France Bans Facebook and Twitter From Radio and TV

An anonymous reader writes "In France, radio and television news anchors are no longer allowed to say the words 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' on air, unless the terms are specifically part of a news story. The ban stems from a decree issued by the French government on March 27, 1992, which forbids the promotion of commercial enterprises on news programs."

Comments

Unless

[Andy Smith]

"unless the terms are specifically part of a news story"

Well that hardly ever happens.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of "France" the new term is "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys."

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[Hylandr]

Check your history before flaming or modding me down.

If it weren't for France there wouldn't be an America. Seriously, Philosophically, financially, and with their military help America was established. Then they turned around and did for themselves too.

- Dan.

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[Alex Belits]

And the rest of the world still blames them for you.

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[Tasha26]

You seem to be forgetting presenters who re-direct viewers to their twitter or facebook page and/or ask them add their views to an ongoing discussion of some topic posted/tweeted on those sites. Frankly, I think it's a good move. Why should Facebook and Twitter get free advertising and becomes more popular than they already are? It's hindering emergence of other sites... hmm, non-US sites. :)

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[lexsird]

There is an epic amount of "French Bashing" going on in the USA. I find it repulsive because I have always liked the French. I ran into lots of them in MMORPGs such as Asheron's Call, particularly the Dark Tide server. They were fun to fight and fight with. They are a bit quirky and tend to stick together, but can be very friendly if you aren't a tool.

Its highly important that everyone isn't of the same mindset on planet Earth. I could explain this, but I would rather do it and get an A for it in some damn sociology class, than waste it here.

  Just think if we would have followed the French's lead on Iraq, we wouldn't have invaded and wasted trillions of dollars in a war that we get absolutely NOTHING from. Leave it to the Right wingers to smear them after they didn't play ball with them. AND leave it to capitalists to make every socialist country a villain. BTW, I am not a socialist or capitalist. I believe the intelligent way to govern is to cherry pick what works well and use that for the benefit of EVERYONE, not just the aristocracy.

Also, contrast the life of the average Frenchman to ours. They live longer, have more free time, have medical and JOBS. I think they are infinitely freer than the corporate wage slaves that we are here. Every time a Rightwinger brays about how socialism doesn't work, pointing to the fall of Russia, I think of the French. In fact, I think of a lot of European countries that are socialists and they haven't "failed".

With that all said, I cheer them on if they want to keep the news newsworthy and not yet another plug for company X. After all, the airwaves belong to the public, not to any one person, and if you want to use it, you have to follow the rules the public agrees on. If you think our TV has "free speech" to say whatever they want, you are insane. We have something called the FCC and there are censors in this country and have been for decades. After the "Patriot Act", I don't think we have room to talk smack to ANYONE about freedoms. Once we stop our own government from goose stepping all over our Constitution, we might have a leg to stand on.Until then, we need to seriously STFU.

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[Nick_13ro]

Check your history before flaming or modding me down.

If it weren't for France there wouldn't be an America. Seriously, Philosophically, financially, and with their military help America was established. Then they turned around and did for themselves too.

- Dan.

And if king Louis XVI would have found a better way to spend the country's money other than further bankrupting it and inviting unrest by funding the american freemason rebellion, like for example paying an army to kill a bunch of bankers like his ancestors did with the predecessors of the freemasons- the templars, then maybe the world would be a somewhat better place.

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[thetoadwarrior]

I can't remember did France run away from Vietnam in a cute little bitch style like the Americans did?

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[RonnyJ]

That bit should be part of the headline. Terrible editing.

France Bans Facebook and Twitter From Radio and TV News

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[lexsird]

Are you serious? Do you blame women for being weak when their men beat them too? If we lived next to the Germans when they came Blitzing through, we would have surrendered too. There wasn't a lot of choice in the matter either. You obviously are no student of history and just how advanced the German war machine was.

German engineering + War; think about it.

French life style + War; bad combination. Unless they are invading to plant vineyards, and make better coffee, or milk our cows to make some cheese, I don't think we have anything to get excited about.

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[RonnyJ]

Or, better yet: France Bans Facebook and Twitter Promotion in Radio and TV News

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[Anonymous Coward]

If it weren't for ____ there wouldn't be ____. This statement is true for many, many countries. The world is interconnected and many countries rely on each other. If it weren't for America Napoleon wouldn't have been able to fund his war, and France might be a very different country. Does that mean France has any sort of obligation to America today? No. It amounts to nothing today. The same goes for what you said. It amounts to nothing.

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[houghi]

Please give France back the Statue of Liberty. You don't deserve it anymore. You rape the liberties France helped you with against the British. You slap the the French soldiers in the face who died next to yours in the first Iraq war.

You try to convince the world that you alone won world war one and two, ignoring the many other countries and men that you were in a coalition with. Canadians, Polish, Russians, French, Dutch, English, South African. The list goes on and on and you could not have done it alone.

The one war you lost was Vietnam and you couldn't deal with it the moment you went at it alone.

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[Yvanhoe]

I ran into lots of them in MMORPGs such as Asheron's Call, particularly the Dark Tide server. They were fun to fight and fight with.

Unfortunately none of these games allowed us the weapon that our history taught us to excel at : the cow catapult !

They live longer, have more free time, have medical and JOBS. I think they are infinitely freer than the corporate wage slaves that we are here.

yes, yes, yes and no. Our unemployment rate (~9.5%) is higher than the one in US (8.7%) but I think it is easier to live as an unemployed person in France than as someone with the minimum wage in US. however, the media I read have some bias so I cannot be sure.

Every time a Rightwinger brays about how socialism doesn't work, pointing to the fall of Russia, I think of the French. In fact, I think of a lot of European countries that are socialists and they haven't "failed".

That is something that has always amazed me. In France we have two words with completely different meaning : socialism and communism, that seem to be synonymous in US. We have a socialist party, that has been 14 years in power and did an okay job, and we have a communist party, that has never been in power. Saying they are the same is really like saying that conservative means nazi (and we are talking about extreme politics so I think Godwin laws do not apply). It is inherently absurd.

BTW, in France we have a right-wing government since 1995. Chirac during 12 years hasn't changed much and Sarkozy since 2007 actively tried to destroy the social institutions (retirement, healthcare, family planning, etc...). We compare them to GW Bush, that he actually liked. Next time you want to think about a successful European socialist country, think about Scandinavian countries. They are our models. We hope to be back in the race in 2012.

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[Anonymous Coward]

We should never have been in Vietnam in the first place. Us "leaving in a cute little bitch style" (+insightful, slashdot?) is better than perpetuating a stupid war.

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[Kjella]

Also, contrast the life of the average Frenchman to ours. They live longer, have more free time, have medical and JOBS.

Not so sure about jobs, French unemploment rate is at 9.7% which is about average for the Euro zone with 9.4% (pdf). Europe as a whole is just as screwed as the US, some countries like Germany are doing okay (6.1%) while others like Spain (20.7%) are completely screwed.

Anyway, I've found unemployment rates to lie quite a lot. Look at the US data, sure, compared to last year the unemployment rate is down from 9.6% to 9.1% but the participation rate is also down from 64.9% to 64.2%. So in reality less people work today (58.4%) compared to a year ago (58.7%), even though unemployment has "dropped". Of course there can be slight demographic changes too but the majority of those are people that have completely dropped out of the job market. The real number of people who'd like to work is probably a lot higher.

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[AmiMoJo]

It surprises me that they use Twitter at all. The BBC has hashtags for most of its popular shows, but when you actually read what people post it is at least 75% inane, libellous or obscene. I tried it watching Question Time (political QA session with questions from an audience) the other day and there was a steady stream of profanity and "tits or GTFO" posts. Back when it started the BBC used to ask people not to swear, but they stopped when it became obvious that whenever they did the response was invariable "go fuck yourself".

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[lexsird]

Ha! to cow catapults.

As far as US unemployment, the figures are a complete lie. Double it and perhaps sprinkle a point or two more on for realism. Why? Let met explain; unemployment is finite here. Meaning, you only get it for a short while, then you are kicked off. It doesn't matter if you have a way to survive or not, you are off it. This doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that because you are off unemployment that you are employed. I am sure that sounds barbaric as hell to you.

This is what we get for letting capitalism run everything here. You are right, we have a vast over opinionated, yet ironically undereducated public that thinks things like Commies and Socialists are one and the very same. You are pretty close to the mark when you mentioned Nazis and conservatives here, the only thing they are missing is the yearning to throw Jews in an oven. Instead, they want to throw Mexicans and Arabs in one.

To understand the US you have to understand who's in charge here. It should be named the Corporate States of America because that is who owns the government and controls everything. We have a really fucked up idea of what freedom is and we will kill you if you don't agree with us on it. This is also a product of careful brainwashing of the public by the entire corporate system. I can't imagine how baffled all of Europe is at how fucking stupid we seem to be.

Here's the problem, every adult that is worth their salt here has two jobs at least to make ends meet. Who the hell has the time or energy to do anything but work? They tax the living shit out of working class people while they dish out free money to banks and corporations. We are angry of course, but we are brainwashed into blaming everyone else. Somehow these evil fuckers have twisted capitalism into nationalism and they have religion on board as well. Here is where you and the rest of the world should worry. These corporations are multinational now. They have us in the bag, now they want the rest of the world as well. Imperialistic? The average American has no clue how these corporations operate, remember they are little more than slaves, so how could they know? They are brainwashed to hate everyone because "they hate us for our freedom".

Here is a question for you guys. What was the story with the IMF chief from France, the one that ended up in some frame up job in NY? I read that he was a socialist and I knew he was fucked. I have a feeling someone wanted to reset the IMF chair and get rid of a socialist at the same time. The whole story smacked of a set up to me right from the start, but people here are idiots and believe anything in the news that gets spoon fed to them. I am still willing to wager money that now that he's out of the IMF position and smeared all to hell for the election that this case will fall apart and disappear. I don't buy all these women coming forward AFTER the fact. Its way too easy for bad people to try to capitalize on something like this or for the bad guys to prop up a few more puppets after its started.

As a joke you guys should ask for the Statue of Liberty back. Tell us you are tired of her being felt up by the TSA goons and she doesn't feel comfortable here after the Patriot Act.

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[lexsird]

Odd that out of the 4 things I listed, only one is debatable.

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[cyberfin]

A slashdot story with a sensationalistic title? Shocker.

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[Anonymous Coward]

As far as US unemployment, the figures are a complete lie. Double it and perhaps sprinkle a point or two more on for realism. Why? Let met explain; unemployment is finite here. Meaning, you only get it for a short while, then you are kicked off. It doesn't matter if you have a way to survive or not, you are off it. This doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that because you are off unemployment that you are employed. I am sure that sounds barbaric as hell to you.

you're daft. the unemployment percentage doesn't mean the percentage of people collecting unemployment benefits... it literally means the percentage of people without a job.

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[Yvanhoe]

I am sure that sounds barbaric as hell to you.

Yes, but our enlightened leaders use the same trick. He promised to reduce unemployment and just changed the metric. Now they only count people "actively looking for a job" which means people who accept to go twice a month to useless interviews sometimes far away from where they live in order to get some unemployment aid from the government.

Here is a question for you guys. What was the story with the IMF chief from France, the one that ended up in some frame up job in NY?

What is best in this story is that he was leading the polls for the 2012 presidential elections in France, but now he is pretty much toasted. But he is a socialist only in name, his candidature was frowned upon by a lot of members of the socialist party. Maybe he needed more time to make a change but the IMF didn't look very socialist to a lot of observers during the crisis. Maybe slightly more keynesian. And he was known to have a dangerous inclination for excessive sex. I started believing in the conspiracy theory when I first heard about the event, he has so many enemies and this is the perfect accusation to do, but it is unfortunately too credible and I am not sure what to believe anymore. He is power-hungry, sex-hungry, and not that much of a socialist.

This story however sparked a debate about how the media considers politicians' sex life. There is apparently a widespread belief in US that French do not take sex-crimes very seriously. This is not the case. We just consider extra-marital affairs as not important and private matters, our two previous presidents had mistresses, our current one married thrice, we just don't care and were shocked that the Clinton scandal was so important in US. However, rape is a completely different matter and is very serious. Voting for a cheating husband is not a problem, voting for a raper is another thing completely. And now we discover that the French press covered some past sex-crimes, thinking that the French public would only consider that as "personal matters". In particular there is a rumor about a former minister that had a sex-party with children in a foreign country. Journalists are wondering how to disclose what they know about this without being accused of slander, as the government at the time covered it.

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[Kjella]

Well, you put the emphasis on JOBS yourself. Working hours only matter if you have work and the governments are going to have huge problems getting their budgets back in balance without cutting in public healthcare. Portugal, Ireland and Greece would all be bankrupt by now if not for the EU and the emergency loans are now putting the whole EU on the line as collateral. It's a make-or-break strategy, either they all rebound or it'll all come crashing down. The EU is not "too big to fail", the 1929 crash shows no market is that big. Right now I'd like to see in a few years forward in my crystal ball before I say Europe is going to do better than the US.

That said, I don't see how you could do much worse in healthcare than the US for the same amount of money. And they have a cultural obesity problem, that's sure to affect the life span, but that's a different discussion.

