France's National Assembly voted on Friday to tax the internet by the gigabyte. An amendment to the 2027 budget would charge every company that sends data to French internet subscribers €0.055 per gigabyte, and its Socialist authors expect it to raise €10 billion a year.
But by Sunday, someone had turned the tax on the party that wrote it.
An internet user put a 44MB PDF from the Socialist Party's website on a server on his own machine, downloaded it in an endless loop and tallied the tax the traffic would generate: 13,109 downloads, 576 gigabytes and €31.70 in under four hours.
GENIUS 🤣🤣🤣
He created a script to counter the new data tax the French government wants to adopt:
- He downloads a PDF file available on the Socialist Party's website on an infinite loop, which racks up €30 in taxes in 4 hours.
- In theory, if 1,000 people did this, they could drain their €16 million budget in 5 months 🤣🤣🤣
The law doesn't exempt associations or political parties, so honestly, part of me kind of wants it to pass 🤣🤣🤡🤡🤡— Éros Brousson (@erosbrousson) November 1, 2026
In the simulation, the counter shows the loop running from a local address, 127.0.0.1, so no traffic reached the party's servers and no internet provider metered a byte. The math matches the amendment's rate, though: 576.4 gigabytes at €0.055 co
