French regulators have recently passed laws banning the words Facebook and Twitter from television and radio programs. No, this isn’t a joke.
According to the French broadcasting regulators, television and radio program hosts must refrain from mentioning the words “Facebook” or “Twitter” on the air, unless it’s in direct relation to a specific news story on the subject.
Facebook Word Banned On French TV
This includes popular phrases like “Follow us on Twitter for future updates” or “Join our Facebook page to tell us what you think”. Newscasters may only refer to either of the social networking websites if there’s news directly related to the websites.
C.S.A. (Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel) spokesperson Christine Kelly elaborated,
“Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition. This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box — other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?’”.
It’s an undeniable fact that social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter play a vital role in countless businesses worldwide (small to large), so it’s anybody’s guess what kind of effects this ban will have throughout the working-world (especially if similar policies are adopted elsewhere).
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Article by M Faisal Suleman
M has written 43 articles .
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This seems like a logical choice for C.S.A., since it is perfectly in line with the guidelines around hidden advertisement. Furthermore, often people use these words when they mean something else. When one uses the word “twitter” while he simply means microblogging, it is good to refrain from the usage of the brand name.
A consequence is that people must actually think before using a word. Luckily decent words exist, for instance “microblogging”, of which Twitter is one and “searching the web” of which Google is one of the tools to do this, and so on.