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[mangu]

If we would have followed the French's lead on Iraq, we wouldn't have invaded and wasted trillions of dollars in a war that we get absolutely NOTHING from

So, you think liberating a nation from a tyrannical dictator is worth nothing at all?

I think the US did two things wrong in Iraq, one was overstaying their welcome and the other was leaving the job half done. Should have gone to Syria and Iran as well. Not to mention the religious dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. Religious freedom is a basic human right and that includes being free FROM religion.

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[lexsird]

The thing with Clinton was the Right desperate for something to burn him on. Frankly I can't blame them on that one. Clinton was yet another train wreck of a President for us. Everyone wants to credit him for the economics of that time. I myself credit Bill Gates and the tech boom more than anything Clinton did for those few good years. Clinton has shit like Waco Texas where the military, against our Constitution, rolled in and killed women and children in a stand off. The Feds also extorted and murdered a family at a place called Ruby Ridge. We also had a building blow up with no ATF Agents strangely in it the day it blew up, and we blamed it on domestic terrorism and rolled out new domestic terrorism laws before the dust even settled from the explosion. Clinton did more damage to the Democratic Party and to America than we will ever know.

Just when you think things couldn't get worse...

We have a Presidential election and the guy with the most votes didn't get the job. We were simmering for one fucked up civil war when we get attacked on 9/11. Now all of that shit is forgotten. Handy as hell, no? I find it ironic that we have a war versus terrorism yet we have two borders that you can march an army across and we wouldn't notice and nobody in power cares. Its really strange that we have all these terrorists hell bent on killing us all, for over a decade now and there hasn't been so much as a loud fart in anger here from them. We are suppose to believe the TSA thugs are keeping us safe from them. That and fighting them "over there keeps them from fighting us over here".

We eat so many bullshit sandwiches here its frankly amazing, yet we have the audacity to sneer at you French for some of your TV broadcast policies. Here is one for you, the next time some Yank gets smart assed with you about anything, just whisper "Patriot Act" to them. If they have half a brain they will STFU.

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[lexsird]

You should say "liberating a nation from a tyrannical dictator that used to be our puppet". You and so many others either ignore or are completely ignorant of our previous Middle East policies. While us and the Soviets got into some deadly dick measuring contest, we armed the living shit out of that region. We put some serious weapons in the hands of lunatics just as long as they sang and danced the "oil" tune for us. These maniacs then ran roughshod over their own people, their neighbors and anyone that got in their way, and we wonder why the average person that had to deal with all that shit hates us. "Why do they hate us? Why? Why?"

The rest of your shit doesn't even dignify a response.

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[Opportunist]

I think it's a macho thing. Pulling out is so unmanly.

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[Anonymous Coward]

+1 !!!

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[Yvanhoe]

Here is one for you, the next time some Yank gets smart assed with you about anything, just whisper "Patriot Act" to them. If they have half a brain they will STFU.

The Patriot act is a fucking shame. More even now that Obama called it crucial for US security. But we also have anti-terrorist policies that would frighten you as well. Here we have military with assault rifles patrolling in airports and subway stations. Warrent-less searches is the norm here and wiretapping happens without even a debate. Just don't overestimate us. When the post-9/11 world fell into madness, we followed just like most western countries.

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[Dog-Cow]

Technicalky, the US defines unemployment rates by the percentage of the population looking for work. The percentage is always a fraction of those who are out of work. What the fraction is, is up for debate, and you'll hear different answers, depending on the agenda of those providing the numbers.

(There is also some adjustment made for those too young or too old to be expected to work.)

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[improfane]

Wait, wait.

You assume that he actually did rape someone. Isn't that the crux of your argument?

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[i_ate_god]

So, you think liberating a nation from a tyrannical dictator is worth nothing at all?

I think the US did two things wrong in Iraq, one was overstaying their welcome and the other was leaving the job half done. Should have gone to Syria and Iran as well. Not to mention the religious dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. Religious freedom is a basic human right and that includes being free FROM religion.

Except, "liberating iraq" was not the reason given for the iraq war, it's only the excuse for it now.

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[1u3hr]

French life style + War; bad combination. Unless they are invading to plant vineyards, and make better coffee, or milk our cows to make some cheese, I don't think we have anything to get excited about.

Obligatory: Napoleon.

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[Tanktalus]

And do you think that France defines unemployment rates any differently? The numbers are comparable, even if they aren't what you may want them to mean.

Is my wife unemployed? She stays at home, raising our kids. She has no interest in a paying job. Why should her lack of interest in a job inflate the numbers?

Granted, this means that people who have "given up" also aren't counted, but I doubt that a system could be both simple enough for bureaucrats to implement in a non-biased manner and accurate. Thus, we're just stuck with these numbers, which is a meaningful approximation.

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[rossdee]

"If it weren't for France there wouldn't be an America."

Don't you mean Spain? IIRC it was the Spanish that 'Discovered' America and gave it that name.
(Of course the Vikings were here nearly 500 years before, and the Indians were here for 10,000 years before anybody else.

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[MightyMartian]

Avoiding the issue as to whether there should have ever been an invasion or not, the strategic failure was in sending enough troops to topple the regime, but insufficient troops to police the country until a civilian authority could have taken over. By all accounts, Powell and several other advisors to that simpering moron GWB told him that they needed more boots on the ground to secure the situation. Toppling a government (particularly one that was already on as shaky ground as Hussein's was by 2003) is in many respects the easy part. It's what you do once you've broken it that turns out to be the hard part. GWB's advisors (I have a hard time believing that GWB could think himself out of a cardboard box) went in with a wing and a prayer, assuming everyone would be oh so please to be rid of Hussein and would just sort of spontaneously form a democratic government.

It's hard to imagine how the US could have blundered this badly, considering the extraordinary success they had made of post-war West Germany and Japan. Those two countries had literally been pummeled almost back to the stone age, but by the 1950s were democracies with probably the fastest growing economies in the history of the human race. Not to mention that they became stalwart allies of the former Allied nations, contributing greatly to the encirclement of the Communist states.

In Iraq, they literally busted the country. They seemed to take no account of ethnic or religious divisions. They literally just thought Saddam would be forced out, and someone else would turn the lights and water back on and the troops could come home heroes.

I don't think Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld should be charged with violating international law or lying to Congress. I think they should be charged with gross negligence causing untold misery both to American families and to millions in Iraq. The 2003 invasion was possible the most inept invasion in history, maybe with the possible exception of Italy's attempt to build an empire in the Horn of Africa. And at least Mussolini could string words together to make sensible sentences.

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[MightyMartian]

What an extraordinary combination of astute observation and mad conspiracy theory.

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[russotto]

I can't remember did France run away from Vietnam in a cute little bitch style like the Americans did?

Yes

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[improfane]

I almost choked on my water when reading GPs post. He's an idiot and you are absolutely right.

If you're reading this and wondering why he's an idiot, pick up a book by Noam Chomsky, 'Manufacturing Consent' would be a good start.

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[Raenex]

It doesn't matter if you have a way to survive or not, you are off it. This doesn't mean by any stretch of the imagination that because you are off unemployment that you are employed. I am sure that sounds barbaric as hell to you.

There are many programs in the US besides unemployment that help people survive, such as food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, state welfare, and private organizations. The problem that countries like France and Greece are facing is that they can't afford their socialist programs, and even countries like Cuba are realizing that when people don't have to work to make a living, many of them don't.

You are pretty close to the mark when you mentioned Nazis and conservatives here, the only thing they are missing is the yearning to throw Jews in an oven. Instead, they want to throw Mexicans and Arabs in one.

You mean because we don't want an open border with Mexico and have fought some wars in Arab countries? I don't see genocide as the motivation here.

We have a really fucked up idea of what freedom is and we will kill you if you don't agree with us on it.

Such as? Has anybody tried to kill you?

Here's the problem, every adult that is worth their salt here has two jobs at least to make ends meet.

I don't know anybody middle class person that has two jobs to make ends meet. Then again, I've known many people who live beyond their means and go into debt.

The whole story smacked of a set up to me right from the start, but people here are idiots and believe anything in the news that gets spoon fed to them.

How do you know he's not actually guilty? I won't presume he is, but I won't presume he isn't. It's pretty much he said, she said.

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[lexsird]

Damn it! I was so hoping the 9/11 madness hadn't got you folks as well. It was fun to dream for a while, I guess.

I am curious what you make of this Libya and the whole "Arab Spring" thing? Part of me is very excited at the prospects of peace breaking out in the Middle East. But experience tells me to dig deeper; that there is some rat bastard scheme behind all of this. One thing gave me pause to jumping on the bandwagon with all of this.

Word around the campfire here is Muammar Gaddafi was wanting to bankroll a new Arab currency with a big load of gold he has. Word is he wanted to get all the oil producing nations on board, and then demand the West only buy oil with their currency. Now if I can stop fantasizing about putting a modern Kelly's Heroes team together and stealing all that gold, the implications of such a scenario are staggering. Is this all about keeping the status quo of our money?

I don't know about your money, but ours isn't backed by anything. Some geniuses for some insane reason took us off the gold standard long ago. I am shocked anyone accepts our money, considering we can just print more of it when we want some. I can see where a new gold standard currency would threaten our dollar. If you want to share in some cognitive dissidence with us, consider this: Our Federal Reserve isn't part of our Government. It's privately owned, and someone told me owned mostly by Jews. Holy Shit! Could the plot thicken any more? I am not anti-Semitic by any stretch of the imagination, being I am steeped in Christian fundy doctrine. I have one of those minds that doesn't let shit go, so I have to pry, in spite of roasting in hell for daring to question Israel and Jews.

Did I mention we have blended capitalism/nationalism/Christianity together for some hellish abomination? I am waiting for goose stepping to make a big return here. Back to the Arab Spring thingy. Obama really has set his big black balls out there on this one. His telling Israel to STFU and go back to the 1967 lines has fundies here howling for his blood. I have been looking at the whole history behind this fucked up Arab/Israel thing, this thing is ugly from both sides. One thing is sure, Israel has to be handled sternly to say the least. I was pretty young when Israel attacked one of our ships and killed people on it. I had forgotten about that shit, then came back upon it recently. Its frankly amazing as hell how we gloss over that one now.

What is you take on Iran? The gist of the situation to us is their President is crazier than an outhouse rat and he can't wait to get his mitts on some nukes so he can blow Israel to hell and start WW3 for religious purposes. Surely Iranians aren't going to put up with that kind of insanity that will get their entire country blown to hell? Besides who the fuck doesn't have a nuke already? With the starving Soviets having a Going Out of Business Sale on them, what self respecting asshole Arab billionaire wouldn't pick a few of them up? Why doesn't that alarm me? Lets get on the same page, we are talking about sexually repressed Arabs. They probably have them in their bedrooms to impress hot chicks. Unless disco music or bling can set one off, I don't think we have much to worry about.

Wouldn't it be great if the only people we really had to worry about in this whole Arab Spring thing is Israel? Seems like we should, they gunned down some idiot protestors just the other day. You guys should sell them a pig catapult, so they can just threaten them with a bombardment of swine if they get out of hand.

Here's to hope for peace in the Middle East.

 

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[lexsird]

I was trying to figure out who GP is.

Also, looking at your sig, you like scifi, have you read any of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steal Rat series? Before I stopped reading books and started eating them, I thought that was one funny scifi series.

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[buglista]

yes, they did, but they cut their losses earlier, as they obviously knew the writing was on the wall. Not that the ex-French colonies paint a very nice picture of French rule.

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[Nick_13ro]

What an extraordinary combination of astute observation and mad conspiracy theory.

Right, enjoy forking all your wealth to the banksters and their freemason cronies while laughing at those who see the truth. I wonder if you'll still be laughing when they'll starve you like they did with millions after 1929.

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[mangu]

The root of many problems in the Middle East was the absurdly inept way the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire was handled. The division of the empire ignored the complex religious and ethnic divisions in that region.

Basically, Iraq is a country that should have never been created. Its territory should have been split between Kurdistan, Syria, and Persia. As it stands now, it can be either a police state or anarchy.

However, this does not justify keeping Saddam in power. If Bush Sr. had a little bit of competence he should have killed Saddam in 1991 and moved immediately out of Iraq (and Saudi Arabia), let them sort it out among themselves. Having non-Muslim troops quartered in Saudi Arabia was one of the main motivations for the resurgence of religious fanaticism in the region.

It's a pity the world has no easy way to remove dictators. Unfortunately, it seems that too many people aren't big fans of democracy, or at least do not care to make a big effort to maintain it. I believe that if you have the means you have the duty to do it whenever a dictator starts massacring his own people or attacks another country.

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[Yvanhoe]

Don't mock our catapults, it kept the filthy Englishmen at bay...

Ego-boo ! I love when people ask for my advices :)

Arab spring : I doubt there is much more to it than meets the eye. I doubt anyone has a switch to make populations revolt and if such a switch existed, I doubt it would be stealthy. Actually, many persons had an interest in the statu-quo so I really think this is genuine indignation that sparked the protest. Gaddafi used to be a smart man with many interesting projects but has apparently declined in the last decade. Whet really started the international indignation were the informations that he ordered fighter planes (made in France, yay) to shoot rockets at protesters. An unprecedented move as far as I am aware. The only "conspiracy" I am aware of concerning Libya is from the French governement : before their involvement in the war, there were two scandals unfolding with two different ministers, one having received "gifts" from Egypt, another one from Tunisia, and proposing police help during the revolution.

