With only one day until the Le Web Conference, ReadWriteWeb invited editor of ReadWriteFrance Fabrice Epelboin to share his thoughts on this year’s theme – the real-time web. While many choose to focus on the negative aspects of real-time technologies including information overload, Epelboin offers a positive view of how the real-time web offers French netizens an effective tool for political commentary.
In a Facebook post marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, French President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed that he’d taken part in the event at Checkpoint Charlie on November 9, 1989. Nevertheless, according to Epelboin, after some fact checking, journalists discovered that the date of the event was unlikely to be true.
In protest to what appears to be Sarkozy’s effort to rewrite history, bloggers across the country got creative. Nicknamed, “Sarko on the Moon”, real-time netizens tweeted their best rendition of the President Photoshopped into historic scenes.
While a fun exercise in citizen-driven political satire, the campaign renewed criticism of Sarkozy. Many netizens have openly railed against the President for his aggressive enforcement methods. Most noticeably, Sarkozy enacted the internet policing agency HADOPI, an organization authorized to monitor innocent citizens for illegal downloading.
For more on the real-time web, check out ReadWriteWeb’s latest report
