Could “rationing the internet” be the solution to combat online hate and the rise of deepfakes? One former French education minister that has previously bore the brunt of online trolls seems to think so.
In a move that left many online scratching their heads, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem—the first woman to serve as France’s minister of education from 2014 to 2017—published an editorial in national newspaper Le Figaro on Monday titled “Freeing ourselves from screens! Let’s ration the Internet!”
In it, Vallaud-Belkacem suggests limiting French citizen’s internet usage to around 3GB per week, arguing that such a limit would prompt kinder, more civil discourse.
“Scarcity dictates a certain wisdom. If we know we only have three gigabytes to use in a week, we’re probably not going to spend them posting hateful comments or making fakes,” she wrote, pointing her finger at the internet as “less often a solution than an aggravating factor” in topics like inequality and discrimination.
On the surface, an apparently miserly 3GB per week would go some way to forcing scrollers into exercising a bit of scarcity-forced restraint.
That limit would be the equivalent of a three-hour video call, around 10 hours of web browsing, or a two-hour high-definition movie, according to calculations based on BT data.
However, it seems most people already stick within Vallaud-Belkacem’s recommended cap, with average mobile data usage in the U.K. Getting through just 8GB of data in a month, according to Ofcom.
In France, however, it’s much higher, with Cisco reporting that the average internet user got through more than 15GB per month, Connexion reported, citing data from Autorité de Régulation des Télécoms.
Vallaud-Belkacem received some support online for her comments, mainly from tech-wary posters concerned about the impact of phones on mental health.
Indeed, the former education minister has more reason than most to be wary of hateful remarks online.
In a 2017 speech reported by Le Monde, Vallaud-Belkacem railed against the spread of disinformation online concerning her private life, including erroneous rumors that she was having a third baby and that she was divorcing her husband.
Not everyone was ready to hop on Vallaud-Belkacem’s bandwidth bandwagon, however.
Marina Ferrari, France’s digital secretary, labeled the proposal as “probably the worst way to approach the debate on our relationship with screens.”
“Dealing with risks deserves so much better than a Manichean, out-of-touch approach to the digital space, where there are as many uses as there are users.”
On social media, Vallaud-Belkacem’s suggestion was also mocked, as others questioned the feasibility of such a plan in a world dominated by streaming services and soon virtual reality.
“I don’t think I’ll have read, in 2024, anything dumber on the Internet,” one commenter on X wrote, while French journalist André Bercoff questioned the motivations behind Vallaud-Belkacem’s idea: “When something synonymous with freedom happens, you only think of one thing: ration!?”
French Journalist Yves Bourdillon echoed Bercoff’s reservations about freedom.
“She belongs to a box that considers that life is not worth living if we go a single week without formatting/rationing/banning/taxing people’s lives,” Bourdillon wrote.
“I am in favor of a bill severely rationing the liberticidal proposals of elected or former elected officials.”
Are Vallaud-Belkacem’s remarks the start of a reckoning with for screen time?
Only time (and maybe a few more gigabytes) will tell. Until then, keep calm and browse on — in moderation, of course.