I am not sure good governments will come out of the revolutions but it is an unpredictable process : you have to go through this chaotic period to remove a dictator. These population take their chances. My bet is that half of them will have a democracy in a few years and another half will have a dictatorship.

About money : heh, euro isn't looking too well either. It is currently stronger than the dollar but things could invert quickly. If you are worried about these, you should look into bitcoin. It is a project to make a distributed crypto-currency. Not backed up by much but its scarcity is algorithmically enforced (no money-printing is possible). REally interesting project.

About the big bad jew bankers : There is a theory here that two big clans of banks with different practices are fighting : the protestant ones and the jewish ones. It tries to justify that the big banks began to form when it was forbidden for catholics to lend money. Quite frankly, I am not sure what credence to give to that.

About Israel : Obama showed some balls but it may be a very good service he gives to Israel : in September, Palestinian will unilaterally declare the formation of their state, hoping to rally a 2/3 majority in the UN assembly. This probably forced him to move.

About Iran : During the Bush years, Iran has shown that they have some of the most skillful diplomats. And they have learned a lesson from the cold war : no sane man can wish for a nuclear war, therefore if you want to do nuclear blackmail, you have to appear insane. I don't worry too much about Iran. I think that a good way to resolve this issue is to remove the taboo on one of the main reason for Iran's nuke program : Israel's nuclear program. I think a M.A.D. doctrine should be put in place in middle east. That is only possible if Israel acknowledge their nukes and sign the non proliferation treaty. This is a reasonable demand I think.

And about apocalypse : Nuclear war and the peak oil are my two biggest concerns as of today.

Re:Unless

[lexsird]

I am wondering if there is any vacancy in the ivory tower you are living in. I really want to have that kind of perspective on life. It must be nice.

First, social services in this country are horrible. So many people fall through the cracks here its not funny. It's all scattered, the agencies have little to no cooperation with each other, mostly out of privacy rights from what I gather. You need a college course in navigating through it all if you ever need it. There has classically been mountains of abuse of the system, hence making the system defensive and in turn making those who really need it suffer through a screening process that removes any scrap of human dignity they have left. All in all its a horrible waste of human resources and our tax dollars, the whole thing needs scrapped and redone not just for the sake of the tax payers, but for those it intends to help. You can't just throw people a carrot, you have to put it on a stick so you can get them to greener pastures.

Of course we don't "officially" want to genocide anyone, but if you feel the pulse of the nation, read political comments and talk with people, you will know there is some serious scape goat hate mongering going on. If this kind of crap sets and festers, it has the potential for some evil pricks to tap into it for political gain. If you don't think politicians will pander to fucked up emotions to gain power, get back to me when you grow up. I think we have become so acclimatized to it and bullshitted ourselves so long with political correctness that we ignore it when we are wading waist deep in it.

Funny you should mention the disappearing middle class. Sorry, I don't know any "middle class" people. I come from a rural ghetto that has been ravaged by industry leaving for other countries. Here, college educated people are pumping gas and delivering pizza. I had a friend from a major city come visit me here, he was amazed that everyone working the McDonalds we have are all white. I told him to pipe down, we only have a few black people, and we sure aren't going to make them work such crappy jobs and possibly run them off. We tried to import some Mexicans, but they took one look at our slave driving, low wage paying factories and high tailed it out of town. This is all no bullshit true too, all joking aside. If you have two jobs here, you are affluent, fuck middle class.

How do I know he isn't guilty? Obviously I don't being I am halfway across the country, in the countryside, don't know a thing about the guy. BUT...lol... Even out here in a fucking cornfield, one has to wonder why they snatched him up and stuffed him away at Riker's Island like he was Hannibal Lector. This is an IMF chief, a french diplomat of sorts and no NBA star. People of that caliber tend to be a bit more careful with their sexual deviancy if in fact they are deviants. I can't fathom the French tolerating that kind of behavior out of someone in that position. I am talking "raping the help" kind of behavior. Screwball behavior is something that develops over time, it doesn't just happen in a vacuum. This kind of behavior is far too much of a liability in a power hungry environment that surrounds something like the IMF. His enemies would have burned him at the stake long ago with this you would think. Enemies or someone with a half an ounce of ambition for his job, which the world seems to have plenty of considering the squabble for his vacant seat.

Couple that with the Wikileaks guy being burned with a screwball sex scandal. Oh what precious timing that was, no? Sex scandals seem to be the Plot De Jour with somebody's intelligence crews. It's probably because its so brain-dead simple to pull off an ad hock sex scandal on someone. Frankly what disturbs me most is that I can see it. Shouldn't we get more out of our black ops dollar than stuff that rubes in cornfields can spot instantly? How do I know it's ours? The NYPD put on a puppet show the likes I haven't seen since The Muppets. Seriously, who could pull their chain that hard but us? It had better be us, if they got sic'ed onto this guy by someone other than our own people, that is even more disturbing.

Re:Unless

[Yvanhoe]

I didn't assume anything. We knew he has a lot of extra-marital affairs and innocent or not he is toasted for the 2012 elections as the trial won't happen in time for the primary elections of the socialist party. Where do you see me assuming anything else ?

Re:Unless

[lexsird]

I would like to thank you for the great conversation, first before I forget.

Bitcoins, I was excited when I seen them too. So I asked my IT friend who I was sure already knew about them. He did and he told me some buzzkill news. If I recall right, he said the algorithms would be unsustainable if it garnished any real success. I left it at that, being accustom to my ideas being shot down with some reality.

My apocalypse worries? Not nuclear war, I grew up with vodka swilling soviets beating their shoes on the UN tables wanting to nuke us all until we glowed in the dark. Everybody else with a nuke doesn't worry me. They could get what, a few of our cities? Contrast that to Soviets carpet bombing us with them. Its not so scary, definitely not worth losing any sleep over. I worry more about Yellowstone going Pompeii on us. My most crazy fear? It would be China putting nanobots in all the crap they make and sell us through Wal-Mart. One day they key in a command and all these things dig into our bodies and turn us into idiots who buy all of their crap, go in wild debt so they can pick up our markers and just end up owning us.

On that note, I am tired and need a nap. Thanks again for the delightful conversation.

Re:Unless

[MightyMartian]

I can't fault Bush Sr. He didn't create Iraq (that was the Brits), but he was left with the mess. Not only did he have chaos in Iraq as a likelihood if Hussein was taken out, but there was the real potential for Turkey to march in to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state in the north, which would immediately lead to a civil war within Turkey itself as its restive Kurdish populations would almost certainly have immediately attempted to join to create the much-feared Kurdistan. You would have seen a major Middle Eastern war that could have lit up everything from the Mediterranean to Tehran. The idea was to free Kuwait and heavily damage Iraq's capacity to make war, not to try to correct past errors.

Underlying the elder Bush's decision to leave the Butcher in Baghdad in power was the unpleasant but very convincing maxim; better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Unfortunately, his witless son wasn't so wise. But if the neocons had still thought it a keen idea to topple Hussein, they should have gone all the way and been a proper Army of Occupation, just like in the western German zones and in Japan after WW2. That worked because the US put in the manpower to pull it off. Both Germany and Japan had systems of government that were pretty young Germany had only been united since the late 19th century and Japan had only had fully centralized rule restored since the Meiji period).

Re:Unless

[Hylandr]

We were simmering for one fucked up civil war when we get attacked on 9/11.

It's worse than Civil War. It's WWIII, and it's being fought by Lawyers, in the courtroom, the boardroom and Stage and the Silver screen.

Metallica fired the first shots...

- Dan.

Re:Unless

[Raenex]

I am wondering if there is any vacancy in the ivory tower you are living in.

I didn't say everything was perfect. I was just trying to inject some reality into your one-sided rant.

First, social services in this country are horrible. So many people fall through the cracks here its not funny.

It's patchwork, but for the most part people aren't starving on the streets. If you need help, there's a good chance you can get it. The idea that you should get "unemployment" money for an unlimited time just leads to more and more people not working when they could. As I said in my last post, many countries are coming to that realization, including France and Cuba, of all places.

If you don't think politicians will pander to fucked up emotions to gain power, get back to me when you grow up.

Grow up yourself. People are pissed at illegal immigration and we had limited wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you are talking about Nazi ovens.

Funny you should mention the disappearing middle class. Sorry, I don't know any "middle class" people. I come from a rural ghetto that has been ravaged by industry leaving for other countries.

Newsflash. Middle class people don't hang out in rural ghettos.

I told him to pipe down, we only have a few black people, and we sure aren't going to make them work such crappy jobs and possibly run them off.

What kind of shit is this? Do you micro-manage where black people work?

We tried to import some Mexicans, but they took one look at our slave driving, low wage paying factories and high tailed it out of town.

Funny how many Mexicans come to the United States and take the lowest paying jobs.

Even out here in a fucking cornfield, one has to wonder why they snatched him up and stuffed him away at Riker's Island like he was Hannibal Lector

I hope they just followed standard protocol. He was also probably a flight risk, as he was on the airplane to leave when they picked him up, and it seems quite unlikely he would voluntarily hang around for a trial. He is now under house arrest, living like a king.

This is an IMF chief, a french diplomat of sorts and no NBA star. People of that caliber tend to be a bit more careful with their sexual deviancy if in fact they are deviants.

Do you actually watch the news? Many high profile politicians are not so careful. From Presidents like Clinton (a history of sexual harassment, not just affairs), to Senators like Larry Craig, sex scandals abound.

I am talking "raping the help" kind of behavior. I can't fathom the French tolerating that kind of behavior out of someone in that position.

The French that were so supportive of Roman Polanski? I guess 43 year old men having sex with 13 year old girls is OK with them, which at the minimum is statutory rape, and if the girl's story is believed, was non-consensual and after he had given her alcohol and quaaludes.

Screwball behavior is something that develops over time, it doesn't just happen in a vacuum

The man had a history of being a womanizer, but it went beyond that. In one instance, he was accused of sexually assaulting a French journalist. He also was accused of abusing his position of power to coerce a junior colleague into having an affair.

Couple that with the Wikileaks guy being burned with a screwball sex scandal. Oh what precious timing that was, no?

It's quite true it's possibly a setup, but then again, people in a position of power and fame often abuse it to their own ends. Without having been there, you can't know what happened. That's just the way it is.

Re:Unless

[DocHoncho]

No, he means the French support of the Revolution.

Re:Unless

[ianare]

I live in France, but lived most of my life in the US. There are many things that are better in France, but many things that are worse, and when you add them up it comes to about the same. It really depends on the type of life you want to lead, on your priorities. I'll try to show the differences I believe are more striking, bearing in mind I'm not too familiar with either US or French country side, but rather suburbs and cities.

Want to make it really big, no matter where you started ? Have a great new idea ? Need private investing for your startup ? Do you want to be given a chance to do something you're good at, but don't necessarily have the right diploma ? As an employer, do you want to easily hire and fire people as needs dictate ? The US is where it's at, for sure.

Want to give birth for free ? Don't feel like saddling your wife and children with bankruptcy because you had the misfortune of dying from cancer ? Do you want some strict guidelines on what your employer can fire you for, and be given real compensation if you are laid off ? France has the US beat on that.

Do you want to eat delicious, healthy food -- but only at certain times on certain days, or would you rather get more processed foods, but available essentially any time, any place ?

Would you rather try to protect yourself with a gun from gun-wielding criminals, or never worry about getting shot but worry about getting your handbag or wallet snatched from your hand in the street ?

Would you rather find it sad and troubling that Americans never seem to really protest the evil deeds of their government, letting them get away with gross violations of human and constitutional rights ... or have week, even month long strikes, demonstrations and roads blocked because management decided to do some layoffs or taxi drivers are having to compete with hop-on hop-off tour buses ?

And finally ... what do you consider the minimum and maximum cup sizes of an attractive woman ?

P.S. The job situation is better here (right now anyway, we'll see what happens -- historically the US has been better) BUT only if you have a good degree and/or tons of experience ... There are very little of the "bullshit" type American jobs like greeter at Wallmart, cart pusher guy, or midnight shift gas station worker. One result of this is the young have a very high level of unemployment compared to the rest of the population.

Re:Unless

[lexsird]

Thanks for the well thought out input. I am fascinated by the contrasts. Each of these are an excellent topic of discussion, but one in particular keeps blaring to the front of my brain.

Please elaborate on the breast sizes. I never thought that there would be a contrast of those. Now I need to know what that is all about. For science, you know.

Re:Unless

[terrox]

Slashdot loves clickbait. time to find a real news site.

Re:Unless

[ianare]

An American friend visiting me recently had a hard time picking out what he felt were 9s & 10s in the street due to the lack of sufficient C cups and above ... While people here, men and women, will say they don't understand the American fascination with large breasts (unless of course they like them too ;-)

Re:Unless

[cavreader]

You are correct about the French support but they were more interested in damaging England than they were of nation building. I imagine they were also looking at a future where England would be defeated an then they could start grabbing up real estate in America. Never the less their help was needed and appreciated at the time.

