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Wow, this is absurd! The French official said “This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pa

Wow, this is absurd! The French official said “This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box —other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’” Nobody is saying those other networks can't be mentioned. Maybe if they would improve, they /would/ be used and get mentioned. Does my service have a right to be promoted? No? Clearly the solution is to "level the playing field" and prohibit ALL promotions!

edouard 15y ago
I'm french, and I grew up with this law. So it doesn't sound absurd to me, but my opinion is biased. This has always existed (well apparently since 1992), and for every brand. But you are making a point that we cannot cite other brand, in fact, the law state that, if you cite one brand of the domain (here social network), you should also cite the others. And finally, I was watching french shows this week, and they frequently bypass the law by citing facebook and twitter.
jhchabran 15y ago
You're taking the problem from the wrong side. It had always been forbidden to advertise anything owned by a private company except in some news directly related to it. "Iran is revolting on Twitter" is relevant. "DSK did epic shit in a hotel, follow the news on twitter" is irrelevant. It sounds like a national channel advising to buy newspaper X every time to get more informations about the story. While I personally understand both case, Twitter is a great communication channel, it's still owned by a private company, being quoted by a public channel. The CSA is fighting against my second example, which would consider Facebook and Twitter no more as companies but as public tools, creating a bloody mess : when should we consider a private tool as a public one ? That's what they meant by opening the pandora box. But of course, I strongly agree, crafting some absurd law is clearly a wrong measure but it's not absurd given the strict context we have here in France about national medias.
- jevinskie 15y ago
  By public channels do you mean Free-To-Air or do you mean that they recieve public funding? If the latter, I believe the restrictions are more reasonable.

edouard 15y ago

I'm french, and I grew up with this law. So it doesn't sound absurd to me, but my opinion is biased. This has always existed (well apparently since 1992), and for every brand. But you are making a point that we cannot cite other brand, in fact, the law state that, if you cite one brand of the domain (here social network), you should also cite the others. And finally, I was watching french shows this week, and they frequently bypass the law by citing facebook and twitter.

jhchabran 15y ago

You're taking the problem from the wrong side. It had always been forbidden to advertise anything owned by a private company except in some news directly related to it. "Iran is revolting on Twitter" is relevant. "DSK did epic shit in a hotel, follow the news on twitter" is irrelevant. It sounds like a national channel advising to buy newspaper X every time to get more informations about the story. While I personally understand both case, Twitter is a great communication channel, it's still owned by a private company, being quoted by a public channel. The CSA is fighting against my second example, which would consider Facebook and Twitter no more as companies but as public tools, creating a bloody mess : when should we consider a private tool as a public one ? That's what they meant by opening the pandora box. But of course, I strongly agree, crafting some absurd law is clearly a wrong measure but it's not absurd given the strict context we have here in France about national medias.

jevinskie 15y ago
By public channels do you mean Free-To-Air or do you mean that they recieve public funding? If the latter, I believe the restrictions are more reasonable.