Laetitia Avia, a black French MP whose proposals to tackle online trolling go before parliament on Wednesday, suffers so many racist insults on Twitter that she once thought an abuse-free day was due to a technical problem, reports FRANCE 24.
"It happened once or twice when I really didn't receive anything and I wondered if there was a bug," the former corporate lawyer told AFP in an interview.
"It's incredibly rare that I don't get anything."
Since swapping her successful private sector career to be part of President Emmanuel Macron's ruling party in 2017, Avia has regularly publicised the most abject abuse and death threats she receives online.
"It's to educate people," explained the 33-year-old who has family roots in Togo in West Africa and grew up in a low-income suburb of Paris. "They can't imagine what it's like.
"I sometimes think that I should lend my Twitter account to people from time to time so they can see for themselves."
But her real fightback, which could have consequences beyond France, begins on Wednesday when French MPs start debating a draft law to tackle hate speech online which she has been preparing for the last year.