inform me of the technical conditions under which you could implement such a suspension. It is indeed necessary to carry out a suspension that is as targeted as possible, without introducing distortion between operators.
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