Protests have erupted all around France. How Facebook's change of algorithm caused that to happen.
Image: ABC News
Violence on the Champs-Élysées
Mouvement des gilets jaunes, commonly known in English as the “Yellow Jacket Movement” is a protest movement that began with demonstrations in France on Saturday, 17 November 2018. It's rallying cry is the high cost of fuel in the country. Since that first demonstration, the protests have become larger and, recently, more violent. The Champs-Élysées was aflame last weekend (1 December) as protestors surged toward the Arc de Triomphe and vandalised it. More than 100 cars were burned and the damage to property was estimated at €3-€4m.
An elderly woman was killed by a police tear gas canister in Marseille. Two motorists were killed on the motorway between that city and Paris.
A headless movement
The first odd thing to notice about the Movement is that it appears to be leaderless and has no discernable ideology. The second is that the protests started spontaneously all over France. For instance, on the first weekend, 106,000 protestors took part, only 8,000 of whom were in Paris. Protestors took to the street in small cities and towns, in suburban and rural areas. And it’s only getting more popular. Recent polls indicate the majority of France now supports the protesters.
So how did the Movement form, and how was it so powerfully organised?
Image: Facebook
Facebook Anger Groups
In January 2018 this year, “Anger Groups” (Groupes Colère) started to appear across French Facebook. Whatever local issues people were unhappy about—like labour law reforms, reducing the speed limits on busy roads, or proposed local vaccination plans—were shared in these groups. This lead to protests and, a French favourite—shutting down roads.
These posts were shared using their département number, a common practice in France. This lead to demonstrations with names like “Anger 24” or “Anger 87”. Their posts spread like wildfire. Lower-middle-class and working-class people in small towns could now also protest about local issues.
The explosion of the Anger Groups was no coincidence. In January 2018, the same month the first Anger Groups appeared on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced two algorithm changes to Facebook’s News Feed that would “prioritise news that is trustworthy, informative, and local.” This was in an effort to combat sensationalism, misinformation, and political polarisation by emphasizing local networks over publisher pages. Another change made in the same month was to encourage discussion between friends and family by prioritising their posts.
By the spring of 2018, the protest movement had almost died down.
Priscillia Ludosky, Image: Le Parisien
An insignificant petition
It was then that Priscillia Ludosky, a 32-year-old woman from suburban Paris, googled fuel taxes and was scandalised at how high they were. So she created a petition titled Pour une Baisse des Prix du Carburant à la Pompe! or “For a drop in the fuel prices at the pump!”
At first, her petition didn't find much traction. But she spent her summer on Facebook sharing links to various aromatherapy products and promoting her Change.org petition. All the while, fuel prices in France were getting worse. By October, the signatures started pouring in.
This lead to a local radio station interviewing her, and the segment was written up by a small local news page for Ludosky's Seine-et-Marne suburb. This article was then shared to a Seine-et-Marne Facebook page with about 50,000 subscribers.
This was the perfect environment for Facebook's new algorithm to really kick in. The article got about 500 shares off the local Facebook page and a lot of local engagement. At the same time a second petition against fuel taxes was posted to the crowdsourcing site MesOpinions, titled Pour un prix du carburant plafonné à 1€ le litre or “For a fuel price capped at 1 euro per litre.” The MesOpinions petition went viral fast, receiving 160,000 engagements off their Facebook page alone.
The MesOpinions petition was receiving much more attention than Ludosky's. But on 22 October, Le Parisien wrote up Ludosky’s petition, which at that point still had only received 10,000 signatures. Once the article was published that number jumped to 225,000 signatures. The article itself also went viral. Today the petition has more than a million signatures.
This wildfire spread of protests would not have been possible without the change to Facebook's algorithms. A small local news article about an insignificant petition would not have seen the light of day. But with the new emphasis on local news, the scene was set for the worst riots in France for 50 years.
The spread continues. Yellow Jacket protests have spread to Belgium, the Netherlands and Iraq.
References:
BuzzFeed: The "Yellow Jackets" Riots In France Are What Happens When Facebook Gets Involved With Local News
Global News
Wikipedia: Yellow vests movement
