Macron: Tiktok encourages online addiction

EMMANUEL MACRON, the French president, took aim at Tiktok yesterday, accusing the Chinese social network of censoring content and encouraging online addiction among young people.

“Tiktok is the most disruptive (psychologically), the most effective network among young people,” he said during an event to discuss mental health.

“This network is deceptively innocent,” he added, before discussing its algorithms that help identify content to push to users.

“It knows very well what you like... pushes incredibly well-made things that are much more creative than the American equivalents,” he said in Fontaine-le-comte in central France. “Behind this, there’s a real addiction.”

He also said that information banned by Chinese censors, such as possible human rights violations against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, was kept off the platform. “I defy you to find content on what is happening in Xinjiang,” Mr Macron added.

The president has his own Tiktok account with 3.2 million followers.

♦ A “long-time friend” of Emmanuel Macron has been convicted of spiking a colleague’s champagne with ecstasy to try to rape her. Laurent Bigorgne, a political analyst once believed to be considered for a ministerial position in the president’s cabinet, received a oneyear suspended sentence and a €2,000 (£1,725) fine.

Prosecutors declined to charge him with the attempted sexual assault of Sophie Conrad, but the court upheld the drugging charge after determining that Bigorgne had spiked her drink “in order to commit rape or sexual assault”.