French President Emmanuel Macron has called out the free speech arguments touted by social media giants to justify controversial content on their sites in bruising remarks that put the European leader on a collision course with the Trump administration.
Speaking in New Delhi on Wednesday, Macron described the free speech defense as “pure bullshit” as he criticized digital companies for using algorithms as an excuse for publishing hate speech and misinformation.
His comments come as European countries consider legislation to block some content, often to protect children, amid fierce criticism of their approaches from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and former Trump aide Elon Musk.
The U.K. government has threatened action against Musk’s X platform over its AI assistant Grok creating nonconsensual sexual deepfakes, and Spain has asked prosecutors to investigate X, Meta and TikTok over their role in producing and spreading AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
In his remarks on Wednesday, reported by Bloomberg News, Macron criticized social media companies for “having no clue about how their algorithm is made, how it’s tested, trained and where it will guide you.
“The democratic consequences of this bias could be huge,” the president continued.
Macron added: “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it is guided from one hate speech to another.”
Rubio recently hit out at a “global censorship-industrial complex” he said was trying to pressure U.S. tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.
“The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship,” he posted on X.
In a notably hostile speech in Munich last year, Vance scolded many of America’s allies in Europe for suppressing free speech.
He called the European Union “commissars” and claimed they would “shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, ‘hateful content.’”
Musk, the world’s richest man who touts himself as a “free speech absolutist,” this month attacked Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, amid his threat to ban teenagers from social media.
“Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain,” Musk wrote on X.
