Michel Barnier should know that the Internet forgets nothing. When he was appointed on September 5, it was noted that the new Prime Minister had very recently deleted his blog, created during the 2021 Republican (LR) primary. On this site, now inaccessible but whose various pages can be found in the Internet archives, the then candidate relays his professional trips, his interviews given in the press – on July 20, 2022, for example, he republished an interview given to Figaro titled “Macronism is set to disappear in 2027”.
In another of his editorials, dated 2021 and entitled “Regaining the honor of work”Michel Barnier criticizes, among other things, the “stowaways” of the social system who are supposedly living “off the hook” of the State. He is in favor of a “profound transformation” of unemployment insurance and an increase in the number of weekly hours worked. Questioned by L’Express on the deletion of this blog, the last version of which was recorded by the Internet Archive site in July 2024, Michel Barnier’s office indicated that it “had no information” to provide on the subject. We prefer not to dwell on these withdrawals.
For the past twenty years, many people have had the bitter experience of a digital backlash – like Rayan Nezzar, a young spokesperson for La République en Marche who was forced to resign five days after taking up his post in 2018, accused of old posts published on his personal Twitter account, copiously insulting various political figures. More recently, the candidate for the Rassemblement National (RN) in the first constituency of Caen had no choice but to withdraw her candidacy in the first round of the legislative elections after a photo of her wearing a Nazi cap was found on Facebook and spread virally on social networks.
“Right to be forgotten”
To avoid this type of disappointment, some communicators and agencies have specialized in digital reputation management. Since 2019 and for the modest sum of “50 euros for individuals, and 200 to 300 euros for a public figure”, Malik Amghar has participated in the “cleaning” of the digital profiles of several hundred clients via his PR Consulting agency.
“Several of them were politicians, often novices, and wanted to make sure that no compromising photos or embarrassing posts could resurface on social networks. When they have been present on the Internet for 15 or 20 years, their digital footprint is enormous: they want to erase everything,” explains the entrepreneur. The latest examples? A young candidate for a municipal elected position, embarrassed by the – immature – messages left on his X account (ex-Twitter) when he was 16; an aspirant for a political position “at the European level” who wanted to clean up his automatic subscriptions on the same platform – pro-Russian or pornographic accounts, in particular -; or a “Senate employee” anxious to de-reference old press articles referring to a legal case in which he had been implicated, before being cleared.
To satisfy these requests, Malik Amghar relies on a system developed with artificial intelligence, allowing him to delete all photos or messages generated by his clients’ own accounts. For the rest, his teams take care of making manual deletion requests to former Facebook “friends”, or of filing direct complaints on the sites of the platforms dedicated to the famous “right to be forgotten”. Since 2014, this right defined by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) allows users to request the removal of certain information published freely on the Internet and which could harm them, by deleting this information on the original site or by dereferencing the page relaying this data by the search engines themselves. According to data published by Googlemore than 1.2 million requests have been registered in this regard in France over the past ten years, of which more than 50% have been successful.
“We obviously cannot ask for the removal of everything and anything: this is sensitive, criminal or private data, which, at the same time, does not or no longer falls under the public’s right to information,” specifies digital specialist lawyer Alexandre Lazarègue. “Obviously, the more well-known you are, the more these requests risk not being successful,” he explains. This is how the vast majority of communication experts contacted by L’Express warn of the indelible nature of information published on social networks by political figures. “Even if we try to delete it, everything that has ever been published on the web risks being found: even the smallest elected officials can be surprised by a screenshot taken by the opposition, or by a contradictory position left on a site years before,” warns Axel Thomasset, partner in charge of e-reputation at Havas Paris.
“When it gets out, you’re ridiculed.”
To avoid the dreaded “bad buzz”, the communicator Edouard Fillias, co-founder of the Jin agency, recommends that his clients entrust him with “all the positive or negative information” that could emerge from the Internet, in order to prepare possible communication strategies on the subject. “But often, political figures are their own enemies: out of denial or pride, they refuse to warn us about certain content”, regrets the specialist, who has notably worked with “several leaders of the right and the center” on the subject of their e-reputation. When the information finally comes out in the press or on social networks, the latter understand that the prior deletion of their content was not enough, or even proved counterproductive. “The problem is that when it gets out – and it always ends up getting out – you are ridiculed”, he laments.
To ensure the online credibility of his clients, Edouard Fillias also advises working on a much more global strategy around digital reputation. “Our job is not just to calm the storm when it arrives. It is also to build a coherent image of our clients, by installing reference content on their personal pages, by increasing interventions in traditional media to obtain good natural referencing, by choosing a clear editorial line on their social networks…”, he lists.
This expertise, which most of the time requires a complete team, well-thought-out strategies and a detailed knowledge of Internet codes, can be expensive – “up to several tens of thousands of euros per year”, according to the communicator. A significant investment, far from being within the budget of all candidates, who are sometimes overwhelmed by the subject of their digital reputation. “Many elected officials do not know how to manage this constantly evolving subject, or recruit employees who are quickly overwhelmed”, explains Edouard Fillias.
Attempts at redaction
In the very subtle world of political communication, gross errors can thus harm the personalities most concerned with preserving their image. Valentin, a contributor on the Wikipedia platform for about ten years, is amused by the clumsy attempts of certain political collaborators to modify the Wikipedia pages of their bosses. “At the beginning of each term, we have parliamentary assistants who try their hand: they add, modify or delete information, without any neutrality. It can range from the simple addition of all the commissions in which their MP has ever participated to the real attempt at blacking out”, regrets the young man. To dissuade the most audacious communicators, the Wikipedia community lists each of these cases on a dedicated page, soberly entitled “Instrumentalization and ripolination of Wikipedia“.
The cases highlighted include Laetitia Avia, a LREM MP who allegedly asked her colleagues to modify her Wikipedia profile to her advantage, Eric Zemmour (Reconquête), whose campaign teams allegedly tried to arrange the content of certain articles in his favour, and Laurent Wauquiez (LR), for whom four Internet users – two of whom were identified as close colleagues – have allegedly been trying to steer his biography to his advantage since 2018.
“My recommendation to politicians on the subject is obviously to never touch their Wikipedia page. From the moment you modify or delete content, you admit that you no longer take responsibility for what was said in the past… Which is not really desirable in terms of image”, underlines Axel Thomasset, according to whom some politicians “do not yet fully realize the issues linked to their digital reputation”.
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