Re:Unless

[cavreader]

"I was pretty young when Israel attacked one of our ships and killed people on it" That ship was a US intelligence operation. Israel was in a war. Bad things happen in war. At the time the US was not a big supporter of Israel. They were only there to keep an eye on the Soviets who were supplying and training the Arabs. Friendly fire happens in every war and pillorying Israel on this particular incident is just another indication of the double standard that gets applied whenever Israel is involved. The Arab Spring is just a shuffling exercise that will most likely leave a lot of people worse off than they were before. And the US should stay out of it, including the Israeli issue. Israel is more than capable of defending themselves and with the US not hovering over their shoulder they can end the conflict decisively the next time an Arab country is stupid enough to give them a reason.

Re:Unless

[lexsird]

Israel is more than capable of defending themselves? GREAT! We don't need to send them any more money or sell them weapons then. I am so relieved we don't have to pay that bill anymore. Good luck, bye!

Re:Unless

[cyn1c77]

Just think if we would have followed the French's lead on Iraq, we wouldn't have invaded and wasted trillions of dollars in a war that we get absolutely NOTHING from. Leave it to the Right wingers to smear them after they didn't play ball with them. AND leave it to capitalists to make every socialist country a villain.

You're right. The French wanted to save their bullets to invade the countries that they actually get oil from. Like Libya.

Re:Unless

[Anonymous Coward]

And so it should be. News is news, ads are ads. They have opposite functions in society. News informs while advertising misleads.

Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine something similar:
Visit us at www.texaco.com/abcnews for more information.

Re:Imagine...

[rueger]

Imagine newscasts that didn't include video press releases masquerading as news...

Re:Imagine...

[sammyF70]

this. Sadly no mod points (and besides, you're AC)

Re:Imagine...

[rueger]

Although.... Sexy Lens, the First iPhone App That Enables You to See Other People in their Underwear, Truly Delivers Good Results

Yes it exists

Re:Imagine...

[Fred Ferrigno]

How about:
Write to us at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

You know most office buildings are owned by private companies, right? Is giving out the street address an advertisement for that company?

France is just jealous...

[howlingfrog]

...that Twitter and Facebook have more influence on global culture than it does.

Re:France is just jealous...

[MrCoke]

Facebook == culture??

Damn.

Re:France is just jealous...

[fearlezz]

No, they're jealous that it's not livre des faces and twitteur

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

France is a country. Being jealous is an emotion, which is felt by people.
Maybe you mean "people in France are jealous..."? But in that case this is a generalization as stupid as "muslims are terrorists" or "American culture is Mc Do and Disneyland".

But maybe this comment means `any law on earth should be the same as in the US', which would show a very open mind.

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I know where you are from.

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Face de Bouc " is culture ????

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be "fesses de bouc".

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

surely livre des visages? I thought French "face" had a more religious undertone whereas it's somewhat the opposite in English

Re:France is just jealous...

[jpapon]

Face in French is generally used to mean "across from", or "facing" when describing locations, as in "en face".

Re:France is just jealous...

[alexhs]

livre des faces and twitteur

More like trombinoscope and piailleur.

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook == culture??

Damn.

What ?! All the while I thought it was a country :O

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being jealous is an emotion, which is felt by people.
Maybe you mean "people in France are jealous..."?

The "people" in your example are only those in the government; especially with Sarcozy being in bed with his paying friends from various French media corporations.

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter => gazouilleur

Re:France is just jealous...

[Opportunist]

Is it me or does this sound like it would translate to "goat shit"?

Re:France is just jealous...

[Opportunist]

Sure, like the kind you usually find in a petri dish.

Re:France is just jealous...

[Overzeetop]

You're right, it does! Is there a place on FB we can write to recommend the new name?

Re:France is just jealous...

[Benbrizzi]

Actually it means "Goat Ass".

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like fashion, food, art and politics?

Re:France is just jealous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ding ding ding! It's a common way of saying "Facebook" in French. Just check out the first link of this google search:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=fesses+de+bouc

Re:France is just jealous...

[xyourfacekillerx]

No it doesn't. You're mixing your words up. Facebook may in fact have little influence on culture. It doesn't really alter people's values, and it doesn't lead people to do anything new, both of which are traditional elements of what defines a "culture". Before facebook there was already social networking online, there were already games people could play socially, and so on. It's just a different way of doing the same thing. Not much has changed.

Aside from that, It has influence only on individual small groups. A better way of saying that is it allows individual small groups to influence themselves. Most people don't network beyond family and existing friends, and so the impact of facebook on their culture is limited to just that group. I realize there are hundred million such small groups, but they don't represent one gigantic culture, that is collectively influenced by Facebook.

Re:France is just jealous...

[howlingfrog]

Normally, I would ignore anyone who didn't realize that a comment modded +5 Funny was in fact a joke, not intended as a literally true statement. But first, you're wrong in interesting ways. I mean that as a compliment--people who are right or wrong in uninteresting ways are so boring as to be de facto nonentities, and people who are right in interesting ways are exceedingly rare. Second, you express yourself coherently. I therefore deem you to be worth talking to.

Let's deconstruct my joke. In actual fact, France's influence is larger but declining, while Twitbook's is smaller but increasing. Claiming, facetiously, that those trends have gone so far that the situation has reversed emphasizes the trends themselves. It's a statement which is literally false, but in a way that highlights something true. That's something I (and apparently several people with mod points) find funny.

But we do actually disagree--you think I was overstating the influence of social networking, but I was actually understating the influence of France. Social networking, especially Facebook and Twitter, are a much bigger deal than you claim they are. Point by point:

It doesn't really alter people's values

There has been much discussion, including here on Slashdot, about the effect cable television and the internet are having on people's political views. We can, more and more easily, choose to avoid exposure to differing viewpoints. This positive feedback loop seems to be leading us to hold more and more strongly to more and more extreme positions. I'd call that an alteration of our values. Social networking is not the driving force of that change, but it's certainly a factor.

Just as widely discussed is the rapid, universal devaluation of privacy--primarily and directly due to social networking. Whether that's a good or bad thing is far from clear, but it's definitely a big thing.

it doesn't lead people to do anything new ... it's a different way of doing the same thing

The big new thing that Facebook does is that we no longer have to consciously choose to keep in touch with casual friends--we have to consciously choose not to. I'm Facebook-friends with dozens of people I went to high school or college with but haven't seen since graduation, former coworkers, siblings of friends, etc. These continuing relationships are not a big part of my day to day life, but any of them could be rekindled--if we move to the same city, or one of us posts about a common interest we didn't know we shared. That's something that was never possible before, even with earlier social networking sites. Nothing before Facebook had a large enough userbase to have that effect.

You can break all forms of communication down into four categories: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. A conversation in person, or a personal letter, is one-to-one. The written (published) word (or television or pretty much any form of artistic expression) is one-to-many. Democracy is a kind of many-to-one communication, as is survey-based research. But many-to-many communication never existed before the internet, and you could almost use it as the primary distinguishing characteristic of social networking. Social networking is the subset of internet activity that is not just a faster version of traditional one-to-one or one-to-many communication. The major breakthroughs of the other three categories are language, democracy, and the printing press--it's an understatement to call them world-changers. We may not know yet HOW many-to-many communication will change the world, but there's no doubt that it's going to. Check out the last three paragraphs of this speech by Douglas Adams for a somewhat more in-depth discussion of this idea.

Twitter is drastically different from anything else that exists on- or offline, including other social networks. All o

Re:France is just jealous...

[DaVince21]

Influence on culture is not culture. It's influence.

Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Sparx139]

This isn't limiting freedom of speech. Granted it sucks (I know in Australia we've had all kinds of stupid/funny "if we get x followers on twitter we'll do y" things on breakfast shows that this sort of thing would stomp on were it here), but it doesn't have anything to do with civil rights.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[syousef]

This isn't limiting freedom of speech. Granted it sucks (I know in Australia we've had all kinds of stupid/funny "if we get x followers on twitter we'll do y" things on breakfast shows that this sort of thing would stomp on were it here), but it doesn't have anything to do with civil rights.

Please tell me how you figure this isn't a limitation on freedom of speech?? It's not just a limitation on freedom of speech. It's a directive that requires news organisations to make the news vaguer. If an issue has been discussed on Facebook, and they are forced to say "social network sites" and not identify the social network, that's diluted the information. Idiotic!

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, this is about creating a level playing field for competitors. Both companies can still buy advertisements to get more airtime.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sco08y]

This isn't limiting freedom of speech. Granted it sucks (I know in Australia we've had all kinds of stupid/funny "if we get x followers on twitter we'll do y" things on breakfast shows that this sort of thing would stomp on were it here), but it doesn't have anything to do with civil rights.

How do you figure it's not limiting freedom of speech or, at least, freedom of the press?

It might be acceptable or justified based on whatever doctrine you're working from. But if you can't say X, Y or Z, it's a limitation, any way you slice it.

Generally, if you have to say something or can't say something, it impacts your freedom, but more importantly implements a level of control on you. And, generally, if someone went to the trouble of lobbying the government to control your speech, it will definitely sound like it's for the betterment of all mankind, but it will be tailored to their narrow interests.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[tbird81]

I see. What the world, needs now, is more, government control. It's the only thing, that there's just too little of.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[nzac]

Please tell me how you figure this isn't a limitation on freedom of speech?? It's not just a limitation on freedom of speech. It's a directive that requires news organisations to make the news vaguer. If an issue has been discussed on Facebook, and they are forced to say "social network sites" and not identify the social network, that's diluted the information. Idiotic!

I read the summary/article differently, your case is allowed. What it disallows is using broadcast time to advertise Facebook and twitter pages for the channel, which is hardly censorship of information or an attack on free speech. I would think it closer to age restriction censorship which is good or in very lest necessary.

Anti (some) Americans rant: Seriously how can you use the idea of freedom of speech to make it sound like a good idea to allow advertising or promotions of companies into news broadcasts.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sammyF70]

It's not about news ABOUT Twitter or Facebook. It's about PR related issues. So, the headline "Facebook's Owner, Marc Zuckerberg, killed by frikking bass with lasers he intended to eat" or even "Bill Gate's Twitter account hacked. His password was Chairs4Steve" are still allowed, whereas "Entertainment Industry comes to term with the fact that DRM is contra productive. Read more on our Facebook page" isn't. In the first two, mentioning the sites is relevant. In the last one it's just hidden advertising (Even if might be unwilling).

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[obarthelemy]

Actually, it's an increase in freedom of speech: there's limited time and resources for speech. Letting commercial companies take over all of it displaces and cancels cultural, philosophical... speech.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sammyF70]

it still isn't. "Amazon.com" (or "amazon.fr" in that case) can't be named in similar circumstances ( "Here is our review of "Harry Potter XIII - Resurrection". You can buy it at amazon.fr" isn't allowed, 'Amazon's worth increasing 10 fold on the stock market after Bezos calls his kid "Kindle"' is actually allowed.)

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Dachannien]

Anti (some) Americans rant: Seriously how can you use the idea of freedom of speech to make it sound like a good idea to allow advertising or promotions of companies into news broadcasts.

Freedom of speech protects speech you like as well as speech you don't like.

That aside, this also bans a news channel from saying something like, "Follow us on Twitter at @newschannelname for the latest news updates direct to your phone." How does it benefit anyone to forbid that?

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[blackraven14250]

Why shouldn't a news organization be able to promote other avenues for viewers to receive or submit content to their service? I see no logical difference between "Visit us at CNN.com" and "Visit our Twitter page at twitter.com/CNN" other than the second is an outside service rather than an internal service. It's not a "hidden advertising" issue if the first is allowed, which AFAICT, it is.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[LordLucless]

"...unless the terms are part of a news story" - you know, the bit from the article that the summary deliberately neglected to mention, in order to provoke reactions just like yours. In fact, the law isn't even aimed at Facebook or Twitter, it just happens to encompass them.

The law is intended to prevent "news" programs from stuffing their stories full of product placement.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[TapeCutter]

Breakfast shows aren't news.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sco08y]

Please tell me how you figure this isn't a limitation on freedom of speech?? It's not just a limitation on freedom of speech. It's a directive that requires news organisations to make the news vaguer. If an issue has been discussed on Facebook, and they are forced to say "social network sites" and not identify the social network, that's diluted the information. Idiotic!

I read the summary/article differently, your case is allowed. What it disallows is using broadcast time to advertise Facebook and twitter pages for the channel, which is hardly censorship of information or an attack on free speech. I would think it closer to age restriction censorship which is good or in very lest necessary.

Anti (some) Americans rant: Seriously how can you use the idea of freedom of speech to make it sound like a good idea to allow advertising or promotions of companies into news broadcasts.

You don't prevent the government from doing things because those things are always good. You prevent it because people have an inalienable right to do them. From a more practical perspective, it's damned near impossible to understand the unseen consequences and the more laws you have the more you don't know what problems are caused by people exercising their rights and what problems are caused by laws themselves. From a more cynical perspective, if there's some asshole lobbyist / politician / special interest saying how it's going to promote civility and make everyone's children happier and no reasonable person can possibly disagree with this, he's probably lying out his ass.

