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Silencing social media won’t stop the unrest in France

Censorship isn’t a ‘one weird trick,’ a Band-Aid, or a miracle cure

Sarah McLaughlin's avatar
Sarah McLaughlin
Oct 23, 2026
Riots in Paris, France, on Oct. 17, 2026 (Shutterstock).

Human beings possess many wonderful qualities but one widespread, and less laudable, trait is this: We’re often pretty damn lazy, too. We seek easy fixes for complex problems, reaching for Band-Aids for wounds that need stitches or a fresh coat of paint to conceal a crack in a house’s foundation.

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Sarah McLaughlin's avatar
A guest post by
Sarah McLaughlin
Sarah is Senior Scholar, Global Expression at FIRE and author of Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech
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