Former French minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem recently proposed limiting the volume of data that can be used on the Internet to reduce informational risks, and even global warming. As far as climate risks are concerned, unless mistaken, the Internet enables teleworking, the widespread use of which would lead to a major reduction in the number of daily trips made by French people, and in the amount of CO2 they emit.
Limiting data volume to prevent online hate or disinformation is technically inept : depending on the nature of the content (video, audio, image, text), the volume of data exchanged is extremely variable. Limiting users to three gigabytes per week may certainly reduce the quantity of videos watched, but it still allows torrents of hostile content or disinformation to be spilled or consulted on Twitter or Telegram. Circumventing this difficulty would mean differentiating the limitation of data by type of content, and therefore monitoring the content of IP packets, in other words materializing an opening risk, which has already been debated during the development of deep packet inspection routing, a technique that can only lead to a panoptic mutation of the Internet. The proposed rationing consists in materializing a closing risk to prevent a toxic risk, a solution which would also require the materialization of an opening risk.
The simplism of the proposed solution is symptomatic of a persistent institutional inertia to understand the evolution of Internet techniques and uses, and a certain inability to conceptualize informational risks and threats. This inability is, for example, a major cause of Barkhane's ousting: for several years, the informational operations carried out by Russia against the populations of the Sahel-Saharan strip were neglected, despite warnings. And were even simply unknown, for example to diplomatic personnel in West Africa. Some actors, notably in the defense community, then took this informational threat into account, notably at the time of the fake mass grave affair in Gossi. Despite growing awareness, some actors are complaining of persistent inertia. One result is the erosion of the concept of democracy in Africa.
The nature of the Internet is essentially transversal, leading to an entanglement of issues : faced with this complexity, simplism is the worst solution. Conceptual tools do exist; all it takes is to get interested in them, to understand them, and to use them: this would enable the necessary debates to be deepened, in particular to better adapt regulations.
Today, users are caught between, on the one hand, the perception war waged by the Russian regime and, on the other, the censorship power held by US Big Tech. This private censorship has been exercised against the President of Nigeria and the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, in what is seen as a form of cyber-colonialism. Do European regulations take this threat into account? A US judge defended this private censorship on the grounds that it fell within the freedom of expression of the company operating a social network: what freedom of expression are we talking about here? The right to pseudonymity, which is a guarantee of security, is now under threat, for example on social networks. In France, this led to a teenager being placed under police protection. Facebook in particular enforces a real name policy: this practice threatens the safety of users, and even their lives, as was observed in Afghanistan. A change in the law would reduce this threat. Incidentally, Mark Zuckerberg's sister, who is behind Facebook's real-name policy, justified the measure on the grounds that it would deter inappropriate behavior: here again, simplism leads to the materialization of a risk. Concerning destabilization operations, the installation of a troll farm by the Russians directly within the Presidency in Bangui was revealed : no diplomatic reaction was reported.
Instead of threatening to harm users through risk-generating rationing, institutional and political responsibility lies in adopting the conceptual tools needed to better understand the complexity of the issues involved, to deepen the debate, and to bring deficient regulations up to standard.