Anti-Euro and various ex-colonies question: how the hell do you still have state-run media? Are you children that need Loving Mother Government to tell you what's going on in the world?

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sammyF70]

Supposing you're getting the "visit us on CNN.com" while watching CNN, it's self promotion (hopefully not only that though) and actually informative. People obviously know your product (CNN) and you are just giving them other channels to consume it. On the other hand, if you advertise private third party services you give them unfair leverage against their competitor (and just because "they are soooo big anyway already" is not an excuse).
In France it is illegal to actually name products and companies, unless it is relevant, this doesn't only apply to FB and Twitter. The ~news~ here is due to the fact that more and more news outlets promote those two, thus stiffling competition ( e.g."FB? no .. I'm not on it yet, but the news is all about it, so I might just get an account" even though the only news about FB was that you can like the talking head's page there)

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Hognoxious]

You don't prevent the government from doing things because those things are always good. You prevent it because people have an inalienable right to do them.

Inalienable isn't a magic word. All it means is that, at the time the rules got written down, the people doing the writing thought it was a good idea.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-Euro and various ex-colonies question: how the hell do you still have state-run media? Are you children that need Loving Mother Government to tell you what's going on in the world?

Simple, not one company in this world seems capable of delivering news.
Just political bullshit and commercials, and we don't have time for that.

Using the market to distribute news is a syntax error, every theory starts with assuming everyone has all information, and that would quite often include the news, so there is no need to distribute it.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[lexsird]

Two points for you to chew on.

1. We have censorship of "speech you don't like" as well, so seriously we need to STFU about "free speech".

2. The French have something called "culture", I know its a concept wasted on 99.9999998% of Americans, but if you strain real hard, you might come close to the galaxy of thoughts they have about preserving said culture. This probably entails them wanting their news without anymore bullshit than necessary.

Besides, it's the French, it's their country, let them run it the way they choose. Frankly, if I was to find a gene in a bottle and get turned into King of the World, I would make a law if you even say "Twitter" or "Facebook", you and your entire family tree gets a bullet in the head. If you have to ask why, you would get one in the head too. Contrast that with the French and get back to me if you still think they are being too harsh.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[valdyn]

No, we have "state run media", because the majority of voters think that its a good idea having public media that is paid by taxpayers rather than Companies, because that makes higher quality programming possible. Btw, it's not "state run media", its independent media financed by taxes. Yes, *we* do like having independent media.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[buchner.johannes]

This paragraph from TFA sums up their argument:

The French TV regulatory agency Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) insists the French government is simply upholding its laws. “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition?” a CSA spokesperson said in a statement. “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?’”

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[nzac]

Freedom of speech protects speech you like as well as speech you don't like.

That aside, this also bans a news channel from saying something like, "Follow us on Twitter at @newschannelname for the latest news updates direct to your phone." How does it benefit anyone to forbid that?

Dont think I have hope of getting the point across but here goes...
RRS does the same thing but more flexible you dont need a bowser and are not limited by characters so twitter is redundant compared to RRS except for the brand and takes less 'why can I do that?' panicking from the technologically inept.
Then there are people like me who don’t like the idea of twitter a global (among friends) SMS service controlled by a US company (cant fully trust a service you really don’t see any benefit to them in you using). Who would prefer if they just died so a small sector of society see a direct benefit.

Now for the real point, Some people like our news service just to report the news not promote themselves. Apart from fixed periods of ads, the news hour is just used to present news is something that we should be able to expect. Why is it good that channels/stations use this time on things that aren’t news. People watch the 6 oclock news for the 6 oclock news, that is how they have chosen to find out what happened they don't need to be provided alternative ways or give the channel a chance manipulate our behaviour.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[thetoadwarrior]

Except for the fact news organisations will have no problem reporting on facebook and twitter unless of course they're doing it because they're paid by twitter or facebook.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[nzac]

You don't prevent the government from doing things because those things are always good. You prevent it because people have an inalienable right to do them. From a more practical perspective, it's damned near impossible to understand the unseen consequences and the more laws you have the more you don't know what problems are caused by people exercising their rights and what problems are caused by laws themselves. From a more cynical perspective, if there's some asshole lobbyist / politician / special interest saying how it's going to promote civility and make everyone's children happier and no reasonable person can possibly disagree with this, he's probably lying out his ass.

Some of us actually believe that we still have a better democracy than that, if most think a law turned out bad the government can repeal it. Though NZ appears to slowly converging to American 'democracy', most countries do not have the lobbying problem that the US has.

State media is better than news designed to generate rating rather than present the best news. The main point most democracies are actually democratic and care about the people more than profit driven companies.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[vux984]

That aside, this also bans a news channel from saying something like, "Follow us on Twitter at @newschannelname for the latest news updates direct to your phone." How does it benefit anyone to forbid that?

In the same way that it benefits us that the anchor doesn't follow every sentence with "brought to you by Carls Jr."

Now maybe you don't see a benefit to that but I sure do. I don't want to get my news from a 3rd party ad company that has nothing to do with anything, and to be honest, I'm genuinely sick of being told sign up to twitter and facebook 30 times a day to follow some bullshit but that's life in 2011.

But I don't have a facebook account, I don't want a facebook account and I'm particularly offended by government subsized entities endorsing either.

(And that may well be the case with the French News organizations, although I don't know offhand.)

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[thetoadwarrior]

It is obvious that Americans hate the idea of news that just reports the facts so it's no surprise you use that defense. Not all speech is free and in fact the constitution arguably didd not originally make it free. It just made it the state's decision to censor you not the federal government's decision. But the news is something that people take seriously. It affects how they vote and how they live. You can't just let a news organisation take money to say things for a corporation, to out right lie or censor facts. Anyone that thinks it's acceptable for that is a tea party tool.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[dolmen.fr]

That aside, this also bans a news channel from saying something like, "Follow us on Twitter at @newschannelname for the latest news updates direct to your phone."

Why not use Internet standards and a subscription model they control themselfves instead of delegating that to a private company? "Follow us by subscribing to our mailing list at http: //newchannelname.fr/mailinglist"

Note that free Twitter by SMS does not exist in France due to the price of sending SMS. Only people with a smartphone and an Internet plan can use Twitter on their phones.

How does it benefit anyone to forbid that?

How does it benefit anyone to give the control of our communications and web site authentication to a single private company?

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[war4peace]

I'm looking at this whole thing from a different perspective: proper news flow.
Too many times it happens that journalists obtain some information from Twitter/Facebook and broadcast it specifying the above as sources. With this ban, maybe they will do their job properly and will search for the ROOT source of the story instead of simply mentioning the most popular website as source.
Of course, according to TFA, if the ROOT source IS indeed Facebook or Twitter, they CAN mention that.
As for the "follow us on Twitter" broad-casted live, that was dumb anyway. Just mention the company's web page and a shortlink to the specific branch (e.g. "Socialize with us at www.abc.com/livenews"). What's on that webpage is their own business.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[dolmen.fr]

The difference is the World Wide Web versus Facebook. Open standards versus a single platform controlled by a single company.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Anti-Euro and various ex-colonies question: how the hell do you still have state-run media? Are you children that need Loving Mother Government to tell you what's going on in the world?

BBC vs Fox News. Gimme a minute, I need to figure out which one treats their viewers like children...

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[war4peace]

Anti-Euro and various ex-colonies question: how the hell do you still have state-run media? Are you children that need Loving Mother Government to tell you what's going on in the world?

Have you watched any?
[sarcasm]Better run by the government and publicly known as that, than run by megacorporations for their nefarious purposes! [/sarcasm]
Disclaimer: I stopped watching ANY sort of TV years ago.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[jpapon]

What the world needs is for you to use less commas.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[icebraining]

That aside, this also bans a news channel from saying something like, "Follow us on Twitter at @newschannelname for the latest news updates direct to your phone." How does it benefit anyone to forbid that?

No, the channel can still do it, just as a proper advertisement, and not mixed with the news. Seems OK to me. Advertisement as news is just fraud.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[VanessaE]

There is ONE argument I can make in favor of promoting Facebook or some other social network: When the news in question is ongoing. I.e. something that, if reported on only as part of a normal news broadcast a few times a day, leaves out valuable information of some kind.

The recent devastation in Joplin, Missouri is a perfect example; until I heard that everyone I know there was safe, if homeless, I followed the story using the Facebook page for one of the city's radio stations (KZRG),at their suggestion. Not because I can't get that info from the radio station itself, but because it was more convenient for me, not being a resident of that state anymore, and because the "wall" therein also allowed for people to ask questions, make suggestions for places to donate, offer their own hands and tools to help in the cleanup, ask about missing loved ones, etc.

These things just don't seem to work all that well on regular websites, from what I've seen. I still dislike Facebook, but I do have an account there and it does have its uses.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[nyctopterus]

Whoosh! The commas give the cadence of the song "What the World Needs Now".

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't matter. It's a limitation on freedom of speech. The fact that it's a fair and consistent limitation doesn't mean it isn't a limitation.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Alarash]

They passed this law because it was unfair competition against other social websites. They wanted to ban the use of the "And find out more about our show on our Facebook page!" at the end of every TV show or whatnot. Now they'll have to say "And find out more about our show on the social websites!" I think it's actually a good thing and make people more aware that FB and Twitter are not the only websites on earth.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Not being allowed to say something is, by definition, a restriction on freedom of speech. It doesn't matter why you aren't allowed to say it.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[flibuste]

You cannot cite companies, brands or such advertising-like terms on a News show, be it Facebook or your Mum's Ice Cream Boot. And I think it's healthy for our societies to avoid this. That's all that piece is about. You read it wrong. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech, and in the case of many, everything to do with freedom of thinking.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Sparx139]

Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the law in France

Yes, but where is the line drawn at? If they include the headlines along with the various gimmics, could they be seen as news shows? Sure they're trashy, almost as much as our current affairs shows (Non-Aussie's: these two shows are tabloid crap, flitting from moral outrage to shameless advertisement in the space of a few seconds). But I doubt that a sense of taste comes into legalities

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[cheekyjohnson]

1. We have censorship of "speech you don't like" as well, so seriously we need to STFU about "free speech".

And? That does not mean that free speech does not mean what he says. You don't have to agree with limitations upon free speech, you know.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Not the amount that matters, just how you use it. And here, it's being used well.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sammyF70]

then let me rephrase : it's not a new limitation of the freedom of speech. It's just the application of an already existing one.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[joebagodonuts]

It benefits control freaks who don't understand that news and news reporting are no longer a one way flow of data. The days of "You just sit down right there and we will tell you what happens, and what to think about it." are done.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[MightyMartian]

Last time I checked it's still a website.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[MightyMartian]

Generally, if you have to say something or can't say something, it impacts your freedom, but more importantly implements a level of control on you. And, generally, if someone went to the trouble of lobbying the government to control your speech, it will definitely sound like it's for the betterment of all mankind, but it will be tailored to their narrow interests.

Mod parent up! We can debate all day whether this ban is useful, good or right or not, but what we can't debate is that this is a limitation on speech.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[TapeCutter]

but where is the line drawn at?

News in Oz is ABC or SBS, if they banned payola and propoganda from shows like TT then those shows would have nothing left to....hmmmm....maybe it's not such a bad idea after all.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Patch86]

Some "limits" to freedom of speech are common (and desirable).

In the UK, TV news is legally obliged to be as politically impartial as possible, and politically partisan programmes aren't allowed to advertise themselves as "news". In most countries, it is also (either intentionally or as an effect of a variety of different laws) illegal to present lies or malicious ungrounded facts as the truth (meaning TV news can't just make stuff up). Product placement is also heavily regulated in many countries- in UK TV broadcasts you are not allowed to endorse or advertise a product or brand without explicitly warning the viewers first. All good things in my books.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Rising Ape]

Yes, it's a limitation. But TV broadcasts are open to only a small handful of people who can determine the content. Most people don't have access to it at all - is that not a much more severe limitation of free speech?

Given the privileged position TV broadcasters hold in this respect, holding them to additional standards to ensure they don't abuse that power is entirely reasonable.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[king neckbeard]

Is there going to be a huge difference if when you go to CNN.com, you get big "follow us on twitter" links that 'advertise' twitter?

Also, the laws about actually naming other products are pretty stupid IMO. I think the BBC has/had a similar stance, which led to the Kinks having to rerecord a part of the song 'Lola' for the single so it would say 'cherry cola' instead of 'Coca Cola.'

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[sammyF70]

Completely different situation concerning the Kinks song , at least in France and Germany (the two country I know best). If you want to release a song about prostitution and call it "Rhum and Cocal Cola" you're completely free to do so. It's limited to TV and radio broadcastings and only when the product/company name isn't relevant to what is being said.*That* being said, I'm sure lots of people *LOVE* lyrics like "Amerrriiiicaaaa, [BEEP] you!", because beeping ~obscenities~ is definitely no limitation of free speech.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[xyourfacekillerx]

This isn't limiting freedom of speech. Granted it sucks (I know in Australia we've had all kinds of stupid/funny "if we get x followers on twitter we'll do y" things on breakfast shows that this sort of thing would stomp on were it here), but it doesn't have anything to do with civil rights.

