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France Fights Back Against Online Disinformation with “French Response”
France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has launched a bold new strategy in the fight against online disinformation with its official X account “French Response,” which has gained more than 180,000 followers since its September debut. The account employs humor, irony, and provocative language to counter fake news and trolls, particularly those from pro-Russian sources and certain U.S. accounts.
“The intuition was that you can’t win the information war if you don’t fight the battle. So we had to raise our voice,” ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux told Euronews. The account generates approximately 15 million impressions weekly, according to ministry data.
France’s diplomatic pivot comes amid increasing online attacks. In recent months, White House-aligned accounts have increasingly targeted France on X, prompting officials to reconsider their approach to social media engagement.
“We have changed our stance, with a rapid reaction to foreign informational attacks against us, so that we can re-establish a form of dissuasion, in other words by exposing the ridiculous, the big tricks or the big lies,” Confavreux explained. “We’re using the codes of social networking with a virality that will enable us to increase our audience and reach precisely those who hear only manipulated information.”
The account’s debut post challenged U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim that Hamas withdrew from hostage negotiations immediately after France announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state. French Response countered with a timeline showing Israeli officials had reported the collapse of talks before President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement.
In another prominent exchange, French Response defended EU investigations into X against claims that such probes constitute censorship. “Judicial scrutiny should be a welcome spotlight, not something to run from,” the account stated in February, a post that garnered over 1 million views.
The account has also taken on pro-Russian disinformation, including a viral video featuring doctored email exchanges that falsely implicated Macron in the latest release of the Epstein files. The campaign included a fake article on a website impersonating the French outlet France-Soir. French Response quickly debunked the claims with a sarcastic post highlighting the manipulation.
France’s new approach to diplomatic communications extends beyond this specific account. In May, the Élysée’s official X account responded to a pro-Russian disinformation campaign alleging that President Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer were caught taking cocaine during a trip to Kyiv. The Élysée shared a meme mocking the allegations, pointing out how “misinformation” was being used to “pass off a simple tissue as drugs.”
However, experts have raised concerns about this approach. Ruslan Trad, an expert in global security at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, cautioned that “when official diplomatic channels adopt trolling tactics, they implicitly validate the information ecosystem’s descent into provocation-based discourse.” He warned that matching adversaries’ tone risks “creating equivalence in audiences’ minds between democratic institutions and disinformation actors.”
Questions remain about whether this strategy can effectively reach the most vulnerable segments of the population, particularly given rising institutional distrust in France. A 2025 study by the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Cevipof, and the Institut Montaigne found increased distrust of institutions and politicians over the past year. Separately, 62% of French people believe they should “be wary of what the media say about the major issues of the day,” according to another 2025 survey.
Confavreux defends the approach, stating, “What counts is not so much the number of followers that ‘French Response’ accumulates, but the number of engagements. These posts need to be seen, particularly by those who are the target of these manipulations.”
The European Digital Services Act, which aims to make digital platforms more accountable, has also been a frequent target of disinformation campaigns. When asked about potentially legitimizing troll tactics by using them for diplomatic purposes, Confavreux drew a clear line: “We will respond to trolls, but we are not trolls ourselves.”
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8 Comments
The ‘French Response’ campaign sounds like an innovative way to fight back against foreign information manipulation. I’m curious to see what kind of content and messaging they use to call out lies and trolling. Confronting disinformation with wit and facts could be an effective approach.
Absolutely. Deploying humor to puncture the credibility of disinformation campaigns is a creative strategy. It will be interesting to see if the French account can gain enough traction to sway public opinion and raise awareness of these issues.
Interesting strategy by France to combat online disinformation. Using humor and irony to expose lies and manipulation seems like a clever approach. I’m curious to see how effective it is in the long run against persistent misinformation campaigns.
Agreed. Countering disinformation with facts and levity could be a more engaging way to reach people compared to dry debunkings. It will be worth monitoring the impact of this ‘French Response’ campaign.
It’s heartening to see France taking a proactive, tech-savvy stance against online disinformation. Countering false narratives with a combination of facts and wit seems like a smart way to engage the public and erode the influence of bad actors. I’ll be following this campaign with great interest.
Kudos to France for trying new tactics to combat online falsehoods. Humor and satire can be powerful tools to discredit bad actors and their narratives. I’m skeptical it will completely solve the disinformation problem, but it’s a worthwhile experiment.
This is a bold move by the French government. Leveraging social media to directly confront foreign actors spreading disinformation is a novel tactic. I hope it helps turn the tide against malicious online influence operations.
Me too. Disinformation is a growing threat, so France taking a more proactive and creative approach to push back is encouraging. Let’s see if it can inspire other countries to follow suit.