The gilets jaunes were born on Facebook, as it often happens with public indignation. On October 18, Jacline Mouraud, a 51-year-old Frenchwoman from Brittany, posted a short video on her profile in which she ranted against the French president Emmanuel Macron and his government’s planned fuel tax, a measure she described as a “hunt against drivers”.
“What are you doing with the French people’s money, Mr Macron?” she asked. It was watched more than six million times.
Then an online petition calling for the decrease of the tax received more than one million signatures, and anti-tax groups and events started blooming on Facebook. All mentioned November 17 as the date they would organise a nationwide protest against the tax.
The petition had been covered by the media, but no one had predicted the magnitude of the movement that would stem from these frustrations shared on social media.
On the day of the protest, 290,000 people blocked roads and highways around the country, wearing a gilet jaune, the neon yellow safety vest that is mandatory to carry in French cars, as their symbol.
Spontaneous blockades continued all week, with riots erupting in the French overseas territory of La Réunion. On November 24, there were 106,301 gilets jaunes across France, and more than 8,000 of them marched in Paris, where they were involved in violent confrontation with the police on the Champs-Elysées. On December 1, France’s Interior Ministry reported that 75,000 gilets jaunes were protesting in the country, as Paris turned into a battle zone.
The protests and marches were neither authorised nor organised. There was no clear meeting point, and no leading institution or association affiliated with them. After three weeks of protests, the gilets jaunes have no obvious leader – a committee of eight self-appointed representatives, including the woman who started the petition and Facebook groups admins, abandoned their plan to negotiate with the French government after parts of the movement disapproved of them, and many have since resigned.
Everything is relayed on Facebook, from memes mocking Macron and post-protest photos, to polls on the topics to bring up during TV interviews. Eric Drouet, one of the most active posters and admins, films daily Facebook Live videos on which he takes fellow yellow vests’ questions. On those groups, it is rare to see links from mainstream media outlets, regarded as “collaborators” working hand-in-hand with Macron.
Instead, rumours and outright anti-Macron propaganda flourish on the platform, and are shared at an incredible pace. “The latest rumour is that Macron is going to sell France’s sovereignty to the UN at a conference next week”, says Vincent Glad, a journalist from Libération who is closely monitoring the gilets jaunes Facebook groups.
Facebook groups are a tool for people to gather and share ideas, but a Facebook spokesperson stressed that "content advocating for violence isn't authorised" on the platform. A Facebook spokesperson also told BuzzFeed News that it works with fact checking organisations in France to help stop the spread of misinformation.
Read more: The Brexit app is already causing major headaches for EU citizens
It’s difficult to establish a precise tally of the protesters, who are active on various groups. La France en colère!!! (“France is angry!!!”), created on October 15, around the time of Mouraud’s video, was one of the first, and counts more than 210,000 members. 💥Gilet Jaune💥 and Gilet jaune both have around 130,000 members, and there are dozens of smaller local groups for regions and towns. A spontaneous “Official gilet jaune counter” takes a census of 1,683,342 members on Facebook, but it’s difficult to know.
Olivier Ertzscheid, a researcher in sciences of information at the university of Nantes, estimates that the one million figure is correct: if one group automatically reaches 200,000 people, engagement around one post (shares, likes, comments) can easily reach a million, he says.
While online engagement doesn’t automatically translate into support for the movement, Glad thinks there are many more gilets jaunes on Facebook than has been reported in the protests: “When we say there are 100,000 in the streets, it’s ridiculous, they are many more.”
Glad observed a different ratio online, where women make up half of the gilets jaunes population and elderly people are very vocal, and in the streets, where protesters were predominantly young and middle-aged men. “The movement is supported by many pensioners, who can’t necessarily go on a march,” he says. “But those who post to write encouragements, they’re gilets jaunes too.”
Almost all Facebook groups are open. “It’s surprising, given that they are preparing an insurrection, but everything is public”, Glad says.
Sociologically, the gilets jaunes are a very heterogeneous group: they are from rural areas and small cities, work in factories or own businesses, their age varies from 18 to 90, some vote for the far right, others for the left, and some just don’t vote at all. But they share a common anger at Macron’s fiscal policies, and that was all Facebook needed.
“Facebook’s technical and algorithmic architecture fans the flames,” Ertzscheid says. In January, Facebook’s algorithm change prioritised posts that “spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people: these are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.”
The new algorithm, thought to free the platform from fake news, now pushes content from your friends and family up in your feed. This is instead of posts from news organisations and media outlets. Because the gilets jaunes posts were very engaging, as they played on emotions such as anger and frustration, they collected numerous likes and comments, Ertzscheid says. “So the algorithm enormously pushes it up.”
A French user didn’t have to join a gilets jauness group to be shown the movement’s posts: friends commenting or liking a post was enough. “We’ve all seen gilets jaunes info on our feed,” Ertzscheid adds.
Macron can now thank Zuckerberg: the gilets jaunes movement, based on the explosive combination of emotional posts, tight, local networks and a boosted algorithm reproducing and relaying identical views, spread like wildfire. “If everyone speaks about it, you see it constantly and when it fades, Facebook will remind you that you are invited to this event where people will be blocking a road next weekend,” adds Ertzscheid. “It facilitates the construction of a social movement, as mobilisation happens via trusted third parties.”
The gilets jaunes are already preparing next Saturday’s protest – act IV, as they call it. Even if the movement eventually dies down on the streets, conversations will continue online, Glad says: “From now on, Macron’s main opposition will be these Facebook groups.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