Say you are prevented from doing something. Another way of saying it is you're "limited" from it. Say that thing was what words you could say to someone else. Another noun for that is "speech". Put two and two together and you have "limited speech".

Hey, good job if you followed that! I've just prepared you to pass the 3rd grade synonyms module! Good luck and let us know when you make it to 4th grade!

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[king neckbeard]

The Kinks were free to release the song, but they just couldn't play it on the BBC because it had a similar anti-advertising clause. The concepts are at least similar in justification. Perhaps France is less stupid about it, but it does not make it not stupid. I get the underlying concept, but I don't think bright line rules don't work well. Also, it doesn't make sense for anything but state-owned stations, crown corporations, and the like. A little bit of research shows that there are private stations, and as far as I can tell, they are affected as well.

FCC censorship is absolute bullshit, and I readily admit that. Our tyranny doesn't excuse others being idiots, though. I welcome a campaign from you or any other to liberate us from that particular element of our regime. I will salute you while you drop those F-bombs on us.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[king neckbeard]

If you treat the public like they are idiots, they will be idiots. As long as newscasts are written by humans using human language, there will be bias in newscasts. I'm more concerned with the public recognizing bias and responding appropriately than trying to shield them from it. Perhaps it was justified decades ago, but there's no reasonable way you're going to prevent people with the internet from being exposed to lots and lots of bias.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[terrox]

incorrect effort at argument. freedom of speech does not relate to random drivel.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck does this post even mean? who modded this a 5?

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[dreampod]

On the other hand compare the quality of news programming available in France and the UK which 'restricts' them to producing relatively unbiased, non-promotional programs to the US which does not.

US news programming varies wildly in quality from Fox News,a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican party (or vice versa), to ABC, NBC, and CBS which compete with each other for the position of television tabloid. At best in the US you are getting wildly pro-corporate news typically focused on extremely rare crimes in far away places, this weeks sex scandals, and junk filler that oftens is promoting a product. In France and Britain you get in-depth analysis of real issues, opinions and info from non-partisan sources, and less tabloid fear mongering.

Removing bias from newscasting may not be why the European news networks produce content that is head and shoulders above Americans but the lack of restrictions in the US certainly does not ensure that anything resembling news is actually produced.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[king neckbeard]

I read CNN, BBC, AP, catch some NPR from time to time, and get news from specialized sources such as Slashdot. IMO, AP is better than the BBC, at least from the content from the respective RSS feeds of their websites, and BBC is about on par with CNN, maybe a smidge better on average.

Yes, Fox News is garbage. CNN is horrible to watch for extended periods of time, but that's probably mostly because it's not meant to be watched continually.

In summary, the notion than European news networks content is 'head and shoulders above Americans' suggests that you probably aren't really familiar with American news networks. The mention of Fox News and the lack of mention of CNN seems to back that up. Furthermore, you seemed to miss the important underlying point, which is that people need to learn to see through bias, and hopefully seek out sources from different sides of an issue. We need news from extremists and moderates on different sides of an issue to get the best picture.

Re:Inb4 "freedom of speech" comments

[elastic_collision]

Eh.. I dunno. They're not promoting it directly in so far as they're just using it as a tool to reach their audience (and effectively at that). How does the law extend to purchased extended utilities/services? What if they were having an event for their audience somewhere, would they not be allowed to name sponsors either?

Smart Move

[Anonymous Coward]

More than a few useless web sites have gained prominence and even IPO's on the backs of what would be obvious shameless shilling by news personalities. Smart media entities would ignore these sites (baring actual news events) unless the *sites* paid the media entities to have a presence there. Twitter gets way more value from, for example, Maddow's Tweets than Maddow benefits from traffic sent by Twitter.

This is normal throughout (large) parts of Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Product placement is not allowed in state channels, commercial websites are just that, products.

FFS

[gmhowell]

Can we PLEASE go in on the side of the Germans next time?

Re:FFS

[Hylandr]

Germany is pretty much a Jewish state these days, what are you getting at?

  - Dan.

Re:FFS

[Nick_13ro]

Germany is pretty much a Jewish state these days, what are you getting at?

- Dan.

It was also a jewish state before Hitler took over. Only difference is now they allow more goyim in the middle-upper classes. Before WW2 they simply pissed of way too many people by personally controlling absolutely everything, including all the retail stores- hence the swastikas the nazis painted on them to point out the level of control it got to.

Re:FFS

[houghi]

I say the same thing and I am European. Would have prevented all the wining Americans about how they saved us from speaking German.

(Karma to burn)

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw you

Re:FFS

[matunos]

You misspelled "winning".

Re:FFS

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelt USA.

Re:FFS

[sqldr]

yeah.  it's spelt d-i-t-h-e-r-i-n-g.  And by the way, it was "misspelt" for centuries, until German immigrants to America added their own form of past tense to English words.  So thanks to America, we already ARE speaking German!

Re:FFS

[matunos]

I was being facetious, but thank you for admitting that the word you intended to use was, in fact, "winning".

Misleading Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The slashdot headline is, expectedly, SUPER misleading.

Re:Misleading Headline

[geogob]

It's misleading if you don't even go as far as reading the 2 line summary...

Re:Misleading Headline

[dolmen.fr]

That's is the point of a headline. Why should a headline be allowed to give a totally different meaning than the content?

Wish we had this

[nzac]

No more follow/like us on twitter or facebook interrupting something generally more interesting.

Seriously the PR departments must be really under pressure to appeal to the new generation, without fully understanding it, to think that we would rather follow them using a facebook or twitter interface rather than there generally well done actual website.

Re:Wish we had this

[Anonymous Coward]

there generally well done actual website

There are news organizations with well-designed websites?

Re:Wish we had this

[nzac]

Fair call. But they are still designed for the purpose which is better than getting it from face book/twitter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
This is better than an a list of 140 character news briefs.

Re:Wish we had this

[sincewhen]

It also seems to be strange that they would be saying "Stop watching TV and use the internet".

Re:Wish we had this

[AmberBlackCat]

For me, the best part would be no more people on the news saying "google it".

Re:Wish we had this

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the endless chain of ‘and on -redacted- people commented about it too’s. As if I care.
I can't wait for this law to come to my country. It'd be a welcome whiff of sanity.

Re:How typically ... French...

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news : "dude's phone was smashed by police in miami after filming officers going all Dirty Harry". I'll take "stupid" instead of "psychopathic" anytime, thanks.

I am so conflicted over this...

[PyroMosh]

On the one hand, the freedom of speech lover in me thinks that this goes to far, as I do with many things the French do...

On the other hand, I imagine what CNN would be like if they had to report or analyze a story instead of asking what Twitter thinks of a story...

Re:I am so conflicted over this...

[sco08y]

On the one hand, the freedom of speech lover in me thinks that this goes to far, as I do with many things the French do...

On the other hand, I imagine what CNN would be like if they had to report or analyze a story instead of asking what Twitter thinks of a story...

If you are actually interested in news, just watch C-SPAN. Yeah, sometimes it's dry as hell and the callers are often painful, but it actually does a really good job of presenting both sides, and there are no ads. Bottom line: "I heard Rep X say this on the House floor and then Rep Y said this" wins a lot more arguments than "I heard talking heads X and Y scoring points on CNN."

If you're in the DC area, 90.1 FM is C-SPAN radio, and they have XM, webcasting, etc. If you're up late, they play historic Supreme Court cases.

Re:I am so conflicted over this...

[Raenex]

Yeah, sometimes it's dry as hell and the callers are often painful

I haven't watched it in years, but it's probably still the same now. The problem is the hosts are too polite with the callers. They just need to cut them off very quickly.

I remember watching Larry King, and the man was just brutal about cutting people off -- but it kept the show running smoothly. Say what you will about his programming, but he knew how to run the show successfully.

Re:Circumvention is proven

[sco08y]

Anyway, exactly how do they report a currently hypothetical purchase of say, Twitter by Facebook? "The world's largest social media company, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, has bought another?" Even that is pretty self-explanatory.

FTFS: unless the terms are specifically part of a news story

Sarah Palin FTW

[BenJCarter]

Holy Shit, can she score goals or what.

brand names

[dotsandlines]

Not that I agree with the French policy (or RTFS), but it's recently bothered me (in a very slight way) that we now have forms of communication that can only be referred to through the brand name. We could chat, text, fax, phone and blog without referring to a company name, but Tweets and Facebook posts seem harder to generalize. Just saying something's been "posted online" seems too vague. The proper generic verb hasn't been invented yet.

Re:brand names

[jeti]

If the term has become generic, the venture loses its trademark. Problem mostly solved.

Re:brand names

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually their "value".

Suppose there are only some seven sufficiently established services. Facebook and Twitter and your choice of five more.

We're moving toward an age where people are being taught through ads that Choice is a Bad Thing. ("Oh My Wordy, you have to 'manage' more than one service.")

However the CEOs did their deals, they're making it so you only have seven choices of how to post something. Then it becomes a game of peer pressure - "everyone else is here, why not you?".

Re:brand names

[pipatron]

Oh ok, so I'll just go to my generic local facebook and post something.

Re:brand names

[matunos]

You can blog about something without implying you're using a particular company's service. You can't follow someone on Twitter without using Twitter. You can't 'like' someone in Facebook without going through Facebook. These forms of communication can only be referred to through the brand names, because only the brand names provide them.

(But there are generic names... microblogging and friending/networking/liking/following, depending on what you're doing. We just don't tend to use them because microblogging is dominated by Twitter [in the West, at least] and social networking by Facebook.)

Re:brand names

[dolmen.fr]

There is no generic word, because those communication media are not generic: those are not open communication protocol, instead they are linked to closed platforms. Closed because they totally control your access to your own communications and they can filter as they want.

Some other threads said that forbidding to talk freely about those private networks was against free speech. But I don't see how advertising closed platform that can totally control speech is an advancement.

Re:brand names

[GreatBunzinni]

I believe the proper terms have already been invented. Twitter is a blog which only accepts a terribly limited amount of text. Therefore, if "blogging" is seen as a verb then it also covers message posted to twitter. If that fails then there is also micro-blogging. Even if some people don't believe that that is good enough then I don't see how it is impossible to say "he/she stated that..." or even "he/she stated in a website that..." instead of "he/she tweeted...".

Regarding facebook, it is nothing but a glorified personal site which happens to have a set of features which enable users to communicate between accounts. Therefore, it's pretty clear that instead of saying something similar to "he/she posted on his facebook that..." it is very reasonable to say "he/she posted on his personal website that...". In fact, the latter is clearer and sounds a lot more natural.

Re:brand names

[WWWWolf]

The proper generic verb hasn't been invented yet.

Eh. You're basically correct - except for the technological point. There are generic terms. Twitter is a microblog. Facebook is a social network. The actual problem is that Twitter and Facebook are closed systems - you need to be a Twitter user to follow someone on Twitter, you need to be a Facebook user to talk to Facebook users. The difference is that the other examples you list are federated: you don't need to use wordpress.com to set up a blog, you can go to Blogger instead, or just install any of the dozens of blogwares on your own webhost - and it all works out.

Both microblogging and social networking are becoming federated systems, though; the standards that define the interchange between hosts (ostatus, activitystreams) are being developed at the moment.

Re:brand names

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I agree with the French policy (or RTFS), but it's recently bothered me (in a very slight way) that we now have forms of communication that can only be referred to through the brand name. We could chat, text, fax, phone and blog without referring to a company name, but Tweets and Facebook posts seem harder to generalize. Just saying something's been "posted online" seems too vague. The proper generic verb hasn't been invented yet.

I'm not even a native English speaker and even I know the generic verbs for this, at least the ones used in British English.
Twitter - to mini-blog [used in most other European languages as well, with spelling variations and, of course, a less dumbed down grammar making the word more useful then in English]
Facebook - Follow us at internet communities / befriend us at internet communities. Alt. online community / virtual community [yes it is clunky, steaming from that the English language lack means to create new words (that isn't fantasy words or based on far fetched metaphors only shared by a small part of the English speaking community and hence not immediately understood by a majority of the English speaking community), in less handicapped languages the noun could be for example Netzgemeinschaft (de), nätgemenskap / nätmötesplats / nätplats / nättorg / nätsamhälle / nätsamfällighet et.c. (sv, Swedish is a language that place stress on subtle differences and rarely standardise on one word (but nätkompis (internet friend) seems to be the standard word used nowadays for someone you befriended through internet communities ("kompis" is a slightly more shallow acquaintance then "vän", the word for "friend" used most in the real word)), but as long as a new word play by the rules, everybody understands it), netsamfélag (is, could make along list of words meaning internet community here too, Icelandic is also one of those languages where it is easy to create new words that everybody understand), virtuaaliyhteisö (fi)). The verbs could be something like nätmöta / nätfölja (sv)]

I'm not sure what words would be used in French. French is also a clunky, ugly language, but it is not nearly as bad as English, so I'm sure they will be able to come up with something.

Re:brand names

[Anonymous Coward]

The generic term for "tweeted" or "posted on Twitter" is "microblogged". For Facebook, I'm indeed not sure what the best word would be; depending on how something was posted, I'd probably go with either "blogged" or "shared".

