French PM puts telecoms on standby for nationwide social media blackout

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France's prime minister has asked the country's telecom operators to prepare to block social media platforms nationally, according to a report by the outlet Blast, relayed by the journalist Michael Shellenberger. The request was made as riots over living costs entered their second weekend, with French authorities reporting nearly a thousand people detained by late Saturday evening.

"I wish to have the ability to temporarily suspend access to these services in case of a repeat of urban violence," the prime minister wrote, according to the report. What would count as a repeat, and who would decide when to pull the switch, the report does not say. Around 70,000 officers were deployed across the country, tear gas was used to disperse crowds in Lyon and Nantes, and water cannon stood in the streets of Paris. The Interior Ministry counted 410,000 demonstrators nationwide; the organizers counted 800,000. A week earlier, more than half a million people had marched and some 3,000 shops were vandalized or looted.

Saturday's marches passed mostly in calm, and Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said at midday that he was satisfied with how they were developing. The riots arrived at the end of the day, breaking out in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Strasbourg as the marches dispersed, with further clashes in Clermont-Ferrand, Nantes, Lille, Grenoble and Nice. The suspension the prime minister wants would not distinguish between the people who fought police in the evening and the 110,000 the ministry counted demonstrating in Paris.

The unrest is no longer confined to France. Mass looting has been reported in the past week from France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, and fresh clashes broke out over the weekend in Albania and the Italian cities of Naples, Rome and Milan. In Paris, a communist protester told reporters the turmoil was part of a broader revolution against "Macron and capitalism." A poll published Saturday by Le Parisien projects Marine Le Pen taking between 32 and 33.5 percent of the first-round vote in the 2027 presidential election, with Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 17 percent — the pair advancing to the runoff in every scenario analyzed, while the center's Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal would take 15 and 9.5 percent.

By late evening almost a thousand people were in detention, and the prime minister's request to the telecom operators was on the record.