Re:brand names

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps I'm getting old but I also think that commentary interspersed with "if you want to get in touch then tweet us at X" sounds juvenile. I remember watching a Formula 1 race a while ago where they were talking about the developments in the cars, weighty technical information, etc and then just capped it off by talking about tweeting, etc. It just sounded so out of place.

Re:brand names

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is a 'micro blogging site'(I think that's what it's called, anyway).

Facebook is a 'social networking site'.

Re:brand names

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the generic verbs have been invented, and have been in use for years. The news media just can't be arsed to look them up, and a good part of the population probably wouldn't "get" it anyways.

Twitter / to tweet - Microblogging / to microblog
Facebook - Social network

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[sco08y]

Product placement is not allowed in state channels, commercial websites are just that, products.

And in Europe, it's taken for granted that this is a reasonable restriction and that the idea of state channels is reasonable.

Most Americans (and probably a lot of Euros) don't grasp that European leftism != American leftism and European rightism != American rightism. There are strong parallels in abstract, but as you cross the pond you see a fundamental change in the cultural gestalt of the relationship between the state and the individual.

Yes, owngoals

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, owngoals (aka self goals)

Re:Yes, owngoals

[BenJCarter]

The worst Pirate you've ever heard of... Of course she's attaining her own goals.

Good.

[radio4fan]

Any objective person can see that saying "Follow us on twitter!" is an endorsement of a commercial service, and it's not legal in France to pepper news programs with adverts like this.

The blogtards and upcoming posters who say "Stupid bans like these don't work" and "Next they will be after McDonalds and Disney" are either missing the point due to a lack of thought, or don't care about the point and just like to criticize France anyway.

Personally, I'm amazed that CSA have finally pulled their finger out and have reminded the broadcasters of their responsibilities.

Re:Good.

[matunos]

Wouldn't the news show having a presence on Twitter/Facebook be an endorsement? Indicating that they have said presence isn't so much an endorsement as a statement of fact. Can they mention their website? Is that an implicit endorsement of their web hosting company? The internet providers you might use to reach their site? The companies who manufacture the ethernet and/or wifi devices you might use to access them? Are they endorsing France Télécom when they give out their phone number?

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any objective person can see that saying "Follow us on twitter!" is an endorsement of a commercial service

And yet the BBC does it every day. They'll even flash up a hash tag during the titles of certain programmes.

Re:Good.

[radio4fan]

All of your points are specious.

Which of your questions encourage viewers to become customers of a particular commercial service? Not one.

If you really think that saying "Check out our website!" is a clandestine advert for a web host/ISP/wifi chipset manufacturer then you must be seriously hard of thinking.

Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I'm not a particular fan of Twitter (or any other microblogging services), Facebook or any other social networking sites. I mostly prefer websites that are at least to some extent well-structured as traditional websites are, rather than just adding posts to a first-in-never-out queue. I do see that under some circumstances, a feed that allows for a continuous posting of short messages may be a useful medium, though, so I'm not in for a round of general web 2.0 bashing.

Now, as for the article, I'm having a problem with this restriction. Generally, I see it as beneficial when a news agency points me to a place where I can get further information. I don't think there's anything wrong with that place being the news agency's website. Now, here we got the problem: Is hinting at the news agency's website any less an endorsement of a commercial service (of the webhoster, in this case) than hinting at the news agency's Twitter feed is an endorsement of Twitter?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only difference I'm seeing is that the Twitter feed includes the name of the service provider, whereas the hint at the website does not. So, if I'm not overlooking anything, the straightforward workaround to that restriction is that news agencies can simply point viewers to their microblog on ... which forwards them right to the Twitter stream.

There, I have to wonder - do I as a viewer have any advantage by this? If I don't like Twitter, I'm still getting endless hints at Tweets rather than traditional websites. If I generally like microblogs but dislike Twitter for some reason, I can't even tell beforehand whether or not it is a Twitter microblog the newscaster has just pointed me to.

Concluding, I see the good intentions, but I cannot consider the restriction as it was imposed as beneficial.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the BBC is a disgrace. Was that your point?

Re:Good.

[radio4fan]

Is hinting at the news agency's website any less an endorsement of a commercial service (of the webhoster, in this case) than hinting at the news agency's Twitter feed is an endorsement of Twitter?

Isn't it obvious that that is completely different?

If they say "more information and breaking stories on our website - hosted by soosmabeet web hosting" then it would be equivalent. Otherwise no, because they're not advertising their hosting service.

On the other hand, to say "follow us on twitter" suggests you that should use twitter, furthers twitter's brand recognition, and promotes twitter as *the* micro-blogging service. This is all great publicity for twitter, and surely you concede that this gives them a commercial advantage over other companies? This is clandestine advertising -- giving commercial services undue prominence in otherwise non-commercial broadcasts.

To me the distinction is clear, and I'm puzzled why it's not to others. Is it just because twitter is so entrenched in popular culture?

Or is it because clandestine adverts are so commonplace that they have become like fnords?

Imagine you have ever heard of twitter, but you watch the news and every day they say "follow us on twitter!". Do you concede that this is more likely to make you go and find out what twitter is -- and possibly open a twitter account -- than if you stayed blissfully unaware of the existence of twitter?

If the TV channel want to promote twitter *on their own website*, then [maybe] they are free to do so, because [perhaps] the law only covers what they *broadcast*, and not what they put on their website. [I can't really say, as I'm not going to spend my Sunday wading through a metric shit-load of French legalese.]

do I as a viewer have any advantage by this?

Yes, your news broadcasts are free from clandestine advertisements.

I cannot consider the restriction as it was imposed as beneficial

Perhaps you should think of it as a ban on spam, or slashvertisements. Does that help?

Would you mod me down if I included a link in this post to my fake rolex site?

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. Definitely against their own guidelines on undue prominence:

"However, we must avoid any undue prominence which gives the impression that we are promoting or endorsing products, organisations or services."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/page/guidelines-editorial-integrity-product-prominence/

I will consider complaining if I can be arsed.

Re:Good.

[joakim-lundborg]

If you started telling people "Call me on my France Télécom-number" people would a) think you are salesdroid b) find you pretty silly.

Re:Good.

[Tuan121]

Any objective person can see that saying "Follow us on twitter!" is an endorsement of a commercial service, and it's not legal in France to pepper news programs with adverts like this.

Any objective person would have the complete opposite view.

Are they getting paid to say "Follow us on twitter!"?
If they are, then I agree, but it's probably not the case that every single news network (if any) is getting paid by Twitter to use twitter.
If they aren't, then they are simply endorsing THEMSELVES (not Twitter) by wanting people to join their feed so they can have more people using their news or whatever.

Re:Good.

[Fred Ferrigno]

How about "Write to us at 30 Rockefeller Plaza"? Should that be banned as an advertisement for the Rockefeller Center, which a commercial enterprise?

Re:Good.

[matunos]

Perhaps... but the fact that France Télécom controls most of the phone service in France makes mentioning them by name somewhat redundant.

Over time, this issue will be settled in overtime.

[magusxxx]

Then Twitter and Facebook will have to do what American companies have done for years. Buy sports stadiums. Then every time a game is played there, their name is mentioned during the sports replays.

I wish they had that in Australia

[JinjaontheNile]

It is becoming obligatory that half the news stories have half arsed irrelevant comments from Facebook or Twitter Unfortunately I suspect our journalists will find a way around minor obstructions like the French promotion laws.

Apple?

[sensationull]

Where's the ban for Apple, they usually polute the airwaves far more than either of those meantioned

Proper generic term hasn't been invented

[petes_PoV]

Sure it has: the proper generic term is GARBAGE. Really, when did ill-considered soundbites from anonymous children ever become news?

Re:Proper generic term hasn't been invented

[thegarbz]

from anonymous children

Three words that show you just don't get it.

Twitter and Facebook have a large number of anonymous children. They also have a large following of corporate PR, legitimate news announcers, and non-anonymous important dudes (in someone's view). The fact that some news is broken FIRST on twitter and Facebook and the fact that news articles mention it at all is a clear indication of its perceived importance and relevant in the modern world.

Re:Proper generic term hasn't been invented

[Anonymous Coward]

from anonymous children

Three words that show you just don't get it.

Twitter and Facebook have a large number of anonymous children. They also have a large following of corporate PR, legitimate news announcers, and non-anonymous important dudes (in someone's view). The fact that some news is broken FIRST on twitter and Facebook and the fact that news articles mention it at all is a clear indication of its perceived importance and relevant in the modern world.

I'd say your choice of examples as to who these things are followed by indicates the original poster gets it just fine.

Re:Proper generic term hasn't been invented

[JeffAMcGee]

Ill-considered soundbites from haphazardly-picked and uninformed local citizens has been a staple of local TV news for decades.

Re:Proper generic term hasn't been invented

[Velex]

Uhh... most people use their real name on Facebook.

(I don't, but I've never understood using one's legal name on the interwebs. Most of my friends call me by this name IRL because I'm not either gender so my legal name doesn't make much sense.)

Re:Proper generic term hasn't been invented

[Anonymous Coward]

2007, give or take a year. Welcome to the future.

Nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is "Facebook" will just become "a major social networking site" and "Twitter" will be "a major micro-blogging site". Everyone will know who they mean.

The current French government's internet policy is invariably stupid but this particular incident is just posturing.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[sangreal66]

Telling viewers to hit your facebook page or follow your twitter account is product placement? The product here belongs to the news program.

what?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is ridiculous, the social networking scene has grown beyond just "hey guys check out this 'new' thing", it became a network, a network of people, a new medium to retrive news from. I don't understand why can't there be an exception, facebook has become the new adress book and twitter has become the 'newsfeed of "x" person'.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[houghi]

I would say that European rightism = American leftism. And there would still be place between the two.

Obviously talking about major parties, not minority groups or individuals.

Finally some decency.

[Haedrian]

I'm tired of the 'news' stories pointing out what X said on twitter, and what pictures Y put on facebook related to the news in question.

I for one hope more people adopt it.

Re:Finally some decency.

[Anonymous Coward]

As somebody who refuses to acknowledge the existence of either service I'm 100% with you.

Re:Finally some decency.

[Tuan121]

Yeah, because no information is on Facebook or Twitter........

France has stronger anti-ads policy than US

[Trigger31415]

Some examples : -Logos of trademarks that appear in music clip (and the rest) must be blurred. -A video announcer cannot promote his own book (example: this can't happen Glen Beck. Oh, and btw, his analysis of the French riots of 2005 is completely false, ofc. Hello FUD). -Trailers of films cannot be broadcast on TV as ads (only during emission about cinema) Generally speaking this comes from the same law: "No Hidden advertising" You have other reglementations, like 'in average, 6min of ads / hr max', and 'no too noisy ads' (wasn't that a recent proposition from Obama?). More recently, it was decided to stop broadcasting of all advertising on gvt-owned TV channels, which usually account for more than 50% of hearing. Whether you like or not those laws, comparing them to the Freedom Fries stuff is stupid, and shows that the author ignores French culture...

Simply stupid idea

[Pecisk]

Before social network deniers are celebrating and saying "We don't need people to be dependent to this shit!", sorry guys, they already are. People are using Tweets for news what have happened *right* now. People are using this short form to communicate more effectively than any public radio/television have ever done. Denying these additional ways of communication between public press and people is stupid and back-crawling. Also there is quite fine line between endorsement/advertisment and just mentioning additional communication possibilities. For example, public tv news in my country have used Twitter and Youtube so successfully that people watch news again. They ask for opinions, discuss reports, etc. They are rising interest on what's going on in the country in new generations.

Re:Simply stupid idea

[jovius]

Facebook and Twitter etc can easily be called together as social media, which is part of the news making and gathering today. Actually media today is social as a whole, and there are many means to be in contact in real time. This ban is about commercialisation of the news and not about the contact details given later on the stream.

I think the move is justified and you missed the point.

Re:Simply stupid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's a great idea. Not all people are enslaved by these stupid systems yet. Note that I have nothing against smart peer2peer communications methods like the IRC or even email, which are very different compared to these stupid server-client systems like failbook. I see you're very young, perhaps these new systems is what you have learned first, perhaps these are the only way you know. Perhaps you're completely unaware of the fact these services are practically departments of the united states government? Brainwashing you with the american hegemony, harvesting more information about you than you know about yourself. Have you ever written a real web page, you know from scratch, your content AND your rules? Try it, you're not as dumb and weak as the mainstream media tells you every single day. You can and you should. It's really liberating.

Be a force for good, not evil. Do some reading.

Re:Simply stupid idea

[jovius]

The reason why the brand names are so easily mentioned is that they are something new.

There's really no difference in saying 'Mike from Lond told us' and 'Mike from London tweeted (or send a Facebook message)'

It's sort of self-appreciation to mention the brands; you are proclaiming that you are part of the new wave and your media is up-to-date. That's a bit delusional, because most up-to-date media handle the new information sources like they are. Besides when the first excitement is over the media begins to look old if they keep on using the same brand ridden phrases. It'd seem to be wise (and timeless) to treat the new sources as another ways of communication than especially emphasizing their names.

Single source...

[Bert64]

What we really need are decentralised systems, as we already have for email and to a lesser extent IM with jabber...

While it's almost certainly against the rules to talk about gmail because thats promoting google's business, to talk about the general concept of email is just fine because its an open standard that covers thousands of different providers.

So, have a decentralised equivalent of facebook and twitter, then everyone else would be far better off... No single point of failure, no single company having too much power etc.

Re:Single source...

[matunos]

While it's almost certainly against the rules to talk about gmail because thats promoting google's business, to talk about the general concept of email is just fine because its an open standard that covers thousands of different providers.

Try telling that to people who use Outlook.

Re:Single source...

[Fred Ferrigno]

We have a decentralized system. It's called the web. Facebook.com/CNN is an address you can use to find CNN in that decentralized system. It happens to contain a brand name of another company, but so do many street addresses. Should we ban NBC from telling us to write to 30 Rockefeller Plaza because that would be an advertisement for the Rockefeller Center?

Banning the words seems harsh but...

[matunos]

...I wouldn't mind if "newsmen" would stop reading random goddamned tweets on the air as if they're somehow interesting or relevant. If a tweet doesn't have a congressman's penis allegedly contained within, it doesn't belong on your news show.

Re:Banning the words seems harsh but...

[Fred Ferrigno]

As opposed to days of yore when they'd send out a camera crew to get random sound bites from people on the street. Maybe you'd prefer they did that instead, but should anyone's preferences carry the force of law?

Re:Banning the words seems harsh but...

[matunos]

As opposed to days of yore when they'd send out a camera crew to get random sound bites from people on the street. Maybe you'd prefer they did that instead, but should anyone's preferences carry the force of law?

Nope, that was stupid too. And I think I said "banning the words seems harsh" and never suggested my preferences be enforced by law. Thanks for playing!

Re:Banning the words seems harsh but...

[Fred Ferrigno]

You said "banning the words seems harsh but" and then proceeded to give a justification for the ban. I understand now that you oppose the ban after all, but I think your previous post could reasonably be read either way.

Re:Banning the words seems harsh but...

[matunos]

Yeah, I said that seemed harsh and then described that I didn't like something on US news that was tangentially related to what the French ban was targeting.

High Unemployment in France

[mosb1000]

Also, contrast the life of the average Frenchman to ours. They live longer, have more free time, have medical and JOBS.

Actually, the unemployment rate in France is higher than in the US (9.5% vs. 8.7%), and it is very difficult for young people to find jobs there. If you recall, there was a major bout of riots in 2009 over it, and smaller riots have been occurring since then.

Just think if we would have followed the French's lead on Iraq, we wouldn't have invaded and wasted trillions of dollars in a war that we get absolutely NOTHING from. Leave it to the Right wingers to smear them after they didn't play ball with them.

I don't think we should have invaded Iraq (and I didn't think so at the time), but did you know that France had strong economic ties to Iraq at the time that probably contributed to their decision to oppose the war? It would be similar to the US opposing war on Saudi Arabia, or the UAE (which we certainly would). Those kind of decisions are made the same way in France as they are in the US.

Re:High Unemployment in France

[lul_wat]

Some US commentators are putting the actual US unemployment rate at around 20%. Plus the million or so people who have gone past the 99 week limit. Just sayin.

Re:High Unemployment in France

[mosb1000]

Thats meaningless, as the unemployment rate in france can suffer from the same criticisms and is calculated the same way. You've got to compare apples to apples, or else you're just talking out your ass (which commentators are prone to doing).

Re:High Unemployment in France

[sarbian]

Actually, the unemployment rate in France is higher than in the US (9.5% vs. 8.7%), and it is very difficult for young people to find jobs there. If you recall, there was a major bout of riots in 2009 over it, and smaller riots have been occurring since then.

Those riot have little to do with unemployment, this was only about a death in police custody.
Go on with the french bashing, most of you don't know jack about us.

Re:High Unemployment in France

[ianare]

The difference is that this is actually not a bad rate for France. There has been high unemployment here for decades. As such, there are many social provisions for it (some would argue too many).

In the US, if you've been out of work for a year or more and don't have any savings or family to fall back on -- you're on the street.

BTW, the May 2011 US unemployment rate is 9.1 %

Re:High Unemployment in France

[lul_wat]

I'm not doing your homework for you sonny, go look it up yourself.

Re:High Unemployment in France

[mosb1000]

I already looked up the unemployment rates. I'm afraid you're the one who hasn't done any homework, saying "Some US commentators are putting the actual US unemployment rate at around 20%" without saying what that means, or looking a relevant statistic for france to compare it to. Do you think I'm just going to say "well, some guy on the internet mad a half-ass claim based son something he heard somewhere so I guess that nullifies the actual, published, statistics". I am not an idiot.

Re:High Unemployment in France

[BasilBrush]

Actually, the unemployment rate in France is higher than in the US (9.5% vs. 8.7%), and it is very difficult for young people to find jobs there.

Those percentages are remarkably close. And then checking out for myself the latest figures I find that France is now 9.2% to US 9.1%. Basically no difference. Interesting. And not what you'd expect given the US right-winger claims that socialism is so bad. (they think France is socialist.)

For sure the French get far longer vacations and universal subsidised healthcare. And I don't doubt that the working class in France is better paid than the working class in the US.

US style capitalism is undoubtably better for the uber-rich though. That's whose interests are really served by it.

Re:High Unemployment in France

[lul_wat]

Sorry to hear you are lacking in your comprehension of english, which is strange as you seem to be able to type it well.

Police Brutality at the Silent Flashmob at the Jef

[Angelasharpelle]

Police Brutality at the Silent Flashmob at the Jefferson Memorial Watch entire video here http://spicenewz.blogspot.com/2011/06/police-brutality-at-silent-flashmob-at.html

Double standards

[Anonymous Coward]

This is bullshit. I live in France and the state-sponsored media is always hawking crap on the news; films, CDs, books, series, etc. This is about them reserving the privilege for those who pay (or those who are part of the same conglomerate).

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[icebraining]

You just can't treat Europe as a single country, each country has a different idea of what 'right' and 'left' means.

Not to mention that there's different kinds of 'right'; some are more economically liberal (privatizations, etc), while others are more conservative.

"livre de visage" and "zinzinuler"

[Anonymous Coward]

are probably perfectly fine, though.

French slashdotters filtered ????

[tofleplof]

I posted that very same news to Slashdot about a week ago (created an account on purpose) but it wasn't published at the time. Is this due to my being French and posting from France or what ? Well, my opinion is it's a good thing. The media should just go : "react on our social network accounts.' Or perhaps they ought to set up IRC channels :-O No hard feelings, though...

Re:French slashdotters filtered ????

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this due

Since you didn't already have an account it is possible that your submission was noobish and unacceptable. It is also possible that your recent UID counted against you as well; slashdot gets a lot of poor quality submissions and a 10 minute old UID might be a factor in rejecting marginal submissions.

But feel free to attribute rejection to anti-French behavior; trumped up victim status works well in the US.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[Kjella]

On the really broad lines my impression is that the US leaves it to the "invisible hand" of the market to fix everything. In most of Europe we'll employ any regulation we like as long as we treat all competitors equally. The free market is in the sandbox with the rules and limitations we choose, if say we want to clearly separate news from ads we just make a rule saying that you must, even if the "free market" would like to offer you a slush taking great kickbacks on their promotion. Rather than trust a market not to lie about "unlimited" Internet we tell them to either deliver or face sanctions. If we don't like your warranties we'll just give stronger protection in law.

subject

[Legion303]

Good.

Not news?

[mangu]

"unless the terms are specifically part of a news story"

And what else do they present other than news? Who do they think they are, slashdot?

Re:Not news?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're sparta!

Who advertises whom?

[UBfusion]

I have to ask, what's the precise meaning of "endorsement" and "advertising"? Who advertises whom in this case?

When a (smaller) news company is "endorsing" a 1000x bigger company like Facebook, I 'd think that the small company attempts to exploit the Facebook brand to gain followers/brand recognition/prestige/share value. In addition, Facebook in principle could ask money from the small company, because in effect it's Facebook that advertises them and not the other way around.

Facebook currently does not need any more publicity, but it still would be very interesting if someone cared to investigate quantitatively how much the TV and the press contributed to Facebook's rise.

What The France

[kikito]

What The France

it's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's about time. The number of times they pronounced the words in the news was incredible. For the companies it was free publicity. Really the news were most of the time unjustified. From a viewer point of view it really looked like the journalists were payed every time they say the word.

Funny about the demonstration in Spain: they used all the time the word "social media", I guess in this case it wasn't facebook.

Why is there no Like button for this story?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like it and want all my facebook friends to know

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[bhtooefr]

Except the "invisible hand" of the market actually is pushing politicians in a direction that is beneficial for those that control the hand, here in the US.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[houghi]

Even though each country in Europe has a different idea what 'right' means. Any of those countries 'right' means 'left' when compared to the USofA.

Tres bien

[Anonymous Coward]

At least one country doesn't give these companies endless free publicity. Vive La France.

The BBC and Apple

[Evtim]

I wish the BBC would stop calling tablets "iPad". No kidding, just pay attention during the news. If they say that a newspaper X has launched version for a tablet, they say " you can now read it on your iPad". And no, it was not the case that the subscription was for iPad only (I checked).

I don't think the newsreaders do it intentionally but still...

Re:The BBC and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Or say 'download' when they really mean 'upload'.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[MightyMartian]

I'm curious as why you think regulators are less likely to be corruptable than private companies? Maybe it's bad having corporations shilling on news programs, but in the long history of our species, the most horrendous crimes have not been committed by the Board of Directorys of Acme Inc., but by governments, and quite often by governments who thought they were doing the right thing.

Need this in the Netherlands ASAP

[Anonymous Coward]

The national news (NOS) likes to mention twitter and facebook at least once a day. Anything on the internet is turned into 'on facebook' or 'on twitter', because every site is on there (even if they merely republish their RSS feed on it).

I still wonder if they get paid a little every time they mention 'twitter' or 'facebook' when I just want to know what website they're talking about, that also happens to have a twitter account. They never mention the address.

Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

this isn't really news, it should be the same in the U.S.

And then those people complain about the USA ...

[porky_pig_jr]

outlawing the "french fries".

right move!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook and Twitter are too much hyped just because of media. There are better services and none gets equal attention, this is the right move by the french.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

That's awesome!

[xyourfacekillerx]

Think about it. The news programs are financed by advertisers and networks who are part of parent companies with products and services they definitely want to promote. Facebook is a great means for the promotion of these; mentioning facebook, and offering a facebook link to the news site, is like free on-air advertising: people do and will visit the facebook site, see the ads (promotions, product placements, what have you). of course in the states, it would have to be corporate policy not to mention facebook, we have free speech here, but i do think it's shameful to mention facebook during a news program for something that isn't really news. Facebook.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[xyourfacekillerx]

Uhhh, we have that whole pesky "free speech" thing in our Constitution in the US. "Invisible hand" isn't a socioeconomic philosophy it's just a side-effect of the fact we have designed our government from the start NOT to fuck with any of our lives.

France Franc Fran Fra Fr F ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was considering proposing that people stop using the word France, until I recalled that it's rarely used anyway, other than in a punchline.
However, it's good to be reminded that a country still exists, however insignificant it is, and however little it contributes to the global commonweal.

"Personal web site"

[tepples]

Therefore, it's pretty clear that instead of saying something similar to "he/she posted on his facebook that..." it is very reasonable to say "he/she posted on his personal website that...".

"Personal web site" sounds to me like a site on one's own domain. A page on Facebook certainly isn't that.

Follow someone on RSS

[tepples]

you need to be a Twitter user to follow someone on Twitter

True, one needs to have a Twitter account to be listed as a follower, but I thought Twitter was still providing RSS feeds for people to follow on a web feed reader: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=Lawrence

Good

[Angostura]

I get bloody sick of BBC Radio programmes continually plugging Twitter and Facebook as the primary means to contact them.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[dreampod]

So very true.

On the other hand Europe does have its extreme right which is a touch to the right of any US politician who actually is capable of getting elected. The simple fact is that in European countries that have minimal visible minorities due to lack of imigration the extreme right can get away with extremely overt racism and still occasionally grab a seat or two in a way Americans can't. Instead the republicans and tea party just have to look on with awe and stick to using dogwhistle language and covert racism.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[dreampod]

Mostly because unlike the US the system is not designed to encourage corruption. You get people making bad decisions because they are wrong rather than because they were bought off by commercial interests who don't want restrictions to impair their ability to make money.

-Lobbying is tightly controlled and restricted with real criminal penalties levied against both the politicians and the companies who violate the restrictions.
-Revolving doors between regulators and industry are often illegal and even when not are considered highly inappropriate causing major social suffering and diminishing their ability to abuse their previous contacts.
-Money is a less significant player in elections. Most countries have some form of public financing and thus the legal bribery of the US does not occur.

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[Anonymous Coward]

French law says that you cannot say any brand name, to prevent for abusive product placement,
you cannot say coca-cola, toyota, playstation or any other brand, that simply the same think for twitter and facebook,

if TV presenter show way to say playstation without saying playstation they should be able to do it for twitter and facebook

Re:This is normal throughout (large) parts of Euro

[MightyMartian]

How much money did Barack Obama raise in the leadup to the 2008 election?

Link broken

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine my surprise